Tag: Needles

Death Valley catchup (plus Iowa things)

Warning – this has a lot of time and variety in it!

To catch up on Death Valley and surroundings, we stayed at Sunset until the morning of 20 February. Since the cellular data service ixps extremely limited there, we were pleased to make full use of the monthly WiFi pass at the resort. $60 gives you 30 days of high speed Internet on up to two devices! I tried to get some pictures from Kevin’s fancy camera of the Funeral Mountains to the east of us, but I wasn’t terribly successful. The mountains are made up of rocks so old and confused they are called “Funeral Chaos”. Twisted, faulted, squeezed, faulted again – they show amazing patterns. I just couldn’t get a good picture though, so I guess I will try again next time.

Searching for phone service and a place to hunker down to care for Lily, we ended up at the Needles KOA. We have stayed there a few times before. The sites are big enough, and there is a resident group of quail that I find adorable. I tried to get a picture of the 20 or so who ran across the road as we were checking in, but they were too fast for me. You can hear them clicking away in the mornings if no one has taken their dogs out yet.

As I said in the previous post, we headed back to Iowa as soon as we knew about Lily’s condition. We stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants, NM the first night after we left Needles KOA, Tuesday 23 February. They had a nice brewery that concentrated on porters and stouts, my favorites. Sadly their kitchen was closed, but we did order some pizza delivered to the brewery. Nice to eat pizza and beer inside an almost empty place. Our next stop was Big Texan RV Park in Amarillo. It is a mile or so away from the famously advertised restaurant, but it was an easy in and out spot. We made it to the Wellington KOA on Thursday, much nicer than the dreadful place we stayed heading to Arizona in December. We then headed to the Lakeside Casino RV Park in Osceola, IA for our last night. It isn’t very suitable for big rigs since the turns are tight and the sites pretty short, but we found a spot we could fit into. It wasn’t the one the check in folks had us in initially, but with only 5-6 other rigs we had our choice. It is close enough to home to make it a good spot to winterize the rig, and thanks what we did on Saturday morning before heading out. We are pretty good at it these days, and it too, less than an hour. The ice maker is always the hardest!

We had gotten COVID vaccination appointments on Sunday, 28 February, and we had our follow up vaccination yesterday (Pfizer). I am anxiously awaiting my 2 week time for feeling comfortable again! We are having two of the kids and their families over for Easter (another son heads to his cabin every Easter), and I am soooooo wanting to hug them all!

Kevin’s big job this time was installing new LiFePO4 batteries. He chose three 200 amp hour LifeBlue batteries with their integrated heater. Lithium’s don’t charge below 35 degrees or so, and we stay in those temps too often to not get the more expensive heater version. He needed a new solar controller, and luckily this one has Bluetooth so it is much easier to see what is happening. They see to work fine, and I am anxious to try them out on a real trip, not just sitting outside the storage unit. Our solar system will be able to punch more power into the batteries because it won’t be throttled by the lead acid charging curve.

We have been doing work on the house too. We bought a pergola to go on our very hot west side deck. It has a nice adjustable shade cover that will help with keeping the house cooler too. We even bought a propane fire pit to put under it!

Plenty of room for two
Ignore the straps scattered around

i also finished the three quilt tops I sewed while we were out. I got them quilted pretty quickly, but I procrastinated on the binding because it is the task I like least. I got them into the wash yesterday though.

The first two were made from a layer cake I bought on sale. I love the water lilies and dragonfly theme.

Bound and backed with a green Grunge fabric
Bound and backed with a light turquoise fabric with yellow dots

This one was way outside my comfort zone! I just don’t “do” scrappy well. It will make a fun ”I Spy” quilt for some child though.

Mostly mask left overs – very scrappy!

Enough for now. More going on at home, but I will leave that for later.

Recovering from sinusitis and heading into Death Valley

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

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

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

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

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

Sunset campground in Death Valley

Part 2 of our Death Valley trip.

We moved to Sunset campground in the Furnace Creek area. I was astonished to get what I consider the best site in the entire place – F1. It faces East so you get the morning sun but you have protection from the hot afternoon sun. It is also at the end of a row with nothing but a driveway between you and the mountains. We stayed for 7 nights, and we considered staying longer.

