Utah part 2 - parks parks parks

Hello again. Moving day was a success. It came off without a hitch. I think we have our moving day rhythm in place. We did meet our next door neighbor (now that all of the people in between us have left. He has a big 40+ foot class A and hauls a very large closed in trailer. He uses it as a garage for his Suzuki Sidekick, a motorcycle, an ATV and some other things we haven’t even dreamed about. His vehicles have Texas plates. We hooked up our trailer and pulled over to the campsite and loaded the car. He came over and visited while we tied the car down. I asked him about Texas because we were headed there in a few weeks. He could offer no advice as he used a mailing service in Texas and claimed his residency there but was really from Ohio. Texas is one of the places (along with South Dakota and Montana) that is a good place to claim your residency. They have no income tax and registration fees for your vehicles are very low. They also have no inspection sticker requirements so you can do all of your business via mail. He and his wife are fulltimers. When he retired they had a large fifth wheel trailer that they pulled with a large diesel hauler. That forced them to use the diesel truck (much like a tractor trailer) when they went for a quart of milk. They agonized for 5 years over becoming fulltimers and finally sold their house and belongings and bought a large diesel pusher motorhome and the small car they haul in the trailer. They have been on the road for 2 or 3 years now and wonder why they didn’t do it sooner.

Becoming a fulltimer (a true fulltimer) is a big decision. They took their time and are happy they finally did it. They did find a place they really liked in Arizona and bought a seasonal space and put a park model (kind of a trailer that never moves and doesn’t have any wheels) on it. They winter there so I guess they do have some roots just not in Ohio. When the weather gets hot, they head out on the road and stay there until they are ready to return. We belong to Coast to Coast to get our inexpensive campgrounds. They belong to 4 or 5 similar groups and have a much larger pool of campgrounds to choose from. After all of the driving we have to do to go places, we may have to look into that also. They got several groups out of one membership purchase.

The trip from Delta to Torrey was uneventful. It was about 145 miles but was all back roads so we didn’t make really good time. The drive was pretty. We saw lots of mountains and cliffs and some sheer rock and smallish canyons. As we got closer to Torrey, the scenery got more spectacular. We spent a lot of time climbing mountain passes to 7 and 8 thousand feet. That gets to be slow going but we have a lot of company (trucks). We started to see large cliffs in multiple shades of reds, yellows, greys and white stone. They soared 100 feet tall with a river at the base. There were large flat areas of open range leading up to them. We started to see more and more cattle and horses. We passed through a lot of really small towns. They had a gas station, one or more small restaurants or diners and a couple of small shops. We saw no large grocery stores and certainly no shopping centers. We have seen some ALCO stores. In Delta, the woman at the hardware store told us that they were a smallish Walmart. I didn’t think to ask if they were connected to Walmart or if they were like Walmart but when we were leaving, there was a Walmart truck headed towards Delta.

We came up over a hill and found our campground. I almost turned around and left. It has spawned a theory: If you have a really spectacular view, you can have a crappy campground and no one will care. Well, we are still here. The campground is adequate and certainly fills our need to be in the middle of everything. The water works, the sewer works (I hope) and the electricity runs the A/C (which it seems we don’t need). The view is like driving through one of the national parks around here with sheer rock cliffs in the aforementioned colors. We also have a year old horse pastured right next to us (to maintain the old west décor). There is a trail riding place just down the road and a police car sitting on the side of the road (perpetually) with a dummy sitting in it (a mannequin with a cowboy hat and a big bushy mustache). There is a general store just down the road that has a little bit of a lot of things (they have corned beef for sandwiches that is cut from a real flat of grey cooked corned beef rather than the chemical treated red corned beef), clothes, Mexican restaurant and things to fix your car. Out back they have cabins but no beer, wine or liquor (2 towns over I did pass a Utah State Liquor Store that had a neon sign saying they were open but had all the shades drawn and looked like a place no respectable person would be caught dead. I tell you what it is like inside when I see.)

It seems, somehow, that they expected us yesterday and reported us to Coast to Coast as no-shows. Coast to Coast assured us in the beginning that we could not double book a date in different parks and I know we were booked in the last park for 6 nights. We had originally booked the parks online but changed our dates over the phone. I must have screwed up and they didn’t catch it so we ended up double booked. The owner here said she would log onto the site and fix it so we didn’t lose any money.

We set up camp in a hurry, unloaded the car and headed for Capital Reef National Park. It is about 8 miles down the same road we are on. We were not very familiar with it so we wanted to check it out, get the brochure on the park and see what else we could glean in a short amount of time. The red cliffs behind our camp ran into the park. It seems that wagon trains and western travelers came through this area. The leaders of many of these wagon trains were former ship captains. To a ship’s captain, anything that blocked their way was considered a reef. When these former captains came up against the great stone walls here they called them reefs. The “reefs here are about a hundred miles long so the wagon trains had to go a considerable distance out of their way to get by them. In contrast to the red cliffs, there are huge domes of white sedimentary rock. The feeling was that these domes looked like the domes of the capital and so the area became known as the Capital Reef and ultimately was granted National Park Status.

The first settlers here were the Mormons. They built a town they named Fruita. They raised orchards here and were well known for their fruit. They built a school that doubled as a community building and had a blacksmith shop and several dwellings. Down by the school, there are pictographs carved into the stone by the Indians. There is a viewing place that you can see them from. They show animals and Indians in ceremonial headdresses. The theory is that they carved them to appease the gods so that they would return the mountain sheep that had so mysteriously disappeared. We returned to camp and set up our chairs and just stared at the big red cliffs.

The next morning, we got up early and headed off to Arches National Park. We drove through Capital Reef on our way. The drive was spectacular. It is beginning to remind me of Alaska. Around every corner is a view that is better than the last one and every view is spectacular. Most of this country is at altitude. I have had some trouble adapting to the altitude. Acclimatization has not come easily but still I work at it.

It was about 2 ½ hours to get to Arches. By the time we got there, we decided that we didn’t really want to make a second trip so we planned to also visit Canyonlands National Park while we were there. The two parks are almost across the street from each other and Moab is just a few miles down the road.

We spent much of the day in Arches. The scenery was impressive with spires and rows of rocks layered with shades of red, yellow and white. There were large rock formations and huge rocks balanced on smaller rocks. In the back of the park were the arches; large formations of stone with holes through them to form arches. One of the best known is called Delicate Arch. It is quite large and has several viewpoints. We checked out the first one (also the shortest walk). It didn’t do justice so we took the longer walk. There was a 200 vertical to the walk. It wound through the rocks and climbed up over a ridge and out onto a series of rock ledges. It stopped at the edge of a cliff. Delicate Arch was just above the cliff edge on the other side of the canyon. People who had taken the hike to the base of the arch looked like ants. The arch towered over them. The view from our cliff was the best place to take pictures. Pictures from under the arch would not be at their best (it was also a 3 ½ mile hike to get to the arch and we still had a long hike that we wanted to take.

We completed our drive through the park ending up at Devils Garden Trail. There are several arches along this trail including another of the best known (Landscape Arch). It had gotten hot by then. A description of the park said if you took just one hike in Arches National Park, this was the trail to take. If you did the whole trail including all of the side trails and the primitive return trail, it would be 8.4 miles. We figured to do about half of the trail out to Landscape Arch. We would see 3 other arches on our hike. The parking lot was crowded but we found a space, gathered up the pack, water bottles, cameras and snacks and headed out. We did eat lunch before we left. We ate canned ravioli. It warmed up some in the car over the day. We took ravioli because it was too much trouble to take a cooler and find ice and make a real lunch. It was good and nutritious. We didn’t need a can opener (pop top cans) and used plastic silverware so we could trash the whole deal.

The trail started out as a narrow channel between two large walls of red stone. Soon we were off in the heat. It was a great walk. We met lots of people along the trail. Some we talked for a long time with while sharing a small spot of shade. Pine tree arch was totally in shade. The arch was at ground level and there were pines growing under it. There was also a cool breeze there so we spent quite a while there. Eventually we got to Landscape Arch. People used to be able to climb up to the arch and picnic underneath it. It is a couple of hundred feet across and is quite thin. Several years ago, people were picnicking under the arch when they heard cracking noises and small pieces started to fall. The people decided to clear out and ran for cover. Large pieces of rock fell from the arch right where the people had been picnicking and now you can’t go near it. It is stunning and looks so fragile with its thin top. It was really hot and we drank pretty much all of the 3 quarts of water we took with us and the last of the bars.

We returned to the car and wound our way back through the park. This was one of the nicest places we have seen so far on this trip. We headed up the road and into Canyonlands National Park. We stopped and talked to the rangers at the visitor’s center before wending our way into the park. As a regular car, we are restricted to the road along the rim. If you have 4 wheel drive, you can descend onto the floor of the park and drive on the roads on the floor of the canyon. That would be worth doing. It looked like fun and the views would be just the opposite of what we experienced. The park was really nice but we were glad we didn’t we didn’t have to drive another 2 ½ hours in each direction to see it. We escaped with the gas light on and were rescued by a gas station just outside the park.

We headed down into Moab. We heard it was a neat little town. It was full of shops and restaurants and finally we found a store we could buy Cheryl a new battery for her camera. We saw a billboard for a place called “the Branding Iron” that was 3 miles out of town and ate there. We both had the Navajo Taco. It consisted of a piece of Navajo Fry Bread with beef, beans and a salad with black olives, salsa and sour cream. We had them 2 years ago in Custer Wyoming at the Crazy Horse Monument. The salad was better but the bread was no where near as good. This was a risen bread whereas the Crazy Horse variety was a dense unrisen bread. The recipe I have for Navajo Fry Bread has no yeast at all in it. The décor was western. There were branding irons on the walls and lots of pictures of western scenes from the town and rodeos in the town dating back nearly 100 years. There were pictures of rodeo champions from the 20s and 30s that were autographed.

