Vegas

Well we made it! If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog you wouldn’t know - we were having a bit of trouble with the pickup, but the new fuel filter did the trick. Pickup ran great the entire trip. As Dave’s brother reminded us today…we need to get that changed every 2-3 oil changes since ours is a diesel pickup. I will make sure that happens from now on!

We are at the Thousand Trails Las Vegas preserve and really like it! It’s not a huge place, the RV’s are side by side, but it’s fine. There is a nice amount of greenery, nice store, lodge room and great pool. As a matter of fact we took a dip in the pool today followed by a soak in the hot tub. Later we walked to Boulder Station Casino and ate at the Italian restaurant and it was terrific! Tonight is football and probably early to sleep, just kinda tired after the long drive.

Photos: Taken on our trip today.
Video: Slides from the trip and of the Thousand Trails Las Vegas park

Tonopah, NV

We made it to Tonopah today…barely. Well, it wasn’t that bad but Dave & I were on pins and needles for a while. Remember when I mentioned we were going to take the truck in for a check-up last week…well we decided not to after all. Oops. The truck had been running kind of rough, especially when idling but only when we were hauling the trailer. Well on the way here the pickup did a lot of shaking and started loosing power…fuel filter came to mind. Amazingly we found a shop open today just a few blocks from where we are parked and the guy was nice enough to fit us in and install the new filter. Hopefully that will take care of it. Dave drove it after the fix and says it feels much stronger.

We are staying at the Tonopah Station RV Park. Basically it is about a dozen hookups in the back parking lot of the Ramada Inn here in Tonopah. Not a place I’d want to winter but fine for a overnight stop. We have full hook-up and are right next to the casino, restaurant and have wi-fi (sometimes). When we got here there was only 2 other RV’s but it has filled up some.

Since wi-fi isn’t the best here I’ll just share a few pics with you. The mountain pictures were taken about 40 miles north of Tonopah and the others are of and around the RV Park. I put some captions on the park pics...the two that say "behind the park" are just looking different directions...

Hawthorne, NV

We took off from Thousand Trails Ponderosa this morning about 8:30 on our trek to Las Vegas, NV. The drive took us through some beautiful country of pine forests and granite boulders. We stopped at Donner Pass, we decided we really didn’t want to eat there so we traveled on. Our thought was to go as far as Fallon, NV today but decided to go a bit further and ended up in Hawthorne. I was surprised to see a light dusting of snow up in the hills around Lake Walker.

We got in to Hawthorne about 2:00 and the clerk at the Whiskey Flats RV park mentioned that a local casino, El Capitan, has a prime rib special tonight starting at 4:00...so we decided to just have a snack and go in for a early dinner. After the trailer was set up we had our snack, took Cheye out for a couple walks and sat outside enjoying the day.

As we went in for dinner there was a person out by the RV park starting up a motorized para-sail (not sure if that is the correct name). We watched for a while but he never went up in the air, maybe he was just practicing.

Photos:
Both taken today at Donner Pass
Video: Slides taken at Donner Pass and Whiskey Flats RV Park in Hawthorne, NV

Oh no, my Flip Video!

Today had a few frustrations…my wonderful little Flip Video Ultra quit. :o( It turns on but won’t record, so I emailed support at Flip. Within a half hour I had instructions on something to try. That didn’t fix it so I replied and again, in about 45 minutes they were asking for my address and other info so they could send me a return authorization to send it in to the shop. Excellent customer service, I was really pleased. Unfortunately they wanted to know purchase date so I had to dig up my receipt, which was in a plastic shoe box, with all the other receipts, paid bills and important mail we have collected since we left our old home in May….I think I better come up with a different system.

So today we computed, walked and had a pretty typical day. The park really filled up tonight. We were really amazed how quickly it happened. We went in for dinner, came outside to enjoy a beautiful evening and it was like a different park! It’s supposed to be a beautiful weekend so people are out to enjoy it.

We head out tomorrow on our way to Vegas. We have giving ourselves a couple days to travel the 500 or so miles. Looking forward to seeing Vegas again, I’m sure we will find it very different from last time we were there.

Photos:
Top: pretty fall colors
Bottom: Cheye starting to shake
Video: More photos from around the park

Back into Town

Well, another laundry day so back into town . This time we went toward Roseville, CA because we wanted to stop at Camping World and Best Buy. Once we got to the laundromat we found it was right next to an Office Depot, which ended saving us a trip to Best Buy to buy a mapping program for me (Dave has one). After our laundry was done we made our way to Camping World and wandered around there a bit. Dave picked up a few parts and I got a cookbook and that was about it.

The afternoon was spent in the trailer figuring out the new mapping program and getting it set up. Street Atlas by DeLorme has more of a learning curve than Microsoft Streets and Trips (the program Dave has). We have the basics figured out, still need to play with it some more to see how the “bells and whistles” work.

Tonight should be quiet. Some TV and playing with the new program. Tomorrow is our last day at the Ponderosa campground. We will have to take Cheye for a long swim!

Photos & slide show from photos taken around Ponderosa campground

Another Relaxing Day

Gosh…did I say yesterday was total relaxation….what is one step beyond that? Well whatever it is, that was today! I had big plans of reorganizing and charging my ipod, cleaning up my hard drive, working on some video editing and maybe starting back up on my cross stitching. Well…I did get the ipod taken care of.

It was warm today, got up to 86 degrees. With a light breeze it was perfect. Even with the perfect weather the park is very quiet now. Some of the hook-up posts have been bagged off keeping people to certain sections. They have drained the pool and there are a lot more empty spaces than full. I’m interested in seeing how full the parks will be in Arizona and Southern California this winter.

Photo: A decorative antique in the park
Video: A slide show of Thousand Trails Ponderosa

Another Relaxing Day

Total Relaxation

Well we’ve been on the road for 5 months now…and happy to report we are still lovin’ it!

It was a beautiful day here at the Thousand Trails Ponderosa park. Our day was one of total relaxation. It consisted of computing, walks around the park, sitting outside reading and enjoying the day. We just finished a fabulous all grilled dinner; steak, potato wedges and pineapple…yum!

On one of our walks we stopped along the way and took a few pictures...somehow Cheyenne ended up in a number of them… go figure! :o)