Nevada – TooBusyForWork

Almost home

We are at the Elks Lodge in Cameron, MO for the night, and we will be back in Cedar Falls tomorrow in the early afternoon. A lot of driving in 2 weeks!

But first I am going to add some pictures of the trip on I-70 heading to Las Vegas that I forgot about last time. I finally got irritated enough with my iPhone camera that I pulled out my nice Canon point and shoot. That’s where these photos come from. Note I-70 starts in Denver, CO and runs until I-25 in Utah. It goes through spectacular country in both states. In Colorado it is not completely rural, but in Iowa it goes for over 150 miles with only one spot for services. It is VERY remote there.

Note this is not a road I would want to do in the motorhome. Not only does it have a lot of steep grades up and down, but the section in Utah has waves in the pavement that would cause the motorhome to porpoise enough to make me seasick! But it is an absolutely beautiful trip for someone in a passenger vehicle, and I highly recommend it.

Now back to more information about our way home. We spent two nights in Gallup, NM. The first night we arrived late in the afternoon, and we quickly got to Richardson’s Trading Post, an historic trading post started in 1913. It is located in downtown Gallup, and I was on the hunt for an authentic Navajo rug. Richardson’s has a huge rug room with all styles of rugs in lots of sizes. We found one we both really like, and it is packaged up in paper until we get home. More pictures when that happens.

The second day in Gallup (Sunday of Memorial Day weekend), we visited the Hubbell Trading Post National Monument. It is about an hour out of Gallup, and I have been wanted to visit for a number of years. Fabulous place. Comments with each picture.

The trading post was built over a number of years as the stonework shows

I like the water spouts and the stone work here

We did buy some things at the store for future birthdays, so no more details there. I didn’t go into their rug room either because after one rug and the ukulele and the HUGE motorhome bill, my pockets were empty.. Kevin said it was smaller than Richardson’s, but that may have been to salve my feelings.

There are other historic sites nearby. The town of Ganado was built up due to the trading post. Hubbell invited the Presbyterian Church Mission Society to set up shop here in the early 1900s. The Presbyterian Church here is lovely.

There is also a nearby mission of the Catholic Church, the historic St. Anne’s. It is still an active parish, so we didn’t do anything but look at the interesting exterior.

So that is pretty much it until we get home tomorrow. We will unpack and I will make a sweet potato casserole on Saturday for a potluck at church on Sunday. Our current pastor is leaving, so there is a big party planned. Next week has some dentist and doctor appointments plus we are taking the Subaru in to get the hail damage repaired. We are also getting our roof replaced! Busy week.

Sorry if you are getting tired of “oops, no posts”

Yeah, I just got rather tied up and distracted about bunches of things. Sadly it wasn’t as warm in Iowa as it was in California and Nevada, so the sandals had to come off for a while.

We did make it to “The Lutherie” in the Des Moines area to get the ukulele crack repaired. He did a fabulous job. I am now religious about case humidifiers. I have even gotten a hard shell case which will keep the moisture inside better. The luthier recommended the sound hole humidifier shown at the bottom of the uke, so I got one of those too. No More Cracks!

Once we got home we were quickly engulfed in grandkids’s end of year activities. All three of the local grandkids had music concerts, and most had two of them! And then came a severe but luckily pretty isolated hail storm.

It came straight from the west and put holes in our siding on that side. We also need a new roof since it was damaged too. We spent quite a bit of time contacting roofers and getting estimates for the roofing and the siding. We definitely weren’t alone either. The roofing company signs were going up the next day, and some roofs are already repaired. Ours will be later in June.

Pella is a small town that was settled by Dutch immigrants. It has a strong Dutch heritage still, and the Pella Tulip Festival is usually the weekend after Mother’s Day. We had friends who visited it earlier, and they warned us the tulips were in full bloom two weeks early. We chose to take a day trip, and I am glad we did. My FB page has a full dump of the pictures , but here is a sample. The windmill is an authentic re-creation, and it is the home of a local museum. The tulips were magical. There are thousands and thousands just in the town square, and more thousands in the parking strips nearby.

For Mother’s Day I told Kevin I wanted a roasted chicken and sweet potatoes. I made the spatchcocked chicken and he did the potatoes. He also bought an adorable little tiny cake. Since I started the Mounjaro for my diabetes, I have very little appetite and small meals are the rule. We ate the chicken for 3 days LOL!

One of the things I am now determined to add to the house are window well covers. In our community, deep window wells are used as access alternatives for the basement living spaces. We have occasionally discovered mice who fell in, but sadly we are discovering baby bunnies now. We found two in the last few weeks. Both were rescued and placed back in the flower garden where they have a hole.

Oh, and I live in a very manicured suburban area without any mature trees. We were one of the first houses here, and ours is just 8 years old. We have planted trees, and neighbors have also as the other homes were built and purchased, but it will be a long time before we get any significant number of big trees. But we do get wildlife! The first year we were here, our cameras picked up a wandering mink, and we have seen possums, raccoons, rabbits, and at least 3 different cats. The deer was a first for us though.

All kind of other things are happening too. A heart murmur was discovered at Kevin’s annual physical, so he has appointments scheduled at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to further characterize the aortic stenosis the caused the murmur. He might need surgery, he might not, but we both felt more comfortable going to Mayo for a significant issue like that. I had my annual MRI to follow up on the DCIS breast cancer and lumpectomy, and a biopsy resulted showing a small area of hyperplasia. Not cancer, but it moves me into an even high risk status of future cancer. So I have an appointment at Mayo too! Lucky it is only a couple of hours away, and it is a common option for people from my small city (50,000). Sigh.

We did finally get news the motorhome was fixed, and we went to Vegas to pick it up after all the initial medical appointments. We spent one night in Fort Morgan, CO and the next night in Cedar City, UT. This is what we woke up to in Cedar City.

We were better prepared than most of the motel customers, but Kevin did go buy us some lightweight jackets the night before.

I am not thrilled with Velocity Truck Center in North Las Vegas. They did fix the engine issue, but they knocked an electrical wire out of its socket that I had to pay to get repaired (hard to prove it was all working before, but it was!). As usual with electrical issues, it took a lot more time to isolate the problem than to fix it. Then after a couple of nights at the North Las Vegas Elks Lodge again, we headed to Needles, CA for a night on our way to south of Williams, AZ where we boondocked last night and tonight. This area is full of OHV trails! We had a great ride today.

Here is a video of the smoother part of the area.

http://May 22, 2026 https://youtu.be/3bBrOCMV-zI

And another one of a bit rougher OHV section.

http://A bit rougher trail south of Williams, AZ https://youtu.be/lWPNxrN1fNw

We are gradually heading back to Iowa. We will be staying in Gallup, NM the next 2 nights hopefully to look at some Navajo rugs.

I did already make one big purchase though. I bought a new super nice Pono ukulele. It is all acacia wood with the standard goodies upscale ukuleles have – geared tuners, ebony fretboard, bone saddle and bridge. It sounds divine, and I am not yet worthy! I am an advanced beginner, and this is at least an intermediate instrument, so now I have to buckle down to be worth of it. It will be fun!

The area around Death Valley

We stayed at The Pads until 17 March. The heat wave that hit the Western US hit us hard, so there was limited sitting outside and a lot more car trips. One took us Oatman, home of the (very tame) wild donkeys. They are famous for just walking up to people looking for some of the alfalfa pellets the stores sell. The community supports them through veterinary care and just generally spoils them. This time there were more donkeys on the road into town than in the town proper.

Oatman is a fun little tourist trap. We were there during the week, and it was still so crowded we couldn’t find a place to park. Here’s a video I took of most of one side of the street. The other side is equally crowded. Sorry for the portrait mode.

https://youtu.be/p6asGj36EtI?si=NFXKj76qf8aMSi6t

We also took a trip to the China Ranch Date Farm. It is a working date farm that is pretty impressive. Their date shakes are famous, and are the best we have ever had. In addition to the farm, they have a lovely desert landscaping. They also protect part of the Amargosa River that comes above ground for a while, disappears below ground, and then comes back above ground. Fascinating biology all around it too. We bought a bunch of dates to take home.

One of the interesting views is the wash you drive through to get to the ranch. Here’s a video of that to give you just a feel. There are a number of small mine diggings all around plus a few larger tunnels that are fenced off.

https://youtu.be/tllv9mf88dU?si=Vem-iwdO-_k34t3G

We also visited Shoshone again. Obviously we ate at the Crowbar, but we also visited the old mining dugouts. Shoshone is at the southern end of Death Valley, and the summer temps are brutal. The miners in the area discovered they could dig into the soft rock for a temperature-controlled dwelling. These are mostly protected as historic structures. Note the smokestacks sticking up.

After such an enjoyable sojourn in the Death Valley area, we decided to head out before the temps got unbearable. We took the south route to Baker, CA then up the long grade to Nipton, CA on our way to Needles where we planned to spend the night. But for only the second time in 106,00 miles, I got a check engine light on the motorhome. After some investigation, we decided we should head to Las Vegas and Velocity Freightliner service. They have done work for us before, and, while expensive, they have a good reputation. We stayed at the North Las Vegas Elks Lodge until our appointment on Monday, 23 March. It was one of those good news/bad news things. What was wrong (low pressure at the turbo) was easily fixable, but parts are on a 60 day lead time! We need a new VGT and the manifold needs new gaskets and such (leaking). Sigh. Parts aren’t awful for a diesel (just under $4000), but labor brings the total to over $10K. Ouch! But no one ever said a diesel Class A is an inexpensive hobby. We thought about it overnight, staying in Velocity’s RV spot, and decided to leave the motorhome with them and just drive home in a couple of days. We are now at the Clark County Shooting Range with FHUs and a nice view of the city lights. We got a storage unit for the RZR so we can use the pickup bed for boxes. It is a good thing we decided to get it fixed here. Even driving the 15 miles to the campground put enough stress on the engine that the AC turned off! We plan on leaving Thursday after dropping the MH off at Velocity. They have a very secure storage area surrounded by a high voltage electric fence!

On to Death Valley!

We left Quartzsite on Sunday, 8 March. We spent a night at the Elks Lodge in Needles as usual to get the laundry done and tanks cleared out. We took the route through Searchlight, NV and the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. It has the most amazing Joshua Trees we have ever seen. They are a different species/subspecies than the ones in January Tree National Park – more branches. They look much more like trees! Of course the issue is the road is a narrow 2 lane and we had a very big motorhome towing a pickup – couldn’t take pictures. I did get one picture of a multi-branched yucca that was blooming though. The Joshua Tree blooms were very similar and very abundant.

We arrived at Death Valley and got a nice spot in Sunset Campground. It wasn’t one of our favorites (the ones on the east end of the campground), but it wasn’t too far from the end. Lots and lots of people in Death Valley for the flowers! It isn’t as big a super bloom as it was 10 years ago, but it is a really nice bloom, more than we have ever seen for sure. Tuesday we drove north towards Stovepipe Wells with a detour to Beatty. Wednesday we drove south towards Badwater Basin. Today we drove south all the way to Ashford Mill ruins. The best flowers were seen today! I am just going to dump a bunch of pictures on you though to give a feel of the area.

Badwater Basin and Lake Manley with the tiny people for scale

Telescope Peak and just a hint of the salt pan

Death Valley pictures are not complete with a view from Artist’s Drive

Swaths of colors, mostly yellow, were everywhere

Yellow, but don’t ignore the mountain colors either!

And we even spotted the lovely Desert Five Spot!

Low to the ground. There is a tiny insect inside if you look carefully

Yesterday we decided it was getting too hot in the Furnace Creek area, so we moved to “The Pads,” a boondock area just outside the park on the way to Pahrump. It contains the concrete pads used for worker housing at the nearby Billy Mine. The housing itself is all gone, but the pads remain. It is a beautiful spot and 3000’ higher than Furnace Creek. That means temperatures a good 10 degree cooler. We actually had to turn the heat on for a short while this morning, mostly because I am a wimp.

I will end with sunset this evening from our campsite.

Lake Havasu part deux

We are back at DJ’s RV Park, a nice older park that is very quiet. Site sizes are decent, and the pool (which we never use) looks nice. It is also $15 less a night than the new place next door! I would not stay here for a season because I would want activities and such, but for a week or so, I prefer a nice quiet place like this.

Kevin got his dentistry done, so that was good. We also got all the basic necessities of laundry and shopping done too. We even got to eat out some! Cha’Bones is our favorite. Upscale, but really good food in a casual atmosphere. We did get some sightseeing done though. We originally planned on Joshua Tree, but they are still recovering from recent fires. We decided to visit the brand new Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. It means “Spirit Mountain”, and is a large swath of BLM land surrounding the town of Searchlight, NV. We visited Nelson, NV, an old mining town that is mostly a privately owned ghost town. Fun place!

The place is full of stuff. While the mill is pretty decrepit, it was obviously really something in its day. The area sent millions of dollars of precious metals out. The owner’s daughter was staffing the cash register, and she described her parents as hoarders who only became respectable after the TV show “American Pickers” became popular! There is a mine tour I wasn’t interested in (claustrophobia), but I bet it would be interesting. There were old workings ranging from small glory holes to more extensive workings all through the area. I would love to come back in a cooler season with the RZR and explore.

On our way back, we decided to explore a part of the Mojave Preserve we hadn’t traveled before. We took the Nipton Road (NV 164) to the Walkng Box Ranch. It was owned by famous silent movie stars Rex Bell and Clara Bow, and they lived there with their family from 1931 until the mid 40s. It was owned by a variety of people before receiving. Atonal Historic Preservation designation. Sadly it is closed right now, though a number of volunteers and seasonal staff have RVs on the property. I did get some pictures.

The ranch house is a long way from the fence

The barn cladding hides railroad tie construction, seen a bit on the far left side

There is a modern visitor center, but closed

The creosote plants had the coolest seed pods like little puff balls

We continued on the Nipton Road to Ivanpah Road then Lanfair Road and then into Goff. Some hard surface road, some gravel, but very little “bad”road, just some minor washboard. We stopped at the Goff Schoolhouse Museum and wandered around a bit. The Schoolhouse itself is impressive, but the surrounding open air mining museum is truly fabulous. They have a walking tour guide you can take, but we just kind of wandered around because it was so hot!

A two stamp mill showing clearly the pistons. I tried to take this in portrait mode. Obviously I failed.

The pride of the museum – a working 10 stamp mill brought from Montana

The have special public days when they operate the stamp mill, and I would love to attend some time. I better bring my ear protection though; the mills were deafening.

I did get some sewing done. My tumbler quilt is completely bound and in the wash. I also got all the Accuquilt cutting done for the next Hunter Star. I decided on a 3×4 layout to make it a bit bigger and more rectangular. I also made some pizza with dough from the bread maker, so I am feeling quite accomplished! We even did some real house cleaning, something g we were desperately in need of.

Tomorrow we head to Saint George, UT on our way to Koosharen, UT up near Fish Lake in the mountains. Lots of trails to ride there. I am definitely tired of the heat here, though I have been pleasantly surprised at how well our two ACs have kept the inside of the motorhome.

Salt Lake City to Lake Havasu

We got to Salt Lake City on Saturday, 3 June. Easy drive, so we got in before 2:00. We stayed at the KOA on North Temple as we usually do. We thought about Antelope Island, but the biting gnats were out, and those things love to take bites out of me! We connected with a good friend on Saturday, and I made my first pizza crust in the bread maker. It came out pretty well, but I don’t know how to stretch the dough well enough! It was a bit smaller and thicker than I like. Wish I had taken a picture, because it tasted great. The recipe for my 1 pound bread maker makes 2 crusts, so I froze on for later use.

Sunday we went to a fabulous concert held at my old church, First Presbyterian in SLC. They did the Rutter Requiem, and it was fabulous. It is one of my favorite choral pieces. If I had brought concert black attire I would have sung with them, but my black polo with worn blue jeans just didn’t fit the vibe LOL! Even better than the choral music was the first piece, an incredible organ piece performed by Larry Blackburn, my favorite organist. The church is a big city church with a gothic style, and it takes a big pipe organ to fill the space. Luckily they have one, and Larry makes good use of it. I don’t know if this link to the amateur recording will work, but here it is. You might need to copy it and place it in your browser.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NeT4rr9IgR15XZv_B_asjfbsmQ0MLysY/view?usp=sharing

Monday we had dinner with more old friends, and we repeated the joy with different friends on Tuesday. So nice to see so many of the people I enjoyed in Utah. I am not sad we moved, but I do miss the people. We also took the mandatory trip to Trader Joe’s and stocked up on freezer meals and treats. We also had the meeting with our financial advisor that was the official purpose for the trip.

We left on Wednesday, 7 June, and spent the night at the Eureka Casino parking lot in Mesquite, NV, just over the border from Utah. We have stayed there before in January heading to the southwest, and it always had 7-10 rigs of various types parked overnight. This time there was just 3 of us. It was pretty hot when we arrived, so we ran the generator for AC until about 9:00 pm when it cooled off enough to open the windows and turn on the fans. Kevin hates heat, but even he was comfortable with the temps that night.

We decided to take the slower route from Mesquite to Lake Havasu by driving NV 169, the Northshore Road that is mostly in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Lovely drive. Here are a few pictures.

Lots of little islands in the lake at this low water level

The bathtub line is >100’ above current lake levels

We arrived in Lake Havasu City to a reserved site at DJ’s Campground on the north side of town. It is a well-kept, older, very quiet place, but handy and priced well. It is HOT here, so boondocking wasn’t an option; we both wanted AC. We picked up the RZR from the Needles storage lot where it had been living since we left the SW, and Kevin is off today with a friend in town doing updates and modifications to it and the truck for transporting it without the trailer. The friend has an air conditioned garage, and all the tools known to mankind. I am sure they will have a blast.

I intend on starting a donation quite out of scraps cuts with my tumbler die. It is nice, mindless seeing, but the result is cute and for a good cause. However I never seem to get the scrap pile lowered!

Death Valley and the Amargosa Valley

We left Hi Jolly Tuesday morning. It was still windy, but we were hoping we could make it the relatively short distance to Death Valley without being blown off the roads. We got just outside of Needles, and the highway signs were telling us “High Profile Vehicles Not Recommended.” We ended up stopping at the Needles KOA after a short trip of just under 100 miles. It is actually a nice place, and we have stayed there a number of times before. Luckily the wind died down some that night, and we made it to Death Valley and Sunset campground comfortably. We did have to cross some mountain passes on the way, and they were snowy. Luckily the snow had stopped, the roads plowed, and brine had been applied to them, so it was easy traveling. I don’t like brine on the motorhome though! We couldn’t find any place to wash the rig, so we just had to leave it on until we left.

We have stayed at Death Valley so often that I don’t take nearly as many pictures as I should. We got our favorite site – right on the eastern edge of the campground with no one between us and the mountains! It was windy and cloudy much of the time, so pictures weren’t that great anyway. I did get a couple of lovely sunrise pictures, taken from the steps of the motorhome.

We spent most of our time at the Dark Sky Festival. As usual they had great speakers from NASA, Goddard Space Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, James Webb Space Telescope, and others. There were photography sessions and astronomy sessions too. We did get one trip into Pahrump for supplies, and it allowed us to eat at Chat Thai, a great little place we try to get to every time we are in town. Kevin tried to get some pictures at night, but clouds came in all nights but one. Sigh.

We took one long trip to the Ubehebe Crater, a steam crater resulting from ground water being instantly vaporized by a magma pipe only 2000 years ago. If you look really carefully you can see four tiny dots of people who walked down to the bottom. It gives an impressive sense of scale.

After the fun of the Festival, we headed to the Longstreet Casino in Amargosa Valley, just 7 miles from Death Valley Junction, so we could relax with power, dump tanks, and do laundry. What a nice place! We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights here, and we will never stay in Pahrump again! The sites were all gravel, but they were roomy and they had planted a native tree between campsites. There is even a swimming pool and petting zoo! We had dinner (so-so) and breakfast (better) at the restaurant. While we were at Longstreet we took a side trip to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. It is always a surprise to find so many springs in the middle of the desert! It is truly a tiny hidden oasis of springs, ponds, and a small reservoir.

A cabin marked simply “Archeology project.”

Jack Longstreet was the person the casino was named after. He was one of the classic western folks – part outlaw, part miner, part rancher. He hid out in a cabin he partially dug out of the soft rock in the refuge. It was well hidden.

The springs and ponds are the real story though.

The pupfish are very small but very blue. Look carefully to see them.

Some of the famous pupfish (though not the Devil’s Hole pupfish.)

The land was developed as a ranch, and they bulldozed sand dunes and pumped water causing significant habitat degradation. The ranch was sold to Las Vegas property developers who wanted to build a few thousand homes here! Luckily the Nature Conservancy was able to purchase the land and transfer title to the National Fish and Wildlife Service. The reservoir below is one of the remnants of the ranch. The dam is in poor shape though, and the reservoir is kept pretty low. The tiny black dot bottom left is a duck.

We left the Casino and are now spending two nights at a Boondockers Welcome location in the Moapa Valley northeast a bit from Las Vegas. Nice guy, but the winds have been so bad! My allergies are flaring up miserably, I am coughing my lungs out, and I am mostly hiding in the motorhome with the HEPA filter running. If it doesn’t clear up in a couple of days, I will have to resort to the steroids I have stashed.