The drive back, however was long. We got back to camp around 11 and went right to bed. We got up late the next morning, packed more ravioli, filled the water bottles and set out for Bryce Canyon. The road to Bryce left our road just a couple of miles from here and passed through the Dixie National Forest and the Grand Escalante National Monument. Little did I realize just what that meant. The road climbed through the forest in a winding manner through the 10,000 foot mark through wooded open pastureland. It meandered back and forth at 35 and 25 miles per hour. Now I like a nice scenic road as much as the next person but I pegged this trip as a 2 hour trip and it took nearly 3 ½ hours because of the speed. It was beautiful and would have been enjoyable if it were the only thing we were doing but our goal was to see Bryce and we felt we needed most of the day to accomplish that. Between starting out late since we slept in and the “scenic” drive it was after 1 when we arrived.

At one point on the drive, the road wound along a hogback (a narrow piece of land, no wider than the road dropping off several hundred feet off either side). Did I mention that there were no guard rails along this piece of road? It was a harrowing piece of road as it actually had no shoulders and dropped off at the edge of the pavement (and the road was none too wide either!) At the summit, we met a couple of bicyclers from Rhode Island who had started on the left coast and were headed across the middle of the country planning to end up in Virginia. They had just spent much of the day going uphill to the top of the Grand Escalante (Grand Staircase). They were planning to stay in Boulder (pretty much downhill from the point where we met them). They were pretty happy with the worst part of that day behind them. They were pretty much loaded down with all of their gear. They had sent their pans and stove home to lessen the weight and were eating simply or in restaurants. I did not envy their trip. My son Brad climbs mountains (big mountains), rock climbs and ice climbs. I like to climb on a much smaller scale. I would not begin to tackle the kinds of things Brad does (of course, I am a lot older now). On the same scale, I like to ride a bicycle but I would never tie all my camping gear onto a bicycle and climb a 10,000 (or higher or actually a lot lower) foot mountain. I am not at all masochistic besides, with a bicycle, where do you put the wine cellar?

Bryce has a voluntary shuttlebus system. In other words, you can take the free shuttle throughout the park or you can drive your own car. The woman in the ticket office told us that the parking lots throughout the park were overcrowded and that she would recommend that we took the shuttle (I’ve heard that story before). Since we have been driving a lot, we decided to take the shuttle. It hits many of the scenic spots (note the word many and not all) and they run about every 15 minutes. It wasn’t until much later that we learned several places on the map weren’t on the shuttle list but then we didn’t have a lot of time either as we still had to drive the scenic route back. Bryce Canyon isn’t a canyon, it’s an amphitheater. A canyon is cut by a river and has steep walls on either side of the base. As an amphitheater, Bryce was created by water, freezing and warming. It is full of hoodoos (spires rising up from the floor). These are created by erosion but the uprights are protected from erosion by harder pieces of stone on the top. This park is created through the erosion of softer sedimentary stone. You drive along the top rim and view the park from several points.

If you have the time, you can hike down into the floor and walk among the hoodoos. Not too many people were doing that but it looked pretty neat. The recommendation is that you head down there early in the morning with some food and plenty of water. It gets pretty hot on the floor. We made a mistake here. We were in such a hurry to get the shuttle before it left that we left all of our water in the car. There is a store in the park but it is not on the shuttle route (what’s up with that?). You can take a secondary shuttle from one of the shuttle stops or you can walk to it from the lodge shuttle stop (one of the last before you leave the park). We checked out the film at the visitor’s center but even that was an adventure. The film started really late. The lights in the theater were on a timer based on the length of the film so the lights went on and off in the middle of the film. The film also stopped on a timer but started up a few minutes later. The sound went up and down at all of the wrong times and eventually the film just stopped short of the end and started up again at the beginning.

There was a huge crop of hoodoos in the park. Looking down onto the floor from the rim, there were herds of them in groups all over the park. In the distance, you could see mounds and mountains. It was really pretty. I am not sure what happened to me but I started to feel sick and weak. It could have been a combination of several days of go go go combined with not sleeping well, hiking several hikes over the last 3 days, a lack of water and perhaps the pizza we ate in a small town just outside the park combined with poor insulin management due to the heat. We checked out some of the features and did the old “Griswold look” on others and headed back. The bus driver we had on the ride out was the best of all by far. The other bus drivers did the least amount they could do and “Fred” entertained his riders constantly. He had humorous stories about the park and cute sayings about people and the way the park is run. He had my vote as the best most entertaining driver.

The ride back was long. Cheryl drove for a while and we stopped and bought bottles of water and Pepsi (diet of course). I started to feel better but the ride was so long and slow. We did get back eventually and saw lots of cattle in the road as well as several mule deer along the road. Camp looked pretty good. We decided to take the next day off and slept late. I took the TV connections all apart and checked the connections. Everything looked pretty good but I wiggled everything and found a plug to what I think is a signal amplifier out of the socket. I checked everything again and turned on the DVD player to find that there was a DVD in it from our last trip. I started it off and then played with the TV. The DVD worked fine and soon we were watching an interview with John Ford, John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. They talked about the westerns that were made by John Ford. He won 7 or 8 Oscars but never for a western though he felt they were the best pictures he made and the most fun to make.

We had a great time watching the backgrounds of the film. They were like the places we have been hanging out over the last few weeks. A large portion of the Ford movies were filmed in Monument Valley where we will be late next week. John Ford and Monument Valley were synonymous. He made 11 of his westerns there with the large monuments in the background.

We relaxed and watched the other 2 John Wayne movies on the DVD ate lunch and headed into the “Reef”. We picked out a couple of trails we wanted to hike and some back roads in the park that we wanted to explore if we could. We checked out the Goosenecks to see what they are. We stopped at an overlook and then headed down a dirt road next to it. It ended at a parking lot for the Goosenecks. It was a short hike up over some rocks (rough because the layers of sediment had broken up so there was no single “floor”). The Goosenecks lay in the bottom of a canyon created by Sulphur Creek. The river bed wound back and forth through the canyon like a series of gooses’ necks thus the name.

Following that we headed down the Scenic Route by the visitor’s center. This road held the Mormon house that is a combination museum and store. The museum consisted of the rooms of the house decorated in period furnishings with craft stuff for sale in each of the rooms. The store had food stuffs including bread mixes, jams, jellies, pies, cookbooks (pamphlets really) and home made ice cream (peach). While we were sitting out front eating our ice cream, a mule deer was about 15 feet behind us munching some grass in a bed of irises. While we watched, she walked through the front yard of the store munching as she went and slowly wandered around the parking lot and headed down the middle of the road.

Near the store was a replica blacksmith shop with an orchard across the street. There was a campground as we went up the road and then the fee collection box. We have the National Park Pass so we passed right through and headed down the road. There were two washes down this road of significance: the Grand Wash and the Capital Gorge. They were both served by dirt roads that doubled as washes (the purpose of a wash is to provide a release for flash flood waters throughout these canyons). Each of these roads/washes carries a warning sign regarding flash floods. They tell you not to enter the areas if rain is threatening. We do not have this problem at home. Here, heavy thunderstorms can drop a lot of rain in a short amount of time. This water runs off peaks and hills and large areas and concentrates in narrow canyons and washes and flows with a violent force down the washes. The storm doesn’t even have to be local. It can happen 100 miles away. If you are in one of these washes, you may not even know there is a storm until the water comes rolling around the corner and then it is too late to escape. People hiking in the wilderness will camp in these washes because the sand is soft and fairly devoid of rocks and then get washed away as they sit around their campfire on a perfectly clear night.

The drive along the Capital Gorge has many features not the least of which are the canyons. You drive between steep stone walls a hundred feet high of red stone. There are rocks that have fallen around the road and several rocks as big as busses that are imbedded in the ground right at the edge of the road. The Grand Wash is the same but shorter and has a hike at the end that takes you to several things among which is a pioneer register, a place where pioneers moving west signed a rock so that people who came after them would know they had made it this far.

We then went down to Route 12 (the infamous road from yesterday) and visited the Flute Shop. This is an Indian shop specializing in Native American Flutes. They had a wall of flutes that were just beautiful. There were single flutes and double flutes that you blow into the two of them together and play notes on one with the other acting as a drone I much the same way as the drone in a bagpipe. They had a lot of nice stuff there and had flute music playing in the background. They also had replica petroglyphs carved into pieces of the local red stone.

We needed some groceries and headed back up the road to find a store. The only place we have found locally was a convenience store kind of place. We drove all the way back to Loa and found a grocery store. It wasn’t big but it was a real store with a bakery and a deli. We stocked up on the things we were getting low on like bread, milk, eggs and soda. The bakery had 2 racks full of these really fluffy rolls (like big fresh made hamburger rolls). They looked so good, I bought a package. We had them for supper. They were every bit as good as they looked.

It has rained today. One minute the sun is shining and the next it is pouring. It has alternated rain and shine all day. We pretty much relaxed today. I have been trying to straighten out a problem with an order of medicine. I waited all day for a call to say it had been straightened out but didn’t receive one. When I checked online, it had been straightened out but no one notified me. I just sat here all day.

Tomorrow is moving day! We have a long ride tomorrow. We head over to Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado. We have reservations in the park as well as a 4 hour tour of the cliff dwellings the next morning. I have been looking forward to this stop about as much as any. I have always been interested in these cliff dwellings. We are there a few days and then off to Monument Valley on our way to the Grand Canyon.

Well, we’ll see you. Hope all is well. I have been working with some pictures that should be out in the next few days if I have a good signal to send them with.

C&C

Utah..part I - The Delta Connection

Well, that last episode ended quite suddenly. I had a chance to upload it and grabbed it. We are in another place with little or no communications. We are in Delta, Utah. Never heard of it? Neither had we. We landed here because Coast to Coast had a place here and it was about 2 hours south of Salt Lake City. I wanted to show Salt Lake City to Cheryl but didn’t want to drive the motorhome too close to there. I figured one day to see the city and check out the salt lake so I started out by booking 4 nights at Delta. As things turn out, by the time I actually got reservations in Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde, I had to rebook everything to make it fit. I ended up increasing my time in Delta to 6 nights followed by 7 in Torrey, UT before trucking off to Mesa Verde. There was about a week between Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon so I put in 3 or 4 (can’t remember) nights in Monument Valley (almost forgot to stop there at all) and still have 3 days that aren’t booked between there and the GC. We will work that out as we see how everything else goes. Coast to Coast does not seem to have any places along the southwestern area of Colorado and the Northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico so we may be stuck in regular camp grounds. Failing all else, we will probably head over to the GC and see what is available either in the non reserved park campgrounds or the private ones.

Well, we headed north from Vegas and saw a lot more desert. While we were on the road, we decided it was time to log onto the computer and register our motorhome. Cheryl gathered up all of the paper required and logged onto the web site. All of a sudden, Cheryl asks me when the registration is due. July, says I knowing that I had looked it up before we left. “How come this registration form says it ran out in ((((((April)))))!!!!! In mere seconds, I pulled into a truck parking area that just happened to be coming up. I looked at the registration form and just turned white. “You mean we have been driving across the country in a motorhome with no registration?”

Cheryl looked over at me and said with a straight face “Yea, but the insurance is good until July of 2009!” You never worry about things like the registration until you realize that it is not registered. Then you see police cars behind every rock and just know you are about to be pulled over. Then you must camp on the side of the road until you can get the coach registered.

We thought about it for a while. We could continue to register the camper over the internet. The problem is that it would take 7 to 10 days for the state to process it before sending it to our home address. It would then take the post office 3 to 5 extra days to get it forwarded to my mother who would then send it to us via 2 day overnight mail. That would mean at least one more travel day and maybe 2 before we would have the new registration. What other options are there? We called the Town Office to see if they had any ideas. When you lay the situation out to someone, you feel like a real idiot. I had looked everything over before we left and decided that July was the registration month. It turns out that July is the new insurance policy month. I had gotten new insurance cards to be effective in July before we left and somehow connected this with the registration (well, you have to have the insurance card to register the vehicle). It makes sense if you stand far enough back.

We got through to the Town Office to find out that they have changed the hours and close at 3 pm on Fridays…..it was 3:30. I did get a message to leave a message and someone would get back to me (when I had no idea). I can say I was happy to hear my phone ring only minutes later. We talked about the situation and a solution was suggested. The online registration was rejected due to time restraints but my mother will go to the town hall on Monday morning (I will not publish this until I have my registration well in hand and on the camper…just to be safe. You never know who is reading these things). She will then overnight mail the new registration to us and we will have it Wednesday. It is amazing how many people it takes to rescue me when I do something really stupid! For all of the help, I am truly grateful.

Back on the road, watching every speed limit change and keeping an eye out for the gendarmes, we headed out of Nevada into that little northwest corner or Arizona above and to the left of the Grand Canyon. We wondered if we would catch a glimpse of it but little did we know that there was a mountain range between us and the great hole. But surprise of surprises, we found one of our own. We watched this mountain range get closer and closer. It began to look like there was a large cleft in the range and that the road headed towards it. I just knew that the road would turn away at the last minute but it didn’t. We turned towards the gap and started climbing. In the early part, the rock had been cut away to make the road but soon we were in a canyon of grand proportions. We climbed and climbed and the rock formations grew more and more spectacular. There were layers of red, yellow, orange and tan and at the bottom was a tiny river. This river had carved out this huge canyon through the various colored sedimentary rock. The river was the Virgin River and the geological result is the Virgin River Canyon. It is the Rollinsford Canyon to its New York City Canyon counterpart but you do climb for 12 miles before you start down again. You reach 6,000 feet + and you wonder why there aren’t more accidents with everyone staring at the canyon. Then you come upon a serious accident in the southbound lane where a pickup truck had its front end ripped off in the middle of the road.

Soon we passed an ambulance headed south and hoped all was well. The scenery evened out and we continued to make time. We stopped at exit 4 right after we entered Utah to gas up…Almost $300 but I think it will last us a couple of weeks. We also grabbed a couple of “Big Dogs”. Remember the ½ lb hot dogs we had in Vegas? Well the Flying J had them too but they were wrapped in bread dough or pizza dough and baked in the oven. I was afraid that they would be overdone sitting in the case but they were delicious; done perfectly, moist and easy to handle. We didn’t want to stop because we had a rather long travel day and had lost several hours at the Camping World (not to speak of several miles in a southerly direction when we needed to go north). We drove through part of Nevada, the corner of Arizona and then had to go 178 miles into Utah to get to our exit. Then another 28 miles to Delta.

The road to Delta took us farther and farther from civilization. We left the highway behind and drove through desolate range with an occasional farm. I was beginning to wonder just what I had gotten us into when Delta appeared on the horizon (the land is so flat that you can see the horizon long before you get to it). The town is a true example of a western town. There are 2 travel lanes in each direction with a turning lane in the middle (big enough for cars to turn either way passing each other and not hitting). There was also a parking lane on either side. Now this parking lane is big enough to park cars three abreast without going over the line into the first travel lane.

The town is an interesting mix of business. There are at least 2 good sized grocery stores and a couple of little ones. There is an ALCO store that we were told by the lady running the hardward store was an offshoot of Walmart for small towns. There is a nice hardware store with a connected Radio Shack, a couple of parts stores, a big museum, a couple of pizza places and a bar (private club open to visitors willing to buy a 3 week membership for $4), 4 gas stations (all with the same prices) a nice fairgrounds still sporting a sign saying there will be a demolition derby on the 4th of July, an honest to goodness meat market, some farming stores, a café and 3 steak houses. There are several other businesses on the back streets.

I suppose it is time to talk about the organization of this town. The streets are laid out in a perfect grid pattern. The naming convention is simple but totally confusing. All of the streets are numbered. You have 100, 200, 300 etc. That in itself is not confusing but they have them running in both directions. Starting at Main Street each street parallel is numbered 100, 200, 300 etc. They are east 100 on one side of Main Street and West 100 on the other side. That in itself is easy.

Now let’s look at the streets that cross Main Street. They start at 100 and go 200, 300 etc except that they are North 100 on one side of Main Street and South 100 on the other side. Now picture this. Every street in town is named a direction and a number. Add the number of the house or building onto that and you can have an address in hand and spend an hour not finding it. We were looking for a propane dealer and finally gave up. As we were on the way back to camp, I spotted it in back of a vacant lot (closed of course).

The people here know this must be confusing to visitors. When you call a business, they always tell you what building to turn at and how many blocks to go.

I have been confused since we got here. Since we started the trip, Monday has always been travel day but we didn’t spend a whole week at Vegas so we moved on Friday and haven’t been able to figure out that it was a weekend. We found the post office at 3 pm; they closed at 12. We took the day off on Saturday to rest up from the late hours in Las Vegas but we had trouble getting our arms around the concept that it was Saturday.

We worked on the camper (now the steps don’t work right) and got the new chairs and table out and set up. We set up an area to cook outside, did some grocery shopping and realized that this was a Saturday night nascar race night. We remembered seeing a bar downtown and figured that they might have the race on a TV there. We got there and saw a sign saying that it was a private club. They also had a sign saying visitors were welcome so we hit the buzzer and they let us in. They said we had to buy a temp membership but before we put up the $4, I asked if they had the race on TV. Mary (the bar tender) looked at me and asked if putting the race on TV was what it would take to get us to join. I said we hadn’t seen a race since we left home so she invited me behind the bar and handed me the remote. It was direct TV so I went right to Channel 245 and there it was. I paid the $4 and $3 total for 2 drafts and they turned on the big plasma and we watched the race. When the race got down to the last 15 laps, several of the other patrons moved away from the bar and watched the end with us.

Then we headed back to camp and made supper. The weather here is a lot nicer than we have been experiencing. It is in the low to mid 80s in the early morning rising into the 90s in the afternoon. As the sun starts to go down, the temperature drops back into the 80s. This is much more comfortable than the mid 120s that we have been experiencing.

Today is Sunday. Cheryl has been checking out the churches locally and picked one to go to. We got up late and she called them finding out that the service was scheduled to start in 10 minutes. We dressed furiously and headed down the street. We got there late but they hadn’t started. We thought they might be waiting for us but the minister’s husband hadn’t gotten there yet and he plays the music (guitar). They were about 15 minutes late getting started. They had a guest speaker Jim Montgomery from Tulsa, Oklahoma (that is what he told us but his brochure lists Broken Arrow, OK). He also has a calling in Israel which he attends to several times a year. This is a small evangelistic church. There were only about 15 people there. It was very friendly and had a luncheon after church (which they do every week). This week there was a choice of sloppy joes or the same meat mixture served on taco chips with cheese and lettuce. There was a salad or two and some chocolate pudding or fresh fruit. They showed a great deal of interest in us and the service was good. The people were a definite cross section with young, old and everything in between (tough for such a small congregation).

When we first checked in, we were given some literature about Delta and the surrounding area. One of the things that interested us was a loop road with some interesting things to do and see. There was a big sink hole and an old miners cabin and some other stuff. The thing that interested us most was a hike up little notch and continuing over a ridge to big notch. We packed some snacks and drinks and headed out. The loop looked like one road that made a loop but one leg of the loop (if loops have legs) was a numbered road that continued on to the Nevada border (about 90 miles away). We drove about 43 miles to get there and got to Skull Rock Pass without seeing the road heading out on the loop. We continued on as the loop came back in right after the pass. We found a small sign that said “Old Route 6 19 M). I remembered seeing a sign that looked about the same but was unreadable. The road was dirt and pretty rough looking. We decided to retrace our steps and find the other end of the road.

We found it. If you stopped and looked at the sign really closely, you could make out “Old Route 6 12 M”. That seemed a lot closer than 19 so we decided to check out the road. Within the first 2 miles, we encountered 2 places where the sand was really soft. We made it through but vowed that we would turn around when we hit the next one. We got to 3 miles without another but started to see a lot of other roads coming and going with no markings. It turns out that this is a desert off road vehicle area and none of the roads were marked. The roads were really washboardy and got rougher and rougher. We saw some mounds off the road and stopped to investigate. They were huge ant hills with dozens of tunnels leading from the top and around the bottom. There were several of these mounds about 20 feet apart. I took some pictures and we set off again. The road got rougher and I decided that the Camry had to make it back to South Berwick so we turned around.

We were disappointed but decided to make up for it the next day. Now to set this up. Are you familiar with the Great Basin National Park? Better yet are you familiar with the Great Basin? You all know about the Continental Divide. If you stand on the Continental Divide and it rains, the water that flows off the western side goes into the Pacific Ocean and the water that flows off the eastern side goes to the Atlantic Ocean. Well, the water that falls into the Great Basin doesn’t go anywhere. It stays in the Great Basin and either goes into one of several brackish lakes, sinks into the ground and joins underground rivers or just evaporates. The Great Salt Lake is part of this basin as is the Salton Sea. This whole area (much of Nevada, Most of Utah, parts of Arizona, New Mexico and California) was once a great sea. The land rose and most of the water left leaving this arid desert and the few bodies of water that still remain. The Bonneville Salt Flats, of racing fame, are part of this old sea bed.

The national park is dedicated to this although its biggest features are the Lehman Caves and Mount Wheeler (13,000 ft). On Mount Wheeler is the most significant part of this because of a small pine tree; the Bristlecone Pine. The Bristlecone Pines are the oldest trees in the world and are found only in alpine areas above 9,000 feet. The main grove of Bristlecones here is found at 10,600 feet. You can drive to 10,000 feet and then take a trail that rises another 600 feet over a mile and a half to the start of the grove. If you have never taken a hike above 10,000 feet it is a real effort, especially for us sea level dwellers. We took our already packed backpack from the day before and drove the 100+ miles to the park.

First we signed up for the cave tour. The cave was really magnificent although not the polished tour that Wind, Jewel and Mammoth Caves are (they also don’t have the traffic). Tours are limited to 20 people as opposed to 60 or 80 at the others. The cave is also pretty much at one level as the others wander through hundreds of feet in elevation change. They do have some unique things though. They have a formation called shields. These are shaped just like the round shields that various warriors used. They are created by water under high pressure coming out from cracks in the walls. I have been in several caves and have never seen this formation before. They have one shield that has stalagtites coming down from it. They call it the “Parachute”. They have a great selection of all of the usual cave items: straws, stalagtites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone and various types of bacon. Unlike the other caves, this one is pretty much on a single level. It goes into the mountain but while there are ups and downs, there is only one level. In other caves you can go up or down several hundred feet by changing levels within the cave structure. Caves like Wind and Mammoth have miles and miles of tunnels striated across levels and stretching for miles. This cave was only about a half mile across and we saw most of the area.

After escaping from the underground, we drove up the road onto Mount Wheeler. This is a 10 mile drive from the visitor’s center up onto the mountain. We stopped at several of the overlooks which looked over the desert below. We crossed the 10,000 foot mark and climbed higher to find a trail head that went to the summit. This was an 8.6 mile trail with 3,000 foot of elevation gain. The road went up from there and finally went down for quite a ways. Soon, we came to the other main trail head. This was also at 10,000 feet and fed several trails to an alpine lakes loop (which also connected to the summit trail), a trail to a glacier (a cirque) which is somewhat depleted but you can see the area created by it, and along the same trail, the Bristlecone Pine grove (1.5 miles and 600 foot elevation gain).

We set out slowly with lots of breaks. The going was difficult and a good breath was hard to find. It got easier as we went on but we still took lots of breaks. The temperature at the trail head was 69 degrees, a big drop from the 120s we have experienced. We put on our sweatshirts, gathered up our water bottles and energy bars (and bug spray) and headed up. It wasn’t long before we took off the sweatshirts. We passed several trail intersections and eventually entered the bristlecone grove. The trees were scattered over the mountainside. Many of them were really old and had lost much of their bark. They were gnarled and were mostly 8 to 12 feet tall. The trunks and branches were twisted and those that had cones had these small purplish cones. There were lots of small trees but they say that even these are really old. Many of the trees in this grove are 3,000 to 4,000 years old. There is one tree here that is 4,900 years old. They won’t tell you which one to protect the tree against souvenir hunters.

They used bristlecone pines to revise the carbon dating system to correct errors in the calculations. Dead trees provide a lot of information too. These trees do not rot. They stay on the mountain basically forever. They are filled with resins and weather like the rocks rather than rot and decompose like other trees and plants. They have tested some of the dead trees to be in excess of 9,000 years old. That boggles my imagination. Many of these trees were old when Christ was born. They are older than the Roman Empire (and the English think we are young and immature because we, as a country, are only slightly more than 200 years old).

When we signed the trailhead register, the couple who signed before us was from Vermont. They signed to go to the alpine lakes trail so we didn’t expect to see them. Wrong again, after completing the loop around the alpine lakes, they continued on to the Bristlecones. We met them there and had a nice chat. They had flown out and were spending their vacation in the area (They were in Ely, NV). They had driven out here on other occasions but decided to spend their time here rather than getting here. It was starting to get late and the sun went down behind the shoulder of Wheeler Mountain. We knew we still had a fair amount of time before real darkness but we headed down the mountain to be safe. We still had to negotiate the 10 miles of mountain road and then the 120 mile return trip to Delta.

We had marked a couple of places along the road that we wanted to stop and photograph so we beat feet for the border and returned to Mountain Daylight Time (the park is in Pacific Daylight Time not to be confused with Arizona which is in Mountain Standard Time). Darkness landed about 40 minutes into the trip. The smokey haze from the fires in California gave us a great sunset. We stopped and took a couple of pictures of that.

We had seen several deer on our decent of the mountain. We stopped and watched them for a while and snapped some pix. After we hit the desert, we saw a group of 3 prong horn antelope and a family of some animal that we didn’t recognize. They were a yellow/tan, looked like a cat but had a naked tail and were the size of a smallish fox. It could have been a fox but it didn’t have a bushy tail. I have tried to look it up on the internet and have not been successful.

Once the sun went down, it got very dark. The road was straight. There were no lights or poles or wires or anything. There was a 3 to 4 foot drop off either side of the road and there was, for all practical purposes, no traffic. The speed limit was 70 and in the dark, you basically put everything on cruise control and just hung on. You would only see another vehicle every 15 or 20 minutes. The land was so dark you had no references other than the white lines on either side of the road. It was difficult but eventually, we made it home.

We got up late the next morning and headed for Salt Lake City. We took the back road and drove up along Utah Lake. There wasn’t much built up around the lake and we wondered if this was another salt lake since we are still in the Great Basin. We pulled into Salt Lake City with the intention of visiting the Mormon Temple complex. This is the heart of the city and the reason the city was built. We got off the highway in the center of the city and followed the signs for Temple Square except that either the signs petered out or we made a wrong turn. We drove around for quite a while and finally followed signs for the state house as it was in the same neighborhood. We finally parked the car and set out on foot. We saw a young family that stopped to read every plaque along the road so we hoped they knew were they were going and followed them right into the Temple Complex.

I had been here on kind of a whirlwind tour many years ago when traveling with some people from work. We had a 5 ½ hour layover in Salt Lake City and rented a car and did the 25 cent tour. Nothing was as I remembered it. The Mormon complex consisted of many buildings, most of which were here then and the one building that I remembered touring is not open to the public. Things may have changed since then but I am confused.

We wandered into one of the visitor’s centers and were pointed right to a tour leaving in just 4 minutes. They have an interesting setup. They bring in young girls from all over the world for 18 months. These girls are the tour guides for the main part of the complex. They are paired up; ours were from Argentina and Armenia. They are known as Sisters. They give you a tour but with a heavy dose of Mormon religion. They will tell you a couple of things about a building and then 5 minutes of religious teachings. The sisters all carry their “Book of Mormon” and continually refer to their prophets and apostles. The Tabernacle was built in the mid 1800s over a period of 4 years. Considering the technology of the time, the acoustics in the building are excellent. They do a demonstration periodically where the demonstrator stands at the pulpit and tears a piece of newsprint. You can hear it everywhere in the hall. That is followed by the dropping of 3 pins and a small nail. You can clearly hear the noise of the pins hitting followed by the clank of the small nail. We toured the next building where they have a beautiful statue of Jesus in a rotunda with stars and the heavens all around. You get to this room by climbing a rampway adorned by huge paintings portraying the New Testament. Behind this is another set of paintings portraying scenes from the Old Testament.

They have pictures of Jesus with the Indians of this hemisphere and have a belief that during the time after he rose, he visited the Americas. I had never heard this before. After this tour, we went to another building and had lunch then headed for the new (2000) Conference Center. This is an amazing feat of architecture. The hall seats 21,000 people and there is not a post in sight. There is an organ at the back of the huge stage that has 7,000 pipes. This is the summer home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They move over here from the Tabernacle to seat the crowds that show up with the summer tourism season. The Choir practices here on Thursday nights (open to the public). The Sunday service (I am not sure it is really a service, just a concert with a few words) is called the “Spoken Word” but is really a 30 minute radio broadcast of the choir. It is open to the public unlike many of their other services there.

