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Escondido California is just a small blip along the Avocado Highway in Southern California, but trust me this little blip is worth a major stop.  We were heading south from the Chino Hills area for a Date with San Diego this November, but we had a week to kill before our reservations, so we booked what we thought was a small campground in the middle of nowhere in order to get some work done. Escondido is a Spanish word meaning “hidden” so we weren't far off with our planned escape from connections.  The town is the oldest in San Diego County and is rich in Spanish and Mexican history before the United States took it over in 1850.  Now it’s famous for avocados and beer. California sunset

Last week we shared our Date Day in San Diego and we received several questions about our first Kamping Experience! It's hard to believe that in almost 5 years of camping around the country we had never stayed at a KOA, not even once. san diego KOA We’ve driven past hundreds of KOA’s over the years and we had this idea in our heads that all KOAs were on the highway, served up cheap box pancake breakfasts and they cost a small fortune.  After spending a week at the KOA Metro San Diego campground I can honestly say we were way off base.

We rarely spend more than a week in any destination, but the small town of Bardstown Kentucky had us feeling like two weeks wasn't enough.

Sounds crazy right?  How could a town with a population around 12,000 keep us entertained for so long? With history dating back to the late 1700’s you’d think visitors like Jesse James, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, Stephen Foster and even Pope Pius VII would have made this place famous…sure all these people left their mark in Bardstown history but it’s the more familiar names that really make this place famous:  Jim Beam, Haven Hill, Barton, Willett and Maker’s Mark.  Not bad lineup for such a small town! To be perfectly honest we came for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and only planned to spend a week, but after just three days of exploring, here are our top 5 reasons we decided to extend our stay: