Nevada – TooBusyForWork

Lake Havasu part deux

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

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

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

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

The ranch house is a long way from the fence

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

There is a modern visitor center, but closed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salt Lake City to Lake Havasu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bathtub line is >100’ above current lake levels

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

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

Death Valley and the Amargosa Valley

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

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

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

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

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

A cabin marked simply “Archeology project.”

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

The springs and ponds are the real story though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of 49ers Encampment and heading home

Warning – another picture heavy post!

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

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

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

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

Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally made it to Death Valley

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

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

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

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

Rather flat light, but the color contrast is still interesting

The mountains at sunset looking a bit south

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

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

Recovering from sinusitis and heading into Death Valley

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

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

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

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

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

Out of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and into Nevada

Yup, lots of driving. No pictures either because I never remember to take any when we are just driving to a destination. We left Oklahoma on Friday morning after visiting my sister, my niece, niece’s husband, and their four month old baby. The baby was such a solemn little guy he was inadvertently hilarious. We stayed in a lovely campground in Oklahoma City, Twin Fountains near the Cowboy Hall of Fame. I definitely will stay there again on another trip.

We ended up Friday night in Santa Rosa Campground in, surprise, Santa Rosa, New Mexico. It was an old KOA so the sites were a bit narrow, but it was a nice and quiet place. Surrounded by that classic New Mexico landscape, I could smell pinons and enjoy the sunsets in that clear New Mexican Sky. Another one worth a repeat for sure. There is a little restaurant at the campground that wasn’t too bad, so no cooking! Nice after a long day of driving the motorhome. I am getting in the grove for 400 mile days: drive a few hours, take a nice long break (30-45 minutes) then finish it up.

Saturday was another 400 mile day. We spent the night in the parking lot of the Twin Arrows Casino outside Flagstaff. We ate in the (well-reviewed) buffet at the casino, but it was so-so at best. Add into it the smoke that you had to walk through to get to the food, and it is definitely not a place to return to. The parking lot was nice though! Many RVers say they only pull into parking lots late at night, but we like to stop our drive no later than 4 or so. Here it was a good thing because the RV parking got quite crowded by evening. We got to position the coach so the driver side windows looked east onto the sage, and it made for a lovely sunrise. The long ride on I-40 made me want to plan a much more leisurely trip where we can stop and see all the lovely places we just drove by on this trip. Maybe 2-3 weeks, just sightseeing.

Last night we made it to Pahrump and spent the night in the Wine Ridge RV Resort. Very nice place though we didn’t use all the facilities. We did do lots of laundry and got our shopping done though. We will be in Death Valley for almost two weeks, and there isn’t much shopping there so we really stocked up. We actually stocked up more than I intended to since the baby back ribs and the meatballs were both BOGO. We should have plenty of meat! I also used the convection oven to cook up a bunch of maple bacon for future BLTs. Surprisingly the little store at DV generally has nice produce. We plan on leaving today with empty waste tanks and full fresh water and propane tanks. Weather shouldn’t be too bad though the forecast is for higher than average temperatures in the low 90s-upper 80s.

It is hard to get internet in DV, so posting will be limited except when we get into a town.

On the road again, plus some food goodies

We left the “sticks and bricks” house today to head south for warm weather. We took our time, didn’t leave until 11:30, and we were set up at the Eureka Casino parking lot (free!) by about 5:30. It was 57 degrees when we arrived, a nice change. Here’s what else happened since the last post though.

I sent a couple onesies with the heat transfer vinyl off to my 11 month old grandson. My daughter is under strict orders to wash and dry them a lot so I make sure I have the technique down. So far so good. I also used the Silhouette cutter to label my food canisters in the kitchen plus decorated a couple of sweatshirts for Kevin and me. Mine is a little crooked, but his looks nice.

Last night we went to see “Something Rotten” at the Eccles Theater. The first act wasn’t thrilling, but good. The second act was hilarious and definitely made the play. Our next show is “The Sound of Music” on 28 February. We have been arranging our trips based on show times, and it is a bit of a pain. I am not sure I will renew the season tickets next year; we would rather RV!

As for food, I have conquered yogurt in the Instant Pot. It tastes yummy even if it wasn’t as thick as I wanted. My first one was a complete fail, so I was thankful this one worked so well.

The fruit came from individually frozen bags of cherries and raspberries. I did add a little bit of sugar since the fruit was unsweetened. Really lovely.