On top of the conference center is a roof garden which provides a great view of the city. They have fountains and grasses and trees and flowers. They also use the gardens to hide several pyramid shaped skylights. It is rather striking. Our tour of the conference center was done by a woman named Kathe. It worked out to be a private tour as we were the only ones she took. She showed us the art work in the building and the building itself. She spent a lot of time with us and told us it was really nice to do one of these tours with just 2 people. Her earlier groups were much larger. In contrast to everyone that was so nice and friendly (too friendly), there was one man giving a tour in the conference center that barged into our elevator as the doors were closing. He did not excuse himself but lined his people up in front of us. When the elevator doors opened, he hurried them out and through the glass doors onto the roof. When the last of “his” people went through the glass doors (I was right behind them), he let the door slam in my face totally ignoring me. His name tag said he was one of the Elders of the church. ???

It was getting late so we headed down the street towards our car and headed back to camp. Another 2 + hour trip. We were pretty beat the next morning. We got up late then headed over to the post office. Both of the packages we were looking for were in. Then we headed over to the fabric shop that was right next to the church we went to. We made arrangements to get propane for the camper. Its been so hot we have hardly used any propane. We have been cooking outside and using electricity to run the refrigerator except when we are on the road.

I worked on the steps and have them working a lot better. They are not perfect but at least they go all the way in and most of the way out. Of course, now that I fixed the steps something else will undoubtedly break…..While I was typing that, the TV went out. I fooled around with it for a while but it tells me that the antenna is disconnected. I have checked every connection that I can reach. Anything else will be more difficult.

Well, tomorrow is travel day. This has been an interesting stop, certainly more than we had anticipated. The weather has been great, a respite from the heat. We will be off mid morning, stopping to fill the propane. This next week will be a real busy one. There are 5 national parks in the area we will be: Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands and Capital Reef (never heard of this one before this week but it is right around the corner from our campground). We will try to keep up.

Glitz, Glitter & DoWop! who cares that its hot

Ok, just kidding. That is the catch phrase around here so I thought in the spirit of things; I would pull a fast one on all of you. Actually, I haven’t written anything since I have been here so I took the cheap shot at humor and the easy way out. First, I am certainly willing to share my experiences in Las Vegas or just Vegas to us seasoned Vegans (cheap shot for a little humor). Second, neither of us did anything we would be ashamed to tell you anyway. Right? You do believe that? Right?

We arrived in Vegas and checked into the campground. I had mentioned that when I called that I would like one of the “big” sites (80 feet). They said I had one of the big sites but when I got to it, there was barely enough room for the camper all by itself and none for the trailer and the car. We drove around the campground and showed up back in the office with a list of sites we felt were satisfactory. They gave us one of them and didn’t charge us the difference because we didn’t get what we were supposed to.

We did the basic setup, hooked up the electricity and headed for the casino while the air conditioners made an attempt to cool down the camper. It didn’t seem to be any cooler here than it was in Bullhead City. We wandered about checking out Circus Circus. It is a pretty neat place. Other than the usual gambling and restaurants, they have an indoor amusement park complete with a roller coaster and many other rides. They also have a large midway where the kids (and the adults) can play the usual midway games like fill the clown’s balloon with a water pistol, shoot basketballs, throw loops over bottles, darts and one that I had never run into: catapult a rubber chicken into a pot. These games are not crooked like the usual carnival versions and as a result, we saw people carrying armloads of stuffed animals back to their rooms or campers. They also have a center ring circus area with various circus acts spread out thru the day. It is a family oriented resort/casino.

During our wanderings and explorations, we were set upon by sales representatives from Tahiti Village. You may have seen their ads on the tellie. They offer a free weekend in Vegas if you visit their timeshare project. Well, we were curious, not looking to buy but to look at it and check out what the TV ads said about the place. Oh, yea, they also offered us Cirque Du Soleil Zumanity tickets for $15 if we took the 2 hour tour. We have taken a lot of these tours and not bought (we did buy a couple that made sense). We agreed to take the tour for the Zumanity tix. As they were signing us up, they discovered that we were staying in the campground and not in the hotel/casino. We were then told that we were ineligible as we weren’t in the hotel. Ok, says we and off we headed. STOP! We can work around that! Just don’t tell them you are in the campground. Let them think you are in the hotel. Since we had appointments on Tuesday, we signed up for the 8 am tour on Wednesday.

We had dinner there (we had skipped lunch as we were traveling). They had a special on Prime Rib. We both had it, good price. The meat was the worst piece of prime rib I have ever had. There was no fat marbling in the main piece of meat and as a result it was dry and tough. They had their chance. We ate elsewhere the rest of the week.

We took a ride through the “strip” and saw all of the famous casinos. It is pretty spectacular. We will elaborate as we explore but I think this is not the kind of place I will feel at home. It is just toooo much. It punishes the senses with its excesses. It is also expensive although you can get tickets to some shows for half price. Each day, unsold tickets go on sale for half price. They have some places in Boston you can get these as well. We looked at the list but decided that we needed to do some things around the camper.

Well, that pretty much catches us up. Tomorrow is another day and we will be tied up getting the camper worked on most of the day. See ya.

That last line was somewhat prophetic. Actually more than somewhat. We started out early in the morning breaking camp and heading for Fairway Motors, a Chevrolet dealer that does medium trucks and motorhomes. We got there easily enough and talked to the service manager whom we had called and left a message for detailing our problems. He had never heard of us and we were told (after talking to the service scheduler and making an appointment (we thought)) that they don’t make appointments for motorhomes because they never know how long they will be there. After discussing our problem, he said he could do it but we would have to leave it for 3 days. “Hmmm!” says I. We live in it and can’t give it up for three days unless there is something really wrong with it. He told us that there was nothing wrong with the motor. The problem is with the gauge package. They have seen a lot of problems with the gauges in that model and there is nothing wrong with the truck. He recommended that we just continue our trip and have it fixed when we get home. Just don’t look at the gauges. When there is a problem with the oil pressure, we will no it immediately and when and if it happens there is plenty of time to turn off the engine to protect it from harm,

That made us feel pretty good but I still don’t like to get in the habit of ignoring the gauges. They put them there for a reason but if we can’t get them fixed on the road…so be it. Feeling better, we drove on to Henderson and the Camping World. They had the slide cover that we needed most and a couple of specials on maintenance we didn’t have time to get done before we left. We made an appointment for Friday morning early as it was a travel day and I didn’t want to spend all of our time in Vegas driving around the city trying to piecemeal the work we needed done.

To digress: as we left the campground in the morning, our propane alarm went off. It went off for only about 20 or 30 seconds, too short to even consider what the problem might be. A little foreshadowing for the events to come.

When we got back from our repair circuit, we pulled into our site and hooked up the electricity first so we could get the Air Conditioners started. After hooking up the rest of the facilities, we noticed that the air conditioner was blowing hot air. Not good when the ambient temperature is 118. I checked the breakers (the a/c was running just not blowing cool air). After exhausting my meager skills, I went over to the store and got the name and phone number of someone who will come out and work on campers. Allen arrived and checked a couple of things and then took the cover off the a/c unit on the roof. There was a hole blown out the side of the compressor. The Freon was gone and there was no way to fix the unit. He told us that the company will not sell just the compressor; you have to buy the whole unit.

He made some phone calls and went to pick up a “””New Air Conditioner”””. He installed it and we were back in business. We paid him and off he went. Cheryl and I took our lawn chairs out to the patch of lawn and trees that we have and sat to relax while we let the camper cool down again. While we were sitting there, I noticed that the slide for the living/dining room was up against a steel and cement post. This is never a good thing and when I went to pull in the slide to move the camper up 4 inches to clear the post, it wouldn’t move. I ran around like a maniac for about 5 minutes and finally admitted that I had no idea what to do so I did the next best thing, I called Allen. He came right back. He fussed and fumed over that slide and after 2 ½ hours got it so it would go in and out. This was an expensive day and I haven’t even had any fun yet.

His parting words were: “don’t be afraid to use it, it will work!!!” I don’t know why but I didn’t feel very confident. Things have been going wrong since we left home. The refrigerator, the front air conditioner, the slide covers, the front air conditioner again and now the slide itself. Visions of Tom Hanks and his house in the film “the money pit” came and went and came and went and came and didn’t go. Motor homes are notorious for being money pits. They are like big boats (a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into). Got the idea?

We decided to go somewhere and try to forget the day we had. We went over to the Casino and checked out the ½ price ticket place. It was really too late to get anything good. On several people’s advice, we wandered down to the bus stop. Vegas has the “Deuce”. That is about its only public transportation that is worth anything. They employ double decker busses (new ones not the used up British ones that we found in Hollywood). They charge $2 for a one way trip or $5 for an all day (24 hr) pass. On the way, we found a 99 cent hot dog place. Now get this, $.99 for a half lb hot dog. That is about 16 inches long and very thick with a matching roll. Feeling very poor after our repair laden day, we bought 2 dogs and a large diet soda which we shared. The place charged $.25 for relish and the same for onions (ketchup and mustard were free and they didn’t have either mayo or Flo’s famous relish).

Refreshed we headed to the bus stop. After several attempts to get on the bus and getting shut out, we gave up and went back to camp. That definitely is not the way to get around. We decided from that point on that we would drive to wherever we wanted to go. Every Casino has free parking in their garages. Las Vegas should be the poster child for every city to solve their parking. In Boston, you can pay $30 to park for 2 hours (at the aquarium for instance) but here in Vegas, you can drive from place to place and never pay a cent for parking. Every Casino has free self parking. You may have to walk a ways (the free parking is not close to anything but the Casino) but that is good exercise after all isn’t it? In many cases, the walkways are air conditioned so you at least are in comfort.

Ok, we got here on Monday and Tuesday was a complete wash. Wednesday dawned and we were up early and off to the Casino for our tour of Tahiti Village. As we were being interviewed before being loaded on the bus, we were asked if we were staying in the hotel. We answered we were staying in Circus Circus. What room number?? Followed immediately. Well, we are in site 420. Room 420? No Site 420 in the Circus Circus KOA campground. Well, you would have thought we were criminals. They called for the sales manager who took us into his office and explained why we were ineligible. We explained that we knew that but his sales rep had told us to say all this stuff (which unraveled when we were asked for a room number and could not come up with one). He had me write everything down and gave me my Zumanity tickets as an appeasement. I don’t understand why we were ineligible. We have timeshares as well as a motorhome. I’ll bet we own more timeshares than 90% of the people they took on the tour. Nuff Said!