We did the must-see drive to Badwater Basin after a rain. Note the reflections.

Looking to the north at the boardwalk
Looking to the south shows the snow touched Panamints

Artists Drive and the Artists Pallette

So many colors

Kevin took a trip to the Keane Wonder Mine again. I stayed at the coach and quilted.

We took what is probably my favorite backcountry 4WD road, Greenwater Road to the old mining communities of Furnace, Kunze, and Greenwater. Furnace had nothing left except a few sun bleached pieces of wood since it had been a tent city. Kunze was the small town, but had some great stone remnants.

Still with part of its roof timbers at Kunze
Someone has carefully selected some artifacts for the inside
There were other ruins in not as good of shape

The town of Greenwater was full of artifacts. This was the biggest of the communities, and it obviously spread out over a large area.

This is the “monument” to Greenwater at what was the towns main intersection
This type of debris was all over the square mile or so of the town

The Greenwater road had more animals than we had previously seen  with numerous lizards running across the road and quite a few antelope squirrels. The squirrels look like small but very round ground squirrels except their very short tail (creamy white on the underside) held curled above their backs. They were very fast, and I never was able to get a picture. They were new to me this trip. The road was also a real 4WD road with big rigs that needed a high clearance vehicle and good climbing ability. The Grand Cherokee Trailhawk handled it like a pro. I am feeling more and more confidence in the vehicle’s abilities.

The weekend we were there was the Dark Sky Festival. There were scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Center, and more plus two local astronomy groups. The talks ranged from deep scientific topics to a kid’s activity of building their own Mars Rover model (quite popular I might add) to guided hikes to Star Wars filming sites (Golden Canyon). Death Valley has been used to test extraterrestrial vehicles for many years, and there were lots of stories about them. Most of the astronomy and astrophotography activities got rained out (DVNP got almost 1/4” of rain on Saturday), but we did go to one ranger program on Sunday night. Kevin has been playing around with astrophotography, and I love looking at his shots. Sadly I can’t show them to you in full glory due to size.

At the Mesquite Sand Dunes
The adobe ruins at Harmony Borax Works

The Dark Sky Festival was very interesting, and I think we will plan on going again next year.

We left on a Monday and headed to Needles, CA as I noted in the previous post. We stayed for two nights at the KOA, and caught up on laundry, shopping, and the internet! I hadn’t had unfettered access for weeks which is the reason for the delay in posts. We are now at the Kofa Wildlife Refuge in a boondock site on King’s Road, about halfway between Quartzsite and Yuma. We don’t know how long we will stay, but it is glorious here.

Looking out the front door

We are RVing again!

We spent Sunday night in a La Quinta on the north side of Tucson, and it wasn’t very nice. It was more expensive than the others, and we got upgraded when they didn’t have our room cleaned at 5:30 (really?), but it just wasn’t very good.  We had a wonderful lunch of green chili chicken enchiladas at Adele’s in Las Cruces on the way in. Definitely will be remembering that spot!

We got into Needles just after noon Pacific time on Monday, New Year’s Eve.  I was slightly nervous about the power in the RV, but everything was fine. We had left a penny on top of a frozen container of water to make sure the freezer didn’t get warm, and it was fine. The coach’s batteries were fully charged on the solar, and we happily pulled it out of storage into Desert View RV Park that was only a few blocks away. It is so nice to be in our own space again. The park is nice with mostly long term residents. Our site isn’t very big, but the long term sites are bigger. The park was having a karaoke night for NYE, and Kevin and I joined them. Well, I did some singing, and Kevin was a great audience. Nice folks here, and we have a good rate because we are staying a week at a significant discount.

Tuesday we just relaxed. I had enough driving! We did some organizing, cleaning, and shopping, but mostly we just relaxed. We weren’t too interested in doing much since there was a dreadfully cold wind on both Tuesday and Wednesday. We had planned on going to Oatman, AZ on Wednesday, but we chose to just visit Davis Dam.

There wasn’t a lot of power being generated which matched the low levels of the river. We also drove through the Davis Camp Campground, a public campground just below the dam on the Arizona side of the river. The dry camping sites were gorgeous – right next to the river. The full hookup sites were very crowded though, and I doubt we would want to stay there in the future.