We had lunch today in Overton, NV at the Inside Scoop, a combination sandwich shop and ice cream store. Look at my sandwich! Actually this is the half I took home. The sandwich was massive and tasted delicious for both lunch and dinner!

We are still trying to figure out how to get to Page. The short way is through southern Utah, but it is looking cold and snowy along part of it. The other way is dropping south towards Kingman and Seligman, but it is a lot farther, and there is some bad weather there too. We will decide tomorrow.

End of 49ers Encampment and heading home

Warning – another picture heavy post!

We finally got all the work done on the Jeep, and it was expensive. Just part of the joy of MH ownership, and we have been pretty lucky until now. There has been so much travel to Las Vegas that we really didn’t want to do a lot more travel. That is the excuse I am going to give for not hitting the big tourist spots in Death Valley this time. We didn’t even do any of the 4WD trips! We did get to some of the historical presentations, all the music acts, and some other presentations.

We also took time to buy a Blackstone grill while in Las Vegas. Kevin has been looking at them, and the Camping World there had one at last year’s price, a significant savings. So far we are enjoying it. Kevin has made hamburgers, fajitas, and grilled potatoes. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but that should get better as the seasoning improves. Kevin installed a propane tap to the MH so it is easy to attach an external device to the MH’s propane tank instead of having to use a separate propane bottle – handy.

We headed into Beatty, NV one day to go to their famous candy store. And of course we bought a bunch of nuts and candy. They have some things hard to find anywhere else. Right at the edge of Beatty we found two of the famous donkeys. They are a standard sight here, and very popular with tourists. They are truly a dreadful thing in the wild though, displacing the native big horn sleep.

Heading back to the campground, I took some pictures of Death Valley at sunset.

Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south

There really is no way of showing the vastness of the park. The picture above shows probably 30 miles.

From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the north

Looking from Texas Springs Road above Sunset Campground, NPS Visitor Center foreground right.

The huge alluvial fans coming from the mountains are amazing, this one shown above is probably 5-7 miles wide. They are a very distinctive feature of the park, and they show up everywhere.

With all the beauty around us, you don’t generally stay at the campground to “camp”. It is more a place to rejuvenate, eat, and sleep. That’s good because the campground is basically a big gravel parking lot. It is cheap though – $7.00 a night with our senior pass. There are flush toilets (no showers) plus a dump station with fresh water. This year there weren’t nearly as many people attending. They didn’t even open the first overflow camp area until Thursday, and normally they have all three overflows open and occupied by Monday or Tuesday.

Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.

Also in the park (but regulated by NPS contract), the price for regular gasoline is $4.86 at Stovepipe Wells. Outside the park in Nevada at the casino, the price was $3.88. It is well worth the time to drive the 35 miles to Nevada! The Furnace Creek prices are the best advertisement I know of against unbridled capitalist greed. Stovepipe Wells is just as far from distribution sources, and they charge more than $2 per gallon less.

One thing nice about Nevada and California is they allow both medical and recreational sale of cannabis. I was able to refill the gummies I use to manage the residual pain in my shoulder for a much better price than I can going to Illinois at home. Using them I have been able to stop the ibuprofen that I have been on since surgery, giving my belly a much wanted relief. I take 10 mg each night, and I also take CBD gummies to reduce inflammation. The combination has really helped. I have to use the gummies because there is absolutely no way I am smoking anything!

Getting back to the Encampment, the biggest event is always when the wagon train comes in. This year they had 14 wagons travel the 100 miles from the far southern edge of the park to Furnace Creek. I will just post the pictures without captions because they are pretty self-explanatory. They are lead in by the Marine mounted color guard from 29 Palms. Each of the color guards trains their own horse, chosen from mustangs sold by the BLM. Impressive!

We left Death Valley on Sunday. We spent Sunday night at the Seligman, AZ KOA. Monday we stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants (nice brewery associated with it), Tuesday and Wednesday we were at the Tucumcari KOA waiting out a wind storm, and tonight we are at Mustang Run RV Park on the west side of Oklahoma City. We will spend Friday night at a Boondockers Welcome site near Kansas City, then home!

Finally made it to Death Valley

We left North Platte on Friday,29 October. We stayed at the KOA in Rawlins, a nice spot, then got to the Salt Lake City KOA late morning on Saturday. We were able to meet up with friends, ate well, but only had the two little kids camped next to us a Trick or Treaters. I gave an entire bag of candy to one of my friends to take into work! We stayed until Tuesday morning, the headed on our way. We spent the night at the Eureka Casino in Mesquite, NV. Very quiet, but we sure had to pull out the leveling blocks!