The temperature was rising; it was already 115 at the camper. We had been promised breakfast on the tour so we headed for the casino and had breakfast at the coffee shop. Then we got the car and headed down the strip. I must say that unlike anywhere else I have ever traveled, you just don’t think about parking here in Vegas. Every casino has a parking garage and they are all free unless you want valet parking. The problem comes on about the fifth parking garage when you go look for your car and you have a list of floor and section numbers in your head and can’t be sure which one applies to this particular parking garage. It is really nice though. In Boston, you have to pick a parking garage based on various criteria because it will cost you $30 every time you change parking lots.

We headed down to the Mirage. They have an attraction called “Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden”. Since they stopped performing, Siegfried and Roy have retired their collection of cats to exhibit status. I am not quite sure how I feel about the zoo aspect of all of this but I can say that it is a thrill to see all of these cats, especially the white ones. They have 2 white lions (male) and 3 white tigers (2 male and a female). They also have a new litter of young tigers. There are 4 females and one male. 2 of the females are white striped tigers and the other two snow white (no stripes). The lone male of the bunch is a yellow tiger. They have them in a big glassed room with a person and a large quantity of stuffed items (including pillows, teddy bears, nemo and friends and a host of other stuffed animals). The man in the bubble just sits there on pillows and interacts with the babies (I think they said 3 months). They climbed all over him, played with him, played with each other in his lap, played with each other and abused the stuffed animals. Oh yea, there almost always was at least one sleeping.

There was always a huge crowd gathered around the glass room. People oohing and ahing, taking pictures and video tape and others just watching and wishing they could be in the room playing with them. They look so cute and cuddly that you can easily forget that Siegfried and Roy stopped performing because one of these grown up cats just turned on them in the middle of a show and came close to killing him. This after years and years of intermingling with these same cats. Mother Nature is fickle and wants you to respect these animals no matter how close you get to them. I guess that can apply to your relationship to anything and anyone. We should keep that in mind as we wander through life.

Cheryl has always had a thing for white tigers and she was quite excited. She shot a lot of pictures and video there and we joined the crowds to watch the babies for a long time.

Oh, there was a small dolphin park as part of the garden. They had 2 exhibition ponds. The first had 3 dolphins including a one year old. This pond had an underwater set of windows to watch them as well as a microphone to listen to them. The other pond had a pair of dolphins and a flat area where they would swim up onto and mingle with the crowd. This was nice but paled in comparison to the part with the white tigers.

We then migrated into the Mirage via the pool area. They had a huge pool with waterfalls in at least one corner (we couldn’t see all of it) what a beautiful place with its spectacular lobbies and shopping malls. We stood in a hall between a Starbucks and an ice cream shop. We debated the merits of each (119 degrees outside) and (of course) ended up in the ice cream shop. They had black cherry ice cream (not up to the standards of Cherry Garcia but great anyway) so we both opted for a double scoop. You have to stay inside to eat it because to step outside with a double scoop would invite disaster. We wandered around for a while and then headed back to camp to get ready for our show.

We had to pick up our tickets at the box office. They gave us a voucher and with the trouble we had with the Tahiti Village Sales people, we decided that we should get there early in case there was trouble. Zumanity was shown in New York New York. We figured we would straighten out the tickets and then get something to either eat or drink.

We parked and headed into the casino. (to call these places “just” casinos is coming up short in the description. These places cover whole city blocks and have pool complexes, multiple show rooms, pool complexes, shopping complexes, restaurant complexes and yes, finally casinos. They are cities by themselves and are lined up down the strip one after another like summer thunderstorms) NY/NY from the outside looks like the NY Skyline. You can pick out some of the buildings (I am sure if you were familiar with NY, you could probably name all of them). Around the outside is a roller coaster. It looked like kind of a fun ride but this was not a coaster trip so we avoided all of them.

We stepped inside and were quite overwhelmed. The entire inside of the complex was the city streets of NY. There were buildings and shops and restaurants and about everything you could imagine. Street side café’s and copies of bars from various places in NY. You could really imagine being in NY in the night unless, of course, you looked up and saw the ceiling with various spot lighting to ensure the mood.

It was a little difficult wending your way through the maze of shops and restaurants and bars but we did manage eventually to find the Zumanity box office and picked up our tickets with no trouble. Armed with tickets we set off to find a bite to eat. We checked out a bunch of places and ended up at a pizza place with a choice of various kinds of regular crust, Sicilian, lasagna and salads. We debated splitting lasagna or each getting a slice and decided on the pizza. Cheryl got a slice of regular pepperoni (huge wedge) and I got a Sicilian pepperoni. The Sicilian was at least 2 inches thick and cut square from a rectangular pan. We were pretty stuffed after only a single slice each but it was great pizza; fresh crust.

Off we headed to the show. We were in the balcony (hey, free tickets) but in the second row. The stage came out from the curtain and was like a big teardrop out into the seating area so that everyone was pretty close to the stage. We were at several points reminded that this was a show that displayed Cirque Du Soleil’s sensual side. We met a couple from Virginia who sat next to us.

Cirque did the usual before the show entertainment. If you have never been to a Cirque show, they always have 1 or more people come out and entertain the audience usually be politely embarrassing members of the audience. This show was no different other than the subject. The acts in the show emphasized the closeness of the participants to each other and relied on their sensuality as an aspect of the performance. It was very good but I missed the heavily athletic acts of the other Cirque Shows that we have seen.

After we retraced our steps through the city streets and found the garage, we watched the coaster go by a couple of times and headed back onto the streets. We pulled off at the Bellagio to see the night time fountain show. There are several public, free shows that need to be seen and the Bellagio light/fountain show is one of them. They run it every 15 minutes with different shows and different music so seeing it isn’t a problem. We got there just in time to see a show though we didn’t have a great place to watch. Afterwards, most people left so we got a primo place to watch the next show. The music was Frank Sinatra’s “Fly me to the Moon”. It was really nice to watch after seeing pictures of them on TV but the whole thing last as long as the song and was done.
It was still 113 when we turned in. We sat around a while trying to figure out our last day in Vegas. What did we want to do with it? We spent our last morning in Vegas making up postcards from pictures and backer sheets. At 11:00 when the half price ticket booth opened, I headed for the lobby. For the first time, I found my way through the building right to the ticket booth (and ultimately back via the Krispee Kreme shop. I stood looking at the day’s offerings and then stepped forward. I asked about Rita Rudner’s show (we had tried 2 days before unsuccessfully). The man in the booth looked at the computer and said she wasn’t in town. There were several other things we were interested in but at that point, I went off the board (this came out of the blue, I have no idea what made me ask about this) and asked about the show featuring the Coasters, the Platters and the Marvelettes. He said they had a few VIP seats left. He said the VIP seats were tables right in front of the stage. SOLD!

Then we hit the road and want to the Luxor. We had seen it at night (it is a black glass looking pyramid) and wanted to see what it looked like from the inside. Some of it was under construction. One quarter of the lobby was barricaded off, the IMAX Theater was closed and the Tutankhamen exhibit was closed. The inside was as spectacular as the outside. It was a pyramid that was open all the way to the top. You could see the individual floors and the doors to the rooms. The IMAX Theater was an inverted pyramid made from the same black glass looking stuff as the outside. There was some kind of a simulator ride but we headed down the hallway towards the Mandalay Bay shopping mall (the Luxor, Mandalay Bay and the Excalibur are all connected by air conditioned walkways). Mandalay Bay was elegant like the Mirage. Each of these hotels had large pool complexes. Mandalay bay had a river float area where you get a tube and just drift along the river. They also had a wave pool. Pretty nice. We wandered through the place. It was elegant. We came upon a bride and groom scurrying down the hallway. When we got to the wedding chapel, they were in front waiting their turn. There was someone managing the door and within a few minutes they were ushered into the chapel. There were a couple of other couples waiting in the seats across the hall. I won’t say it was romantic but it did get the job done.

Eventually we got to the shark exhibit but the line there and the time remaining in the day was crowding it too much so we took the long walk back to the Luxor’s parking garage and headed back “home”. They told us to be at the Sahara to pick up our tickets (another voucher) at least an hour before the show. We were going to walk to the Sahara but the sky was clouding up with what looked like thunderheads and the weather had warned of severe thunderstorms during the evening so discretion being the better part of valor, we took the car and drove to the Sahara. The Sahara may once have been one of the top places in Vegas but it is in need of a refresh.

We found the box office and picked up our tickets. The man at the box office said the doors were open and they were seating people so we headed to the Congo Room. Our tables were perpendicular to the stage. We did not have assigned seating and they had a couple of ushers leading people to their seats. Our usher was the epitome of what you would expect from a Las Vegas show usher. He told us we were at the table and we could sit anywhere even in the padded theater chairs further back if we wanted. I slipped him a tip and told him to choose for us. He took us to the second table from center stage and put us halfway down the table. “These are the best seats” he said. I heard him say that to people behind us too but they were the seats I would have chosen given time to think it over. They were enough off center stage so that you could see everything without having to turn around and enough away from the stage so that the monitors weren’t in the way.

The show was great. The coasters opened up with “Poison Ivy” and sang all of their hits and some other period pieces. When they did Charley Brown, they brought a woman up from the audience to sing the Charley Brown Parts. Of course they changed them to Lucy Brown and claimed that was the way the song was originally written. The Platters were next. They opened with “Twilight Time” and said that some members of the audience were probably there because of “Smoke gets in Your Eyes” played in the backseats of their parent’s car. They made a point to say that one member was the longest member of the Platters at 38 years. A little math (yea, I still remember how to add and subtract) told me that 38 years ago was 1970 so none of them were original. They sounded original and that was all that mattered. The Marvelettes were last (don’t know why). None of them were obviously original. If you added any two of their ages together they wouldn’t qualify. They were good though and put on a much more active show. They opened with “Please, Mr. Postman” and played their hits also. At the end, all of the groups came out and they sang a new patriotic song that the Coasters had written and then sang “Shout”. Everyone was up and bouncing around to that. Great way to finish.