Today we took the belated trip into Oatman. I love the views on the way there.

The drive past Oatman is spectacular too.

 

And of course, if you go to Oatman you have to take pictures of the “wild” burrows.

Kevin has been doing some organizing in the motorhome. He put together a shoe rack I bought, and luckily it fits perfectly on the closet floor. I was tired of a confused pile of shoes on the floor, and now we can see them all. Even better is the cabinets he has modified for a spice rack. The doors were hinged, but had no pulls. Kevin rearranged the pile of wires and flexible hoses behind the door and added the pull.

He had ordered this spice shelf and bottles while we were home. They fit very well. There are actually two cabinets, so he is going to order another spice cabinet when we get home this spring. It will be awfully handy.

That is enough pictures. I am recovering from a sinus cold, and I am now going to bed!

Back in Iowa

We left the motorhome in storage in Needles, CA on Tuesday, 13 November with both the solar and the refrigerator running. I am nervous that something will go wrong and I will have a disaster in the refrigerator when we get back, but logic says it will be fine. I hope so!

We spent the first night in Santa Rosa, NM at the Super 8. Not bad, and we would go back if it was convenient. They did charge an extra $10 for Lily, but is was clean. The second night we stayed at the Days Inn in El Dorado, KS. We intended to stay in Wichita, but it was challenging to find a place close to the road so we drove a bit farther. We did eat at a totally fantastic restaurant in Wichita called Mediterranean Grill. Absolutely wonderful, and I will drive out of my way to eat there again.

As for a route, we chose to just drive I-40 to I-35. It was a bit longer than taking some state highways, but it was just so much easier we did it anyway. Since we bought an Oklahoma PikePass on our way to Death Valley even the Oklahoma and Kansas turnpikes were easy. We got home on Thursday, 15 November in the late afternoon. The house feels huge! What doesn’t feel huge were the televisions, especially in the bedroom which is much smaller than the ones in the motorhome. Of course that gave Kevin the perfect excuse to shop for a new living room TV so we could move the old one to the bedroom. Haven’t figured out where to move the bedroom one yet, but we will figure something out!

My daughter in law had ordered me a wonderful turkey from a local specialty house, so I picked up a 20 pound bird on Friday. It went straight to the refrigerator. We will be having my daughter’s family and my unmarried son for dinner, so five adults and a toddler. The turkey is definitely overkill, but that’s what they had. Kevin also smoked a glorious 14 pound turkey, but it pretty much all went to leftovers for the kids (my married son and his family showed up in the evening). Two pecan pies, one pumpkin pie, turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes made up the menu, and it was wonderful. I brined the turkey for the first time, and it was a brilliant idea.

The other particularly nice thing about being back in the house is that I get to be back in choir. We are practicing for a cantata by Mark Hayes that is filled with Christmas carols. Lovely, and I so enjoy singing with a group again. Our performance is on 9 December.

I admit the cold here is pretty intense for someone just coming back from the Southwest, but we  will survive. I just had to pull out all the big winter coats!

Almost done with RVing this year

We left Death Valley today just before 10:00, and we are spending the next two nights at the KOA in Needles, CA. Another big windstorm came in last night, and we were worried it was going to be too windy to leave, but the wind died down a bit around 9:00 so we decided to go for it! It is just less than 250 miles, so it wasn’t a long day thankfully. Most of the roads were quite narrow 2 lanes without much traffic. The KOA is very nice though with sandy sites and not much noise.

Yesterday, on the way back from Pahrump, we actually made reservations for January at Stovepipe Wells full hookup campground! We had planned on going to the regional FMCA rally in Indio, CA, but we decided we wanted more Death Valley instead. Well, I wanted more Death Valley, but with cell phone data! Kevin survives much better without internet than I do.

Also on the way back from Pahrump we took the 20 Mule Team scenic drive. It winds through a deeply eroded lake bed made mostly of yellow silt.

The silt contrasts nicely with the colors and layers of the distant mountains.

The contrast would have been more intense without the smoke pall from the fires to the west. The haze is the reason we didn’t visit the big overlooks in the park or went star gazing.

Tonight and tomorrow are for laundry and throughly cleaning the coach. Tuesday morning it goes into storage here in Needles until we come back after Christmas. Sigh.