After we left Mesquite, we started getting check engine lights on the motorhome. The error was low manifold pressure, so we called to Freightliner in Las Vegas to check it out. Turns out a hose had developed a crack and needed replaced. Since it was a formed hose, it had to be ordered from the warehouse in Phoenix. They let us stay overnight next to their lot, and then replaced the hose the next morning. $45 hose, $40 shipping, and the rest of the $600+ bill was labor. Sigh. This is the first non-routine issue we have had in 3 1/2 years and almost 40,000 miles, so I won’t complain too much. Still, it was too bad this didn’t happen at home with $95/hour labor rates instead of the $175/hour in Vegas.

We finally got set up at Death Valley, and we lucked into our favorite site! It is on the east side of the lot with nothing between us and the mountains except a small road. My camera was dead, so I hope you can stand these iPhone photos.

Timbisha Shoshone settlement and headquarters on the left and part of the staff housing for Furnace Creek on the right.

Rather flat light, but the color contrast is still interesting

The mountains at sunset looking a bit south

I can look at those mountains all day! We haven’t had a lot of chance though because Kevin discovered the base plate on the Jeep was loose. This is what attached to the tow bars to tow the Jeep, so loose is a danger! The closest place was Vegas again, this time Indoor RV Center. They came recommended, and so far is seems valid. They saw us on Friday to evaluate and quote the repairs, then on Monday Kevin drove back to get the repair completed. It would have been completed then, but we have discovered the idiots who originally installed it didn’t follow the directions or use the right parts! I am livid. We had to have a complete new baseplate installed plus extra labor to drill out or cut off a bunch of bolts put in wrong. It was so much work that we had to come back today too! Since northern Vegas is a bit over 2 hours from Death Valley, that is an awful lot of driving. We don’t know the final bill, but it will be north of $1500. The shop rate here is even worse than the Freightliner dealer – $189. They do seem to know what they are doing though, and a base plate is a critical piece of safety equipment. We just can’t stand to have an issue with it, and better here than Canada or Alaska next summer!

We have yet to attend a single 49ers activity, but we will start this evening if we get back in time. And we have the funds to pay the bills since we knew this day would come. Hopefully my next post will be much more positive.

Recovering from sinusitis and heading into Death Valley

We left Quartzsite on Sunday to drive the short way to Needles, KOA. It is a nice enough park, and a good spot to use for laundry and tank cleaning. However we didn’t do either! I was feeling truly horrid with massive sinusitis, something I am sadly too familiar with. Fever, chills, massive drainage, cough – uggh. In these times, we looked to find a drive-through COVID test site, just because, and we found a rapid test one in Las Vegas. So off to Las a Vegas we went! It is not really out of the way to Death Valley, and we go through it quite a bit. I got the test sample submitted, and we headed to Pahrump, NV, our traditional rinse waste tanks, fill fresh tank, check up on propane and fuel spot. We reserved 3 nights at Preferred RV Resort which is, not surprisingly, not a resort at all but filled with working folks and long term snowbirds. Not bad for the price, but not as nice as Lakeside. But we are just hanging here quarantining until I got my test results Tuesday (negative, as expected). My lovely ENT back home sent me a prescription for a prednisone 6 day dose pack, and I am feeling much better (but not well) here on the morning of day 4.

The drive to Vegas and then to Pahrump was awfully pretty with snow on the mountains. Sadly the pictures I asked Kevin to take out the window of the motorhome didn’t work for some reason. Highway 160 from Vegas is an interesting road crossing the mountains on a deceptively steep and very long grade. Luckily the 9% doesn’t last very long, but there are miles of 5-6%. This is where I end up appreciating the diesel, its exhaust brake, and the Allison transmission that does a lot of the hard work for me.

Kevin and I may not like the RV park over much, but Lily thought it was wonderful! There are pine trees on either side of us with doves in residence cooing. She has been enthralled.

There is a bird on the other side of the window.

We leave this morning for Sunset Campground in Death Valley. I know there won’t be enough cell data service to post, but I will buy WiFi access at the resort occasionally. The weather for forecast to be spectacular (highs in the upper 60s to upper 70s), and the weather at home is abysmal (lows well into negative numbers for 10 days) so we aren’t in any hurry to leave.