We wandered around the Sahara for a while watching a 60’s band play Beatles songs and then decided to get something to eat. We headed back to NY/NY because we wanted to try the lasagna (it looked great) and get another piece of that Sicilian Pizza. The maze was negotiable and soon we were sitting on the “Streets of NY” eating again, a mere 24 hours later. The lasagna was everything we had hoped for but the Sicilian vegetarian pizza was not up to the pepperoni standard set the night before. Don’t get me wrong, it was still better than 80% of the pizza I have ever had but it lacked something. Oh please don’t tell La Festa we liked someone else’s pizza. They are pretty much the entire 20% that was better.

We headed back down the strip to Treasure Island. We wanted to see the Pirate show in front of TI. We parked but weren’t in time for the show. They had blocked off all of the doors and said we would have to wait for the next show (1 ½ hours). We thought we might wait and went into the gift shop. This was right next to the show. The show was over in about 4 minutes. We looked at each other and decided we didn’t want to hang around for 90 minutes for a 4 minute show so we headed back up the strip to camp. We had a drink and talked about what a good time we had in Vegas (except for the plethora of expensive repairs we made). We had an 8 am appointment at Camper World down in Henderson to get the slide cover on the big slide replaced. Over the many miles of highway driving it had pretty much shredded and needed replacing. We also had some preventative maintenance done on our water heater and generator. We are coming into the part of the trip we might need the generator and I knew the rod in the water heater was pretty much gone as I took it out when I winterized the camper.

We got up, broke camp, hooked up the trailer and loaded the car and headed for Henderson. We turned the camper over to the techs and asked where we might get some breakfast. They pointed us to a casino down the road so we set off in search of…The casino was small but it had a café that advertised a breakfast (2 eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns and toast for $1.49. Coffee was $.99). Hmmm, I wonder what I will have. The breakfast was great but when the waitress dropped off the check it read: 1 $1.49 sausage breakfast $3.99. Ok, how does that work? Is this one of those deals where the name of the breakfast is “the 1.49 breakfast and they just don’t tell you it costs $3.99? When the waitress came back to refresh the coffee, I asked her about it. She said that the cashier would ring it up as $1.49 and that they (the waitresses) weren’t allowed to do it.

Now that that was straightened out, we ordered an order of strawberry blintzes. I have never had them but the strawberries got to me. They were delicious. If you don’t know (I didn’t) blintzes are this crepe like tube filled with some kind of cheese with fresh strawberries over the top and whipped cream. Yum!

We went back to the store and looked over the chairs. Our lawn chairs are breaking. They are more than 12 years old but were made by my mother and father. They took lawn chair frames and macramé the seats and backs. The seats and backs last forever but the thin aluminum frames eventually bend and break. We lost one on the first place we stopped. It had already been bent and it folded right up. Another had the plastic handles bend and the frame parts that attach to them. We have been babying that one but it won’t last long. We looked over the chairs and found a couple that had rugged frames and were really comfortable. They were on a really good sale and seemed to be the most rugged chairs they had. As we were dragging them toward the cashier, we came across a pile of portable picnic table. They were for 2 people and folded up nicely. We have already been at 2 campgrounds that didn’t have picnic tables. These were marked on sale at $19.95 so we grabbed one of those also.

We hauled them out to the car in the parking lot and loaded them in. When we got back, the camper was ready so we hit the road. They told us it would take 2 hours. Based on other things we had done, I predicted 4 hours but we compromised on 3. Back on the road headed back through Vegas (kind of the first 20 miles in the wrong direction) to catch I 15 and head North. We saw the Las Vegas Speedway and Vegas dirt short track where Kurt and Kyle Bush got their racing start (Allen who fixed our camper claimed to have raced against both of them and their father there).

Hittin' the Road and Hopin' the Road Don't Hit Back

OK, all of the titles aren't prize winners.

Hi again. We awoke to some clouds in the sky. It stayed warm last night. We went to bed at 11:30 and it was still over 100 degrees as it was this morning when we woke. We need to pick up our mail this morning so we decided to make a morning out of it. We will pick up the mail, go out to breakfast and fill one of Cheryl’s prescriptions because we don’t know when we will be able to pick up the package at another post office. Of course, nothing is easy. We have changed our route to get the camper fixed and will hit the Grand Canyon several weeks later and that is where we had the prescription sent.

We hit the post office first. It was closed! The sign said “not open on Saturdays”. Arrgh. All I could think of was the rumours that our Post Office wanted to start closing on Saturdays. That would be about the end. Then if you worked regular hours and had to go to the PO for any reason, you would have to take time off from work. We headed up to the Walmart to get a prescription filled as we had screwed up our ability to get the mail order stuff which as we speak was headed to a place we weren’t going to get for 3 more weeks.

The woman in the pharmacy told us there was another post office that was open on Saturdays. We jumped back in the car and hurried right over there. There was a line of about 9 people and two people working the counter. We worked our way up the line and finally it was our turn. I asked for our General Delivery mail and was told that all general delivery mail went to the other post office….”You mean the one that is closed on Saturday?” The man behind the counter looked at me with evil intent thinking me as a wise ass. Serves him right. Then I asked him how to get general delivery mail transferred from one place to another since our plans had changed. He told us there was a form to fill out and went looking for one. There wasn’t one there????? Hmmm. He had to call some other location and have them bring one over. It took about 10 minutes but soon we had our form and were headed back to camp.

We lounged around camp (inside under the ac) for a couple of hours and then headed for the pool. We spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening in the pool and the hot tub (why is beyond me) but met some great people (and a few that were not so friendly) and have now returned to our rolling home. We bought one of those aluminum things you put in the windshield to reflect the sunlight (yea, the kind of thing I have always made fun of). It is amazing how much cooler the car is using one of those.

I think we will eat our bear claw (from the black bear diner, we couldn’t eat it this morning and just had to have one) and head over to the casinos to see if we can find some place to dance or see a movie. Just something to get us out of the house (now where have you heard that one before). We’ll let you know what happens.

Its Monday morning…Moving Day. We only have a couple of hours to travel so we don’t need to get an early start. Cheryl filled up one of the cameras so we need to dump our chips and we need to get our mail (can’t forget that, its too far to come back for it and we are already trying to get some mail transferred to another place). It is just coming up on 8 so we will head out to take care of some things and then we will move. Hopefully, in between repairs to the truck, repairs to the camper and just enjoying the glits of the strip in Vegas, I will find time to catch you all up on our last couple of days here in Bullhead City. I do have to run no so See ya.

We decided that we were running out of time here so we headed off to see Davis Dam. I had never heard of Davis Dam so this would be informative. I knew about Hoover dam but I thought you visited that from Vegas so Here we go. There were some educational panels around Davis Dam telling various pieces of information. There are 4 major dams along the Colorado River. Davis Dam creates Lake Mohave. Above Lake Mohave is Lake Mead which is created by Hoover Dam. The Glenn Canyon Dam creates Lake Powell, above the Grand Canyon and the Parker Dam creates Lake Havasu. Got that? There will be a test.

Davis Dam is different from the rest because it spans a wide valley. It is an earthen dam with cement in the control areas. All of the dams generate electricity. The other 3 are in narrow steep gourges and are cement dams. Travel across the dam (there is a road) was stopped after 9/11 and is not expected to start up again. No tours are given.

We will visit the Hoover Dam while we are in Las Vegas (maybe). From there we headed for Lake Meade/Lake Mohave National Waterway (or Recreation area or something). We drove down this long road to a marina and boat launch area. There were a lot of houseboats there. These lakes are all huge and generate a tremendous amount of boating recreation. We though we would see Lake Meade but we weren’t anywhere near it. Lake Mohave runs for many miles after it left the marina.

It is really interesting to drive through the desert and see car after car towing boats along the road. The Colorado is one source of boating but the big lakes formed by the dams (Havasu, Powell, Mohave and Meade) provide vast liquid surfaces on which to recreate. House boating is big on the latter 3 but I didn’t see any when I visited Havasu.

We then visited the Colorado Belle. A river boat casino (sort of). I think if you look under the belle, you will find a foundation like any other building. It does look neat, you have to give them that. We wandered around and watched people play cards and craps but we didn’t partake. It can be fun but gas is just too expensive to gamble with. We do want to get home.

We visited a local pizza parlor. The owner was kind of a cool guy and very Italian. His crust was thin and crispy and hand thrown but our old favorite (La Festa ) does not have to fear our changing allegiance. They are still tops.

After eating, the sun was starting to go down so we headed for the pool and watched it go down from there. It was not spectacular, hardly worth watching but the pool was nice. As darkness settled, we said goodbye to the pool that has been our friend all week and headed for home.

A good night’s sleep and it was moving day again. First we had to make another attempt to get our mail….remember our mail. We headed off to the post office branch that does not open on Saturday (whilst holding all of the general delivery mail). We headed over there around 9 (figuring that our post office opens at 8:30). Wrong again. This post office is open from 10 to 4. There was also a sign that said you could only pick up general delivery mail from 1 to 3. This is not looking good, even after all that effort.

We headed up to Walmart to dump our camera chips. We had breakfast at the Mickey D’s in Walmart. They listed the sausage biscuit (a simple crappy biscuit with a single piece of sausage) at $4 but you could get a sausage and egg mcmuffin (on a toasted English muffin) for a buck. Go figure. We usually get the sausage biscuit for a buck or a little more.