I didn’t get a picture of the other item of food porn: Kevin’s smoked turkey. It was a gorgeous color, amazingly moist, and utterly delicious. He vacuum packed it into 1/2 pound packages, and a bunch of it is in the trailer’s freezer for the trip. We bought the turkey when it was on sale after Thanksgiving. We actually bought two, but the other is in the deep freeze for smoking this spring.

We are all beginning to plan some trips in addition to the big Alaska trip this summer. We made reservations at Kodachrome State Park in southern Utah for late March. A friend who bought their first trailer last year is going to join us, a real treat. They have an A-frame trailer they call their “Tin Teepee”, a name if I find hilarious. During April we have to work around tickets to see “Hamilton” and my daighter’s completion of nursing school in late May. Fun times ahead. Tomorrow we intend on staying at the Calico Ghost Town. Let’s hope they have a spot open. Otherwise Plan B is another overnight in a parking lot somewhere.

Gold country living history, trains, and heading home

On 19 May (Friday) we went to Columbia State Park for a living history festival called “Columbia Diggins 1852”. It turns out the entire state park is a living history location. It was great fun. There were hotels, restaurants, homes, stores, etc. that were from the early gold rush days – blocks and blocks of them. There was even a stagecoach ride that I had to take, just because. The stage was “held up” by a masked bandit, causing the children on the stage enormous amounts of fun.

The “Diggins” was a tent city with lots of costumed docents teaching (mostly children) how to do laundry in a wash tub, how to pan for gold, how to use a sluice and a rocker for gold, how to bake in a wood fired brick/stone oven, and other fun things.

We bought some food and some very small presents for the granddaughters.

On Saturday we went to Jamestown and their 1897 Railroad Park. This is another California State Historic Park. There is a working oil fueled steam train and cars that you can take on a short excursion. Of course we did it. The train only runs on Saturday’s and Sundays, and the entire trip took 45 minutes. It was well worth the $15 per person cost.

The only known woman steam engineer was running our train

Saturday night was pizza at the Pizza Factory in Groveland with the remaining rally attendees. The pizza was very good, and I highly recommend the place. No atmosphere but good food.

We decided to do most of the cleaning and packing on Saturday so we could get an easy start home on Sunday. It worked; we were out of the campground by 8:00. The original plan was to find a Forest Service campground somewhere near Lake Tahoe or Reno, but the Tahoe area was too crowded for us. It was a beautiful lake, but not worth the number of people. We decided to just head home in two days instead of our planned three, so we ended up in Winnemucca, NV again. This time we stayed at the KOA which is actually quite nice. Real cable TV so I can watch the news is very pleasant. The internet isn’t very good from the campground, but I am running great on my Verizon hot spot. Since we have a full hookup site we can get all the tanks dumped and cleaned before heading home. I really like being able to do that on the last night of a trip. There is some road noise from I-80, but I expect much of that to die down later tonight. We have the windows and doors open right now, cooling off in the lovely evening air. Home tomorrow!

Water Canyon BLM campground outside Winnemucca, Nevada

We left the house at 9:15 MDT in lovely weather. After taking our time with a stop for breakfast (McDonald’s Egg Mcmuffin for me in Magna, UT) and lunch (incredible chicken friend steak at Bella’s in Wells, NV – I highly recommend it), we arrived at this wonderful BLM campground around 3:30 PDT. We found a shady campsite next to a fast running creek. No neighbors anywhere within sight or sound, and the campground is free! The site is a huge pull through and we kept the truck connected so it will be easy leaving tomorrow. We sat outside in the recliners next to the water for a long time.

Kevin took a bike ride up the road some. This is just a general area picture he took plus a closeup of a chukkar, one of my favorite birds.

The moon came up over the mountains just as the sun was setting.

Tomorrow we head to civilization, Petaluma KOA. It definitely won’t be quiet and dark like tonight. Urban California (or suburban California) is tough to drive in with the truck and trailer. The roads are much better for smaller cars than our 55′ combination. I can handle the traffic, but there just isn’t any parking even in shopping centers.

Oh, and we only forgot a few things – both sets of house shoes and my cotton kitchen towels. Both should be easy to replace somewhere tomorrow. Dinner was a one spot meal – Knorr’s Chicken Fettuccini plus frozen rotisssrie chicken from Costco. We didn’t need much with such a big dinner. Now if only I can stay awake until 10:00 pm PDT …