We headed back to the post office hoping we could beg, plead and cry to get our mail so we wouldn’t have to sit around for another 2 or 3 hours (we already had only 15 minutes to get out of our campsite. I asked for a priority mail and held my breath. The clerk walked into the back, stuck his head out and said: “Is that a general delivery?”. “Yes”, I said not knowing how I would skirt that issue. He got the envelope and gave it to me. Crisis averted! And we were off to the campground to get ready to move.

We loaded up the camp, hooked up the trailer and loaded the car. We are getting pretty good at all of this and soon we were down (or up) the road. More desert! It was about 2 ½ hours to vegas but we added some extra as we got lost with their directions. We found and checked into the campground.

What Happens in Vegas
Stays in Vegas!!

It was definitely fun!

See ya

Clayton & Cheryl

Happy 4th of July...Oh, is that a fire?

Another day has dawned. I slept really well (for a change). Coffee and blueberry pancakes, do a few dishes, study the maps and head for the car before it gets too hot. It was still over 100 at 9:30 when we hit the road.

We did have one sort of crisis this morning. We realized that by changing our schedule all around, we are sending some of Cheryl’s medicine to the Grand Canyon and we are not going there for nearly a month. This will take a little thinking to resolve. There are some options but we will give it a couple of days to settle.

We headed out for Oatman. We have heard that this is kind of a neat place. It is a ghost town that started out as a gold rush town. They took a lot of gold out of mines in this town but the town was closed up during the war because the government wanted to miners to dig things that were needed for the war effort. Oatman was located on the famous Route 66. It was the last town before the road headed into the Mohave Desert so it was an important stop. Later on, I 40 was built and Route 66 was relegated to the history books. The road was no longer used and Oatman died.

Somewhere later on, Oatman was reborn as a tourist destination. The buildings are all really old and somewhat decrepit but there are lots of antique shops and little “junk” shops, several restaurants, a lot of history and a bunch of color. Did I mention the burros? Back when there was a lot of mining action, most of the minors had burros. As their need for the burros waned, the miners just let them go free. Over several generations, they became wild. When the town was reborn as a tourist site, the burros wandered back into town and they now spend their days begging from the tourists. Almost every store in town sells 1# bags of carrots for a dollar (yes, the same bags you and I buy for $.50). Then the tourists feed the burros or to say it closer to reality, the burros beg, chase, nudge your arm and in some cases even bite you until you feed them. They know the bags of carrots and will follow tourists in droves until all of the carrots are gone (and a rather long time afterwards). The town was fun for a while but the novelty passed in about an hour and a half. We wanted to see the gunfight in the street but we had to wait another 2 hours and frankly, we had already outstayed the interesting part.

Oatman has been used as a backdrop for quite a few movies. How the West Was Won was probably the best known but Universal Soldier also used the town. Their biggest claim to fame was that Clark Gable and Carol Lombard spent their Honeymoon there! Don’t ask me, I am only the messenger. I had a hard time figuring that one out. Of course, that was before it became a ghost town.

We headed back toward the main road. We turned south and followed the old route 66 through the desert. It was an amazing piece of road. Considering it ran through the desert and there was not a building or tree or anything else there, why did the road have to wind to and fro? You would think they would have just drawn a line and made the road along that line. I’ll bet 5 of the 25 miles were just spent going back and forth.

We headed south toward Lake Havasu City. This is the city or town that bought the London Bridge many years ago and moved it from London to Lake Havasu City and rebuilt it as the centerpiece of the city. They hoped to use it to make the place more desirable and it seems to have worked. They put it over a thoroughfare running between the mainland and a large Island in Lake Havasu. The thoroughfare was just lined with boats and there was an English Themed Village along the water underneath the bridge. It was pretty busy but not as busy as I am sure it is in the winter. This is a big area for the west coast snowbirds. We are here in the off season. Their big time is in the winter. This is the west coasts Florida. People we have talked to here say that in the winter, you can’t get a reservation as the park is always full (one place we tried to make reservations in Yuma closes for the summer). It was 117 there. Not quite the 122 we came back to at camp but still hot none-the-less.

When we got back, we changed and headed right to the pool. We shared it with a bunch of other people today and had a great time getting to know them. One couple lived locally but went on the road for 4 to 8 months each year. They admitted to slowing down a little as they were only going for 2 months this year. We watched the sun set from the pool and wandered back to camp in the dark (well, it wasn’t quite as dark as it seemed since I still had my sunglasses on). The temperature had gone down to 113. The camper however, was a lot more comfortable.

Well, that is today. Tomorrow is the 4th of July. Fireworks over the river between here and Laughlin tomorrow night. We’ll see what other trouble we can get into.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!

We’ll miss the fireworks at Portsmouth…a definite must in our annual schedule. The anniversary of our first date (although it was rained out that year and was held on the day after the 4th rather than the night before the 4th. I think we have gone to the night before the 4th fireworks at Portsmouth every year since we got together. We even went the year we went to Alaska. We left a few days later.

We got up this morning and headed out to the Safeway. They have a 4th of July special; 8 pieces of fried chicken for $5. We bought a sampling of salads (potato, broccoli, and artichoke) visited Starbucks and headed for the beach. We had planned to go to the park just down the road. We visited it the other day and they told us it was $5 a car for the day. This morning, I pulled in as big as life and handed the woman a $5 bill chatting briefly about the weather. She looked at me like I had 2 heads and said since it was 4th of July, it was $40 per person (rather than $5 a car). I looked back at her with as much disbelief as I could muster and mumbled something about the woman the other day telling us it was $5. She said this was the 4th of July and the ticket was good for the whole weekend. I only want to be here one day. She shrugged and I turned around the building and headed down the road the other way.

I had scoped out the entire stretch of road and knew there was a municipal park just a mile away; same town, same sunshine, same 120 degree heat and the same Colorado River…..Nice big parking lot and no…repeat…no charge. There was a huge crowd there and all of the tables were taken but we found a spot between 2 trees where we thought there would be shade all day, set up our own table and put down a couple of chairs and called it home for the day.

We have learned to drink lots and lots of water. You have to if you want to survive this kind of weather. You almost never see anyone walking around without a bottle of water or some other liquid. We have been lucky. We haven’t suffered dehydration yet but you get really tired of drinking bottle after bottle of water. Our Brita pitcher is working overtime filtering water. We have a bunch of quart bottles that we bought just for this occasion and we have used several liter and a half bottles that we picked up when our fridge wasn’t working. The refrigerator is about half full of drinks. We drink water, diet soda and crystal light powder in water.

I remember a summer trip to Watkins Glenn (NY) for a World Sports Car Championship 6 hour endurance race and a Can Am race the next day. The temperature was well over 100 degrees and the humidity was pretty high. There was no place to go swimming since they had floods less than a month before and all of the lakes and swimming holes were polluted by bacteria washed into them from the farms around them. We showed up at the track with 5 cases of beer (this was a long long time ago) and a single case of soda which was gone the first day. That was my first adventure in very hot weather. In 1984, I took my family out to Yellowstone. We spent several days at the Badlands and experienced weather like we have seen here. 118 degree temperatures and a breeze that made you feel like it wasn’t anywhere near that hot. We all started to show signs of dehydration within 3 days and had to try to catch up with the water. It was a painful lesson but one which I have never forgotten.

The park was really nice. The river was full of boats and jetskis. There are at least a dozen places in town to rent jetskis and lots of people brought their own. Then you add boats to that; lots of party (pontoon) boats and great huge boats with great huge engines. It was noisy and the water was always riled up. There were a lot of police boats cruising the river also. We saw at least 4 marked Bullhead City Police and a couple of state patrol boats.

We saw a couple of people dump their jetskis and become separated from them. Someone always rescued them. The river has enough current to carry the rider away from the jetski much faster than the jetski drifted down the river. We even saw the police pull one jetski over to the shore for about a half hour.

We wandered into the water. It was cool; the first cool thing we had experienced that didn’t come out of a refrigerator. The water was very refreshing but we couldn’t stay in it too long. Even with sunscreen, we were starting to burn after only a few minutes. We headed for camp. We dried out just on the walk to the car. There were cars cruising the parking lot looking for a place to park. The lot was chockablock full. We made someone happy.

What’s next? I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out….Just got back from the fireworks. I knew I wouldn’t be happy watching from waaayyy up here so we headed out to try to get closer. No one we asked seemed to know where they would be fired from except that they fire them over the river. We headed down this side of the river and found a parking lot where lots of people were gathering so we pulled in. In about a half hour, up went the fireworks. Way down the river from where we were. All of the people around us were facing a particular area. We figured that we had hit the jackpot and that the fireworks would be right across the river from where we sat.

We and they were wrong. The show was really good but being so far away, it lost some of its impact. I like to sit right under the bursts. If I don’t get a crick in my neck from looking directly up, then I missed the real show. This one was like that. This got a 10.0 for technical accomplishment but a 7 for overall affect. The Russian judge gave them a perfect score and the French Judge refused to give them any score at all.

The whole show was synchronized to music. The music was playing across the river but we could hear it quite well from where we were. After the grand finale, everyone started to get up to leave. We stuck around to let the traffic clear out some and noticed that there was a great fire down the river in the direction of the fireworks. It started out as a small compact fire but grew steadily higher as the things around it caught. Then it started to spread in width and pretty soon a large area was involved and the flames were 40 feet up into the air. I have no idea what burned but it grew fast and became more and more out of control. After 10 minutes they started to knock it down but there were still flames covering a large area. You can see how quickly these fires out here get going.

Everything here is dry and from what we are told, many of the shrubs and bushes here are very oily. There is always a pretty good wind and it takes little to get one of these fires started. We will wander down that way and see what burned in the morning.

It was nearly 10 when we got back and the temperature is still 113. They are predicting hot for Las Vegas next week so it doesn’t look like we will get any kind of break. We did have some clouds today but not many of them. Almost forgot what they look like.

See you tomorrow. We have to go get our mail and will probably check out the Laughlin Casinos.