1st week in Las Vegas, 2008

November 8, 2008

Lorraine's report

Saturday night and it’s time to write another blog entry. We are here in Las Vegas at Thousand Trails by Boulder Station Casino.

We left the Bay area on Monday morning and drove to Bakersfield. We spent the night at River’s Run RV Resort. After Morgan Hill, this was a nice full service RV park. I hate to admit it but I’m spoiled. I love full electricity, sewer services and good running water. We left Tuesday morning and immediately got into a 55 minute traffic jam. A u-haul truck had run off the road and broke the light pole, and there were live lines down across the east bound lanes. It took that long for them to get the power people out to cut the live lines.

Here is the traffic jam we sat in for about an hour.

After the delay, we continued east. The drive across the desert was very windy. One gust of wind pushed the motor home into the inside lane; luckily there was no one else driving beside us, otherwise I think we would have been in an accident. It was really windy, but the sun was shining.

We should have figured it would be windy in this area, look at all the wind generators on the hills.

The oranges are ready for picking.

We arrived in Las Vegas around 4:30 and Chuck wanted to stop and get the motor home filled up with diesel. I punched in the Flying J closest to us and the GPS tries to take us there. Unfortunately, the GPS doesn’t know that road work was being done, and the road to Flying J was closed. It took us three passes to get into the Flying J. Five o’clock traffic is no place to be when you are 50 plus feet long.

We pull into Las Vegas Thousand Trails, get registered, Chuck starts the engine and slowly starts going ahead when the little gate comes crashing down on the windshield. He stops the coach and gets out to talk with the ranger. Chuck tells the ranger we will inspect the coach for damage the next day. Luckily, there was only a small ding in the Diamond Shield, it didn’t break the skin. So we head to our site, it's 30 amp with sewer and water, we have to move tomorrow to a 50 amp site.

Boy was it ever a day coming into Las Vegas, glad to have it over.

That's Vegas in the distance.

Wednesday, we get up and move to the site we are now in. I can put everything in its place, since we will be here until the 18th. Then we head off to Wal mart for supplies. It was sunny, but windy.

After that we head to an older casino we found last year. It’s called 4 Jacks and we have a little luck there.

Thursday, Chuck took me to breakfast buffet at Sam’s Town Casino. It is $5.49 per person with a discount for people 55 and older. What a great buffet-an omelet station, a carving station, a desert station, and being so close to lunch, they set up for lunch. We didn’t eat again that day.

Yesterday, we went to brunch with a new couple we met. Joe and Goldy; they have a 2006 Phaeton and they drive an Outlook just like ours. The buffet is again at Sam’s Town and is $13.99 for two with the discount for 55 plus. It was very good and again we don’t eat for the rest of the day. We played at that casino but none of us have any luck.

Goldy and Joe, nice people.

Today, Saturday, we went out into the desert. Our friends, Joe and Alice said we needed to go to see Valley of Fire state park. What a great park. The rock formations and the red colored rocks were spectacular. We enjoyed the trip a whole lot. All in all another great week we just had.

The rocks are really red, just doesn't show up well in our pictures.

This is call "Bee Hive", if I remember correctly.

One of many arches in the area.

Can't figure out how these were formed?

Big spider in the middle of the road, can't spell
tarantella. This is the first one I've ever seen in the wild.

Another arch.

A picture of early Indian writings.

Here are some early Indian writing on the rocks.

The whole hill side has early Indian writings.

A little tough to see this arch, bad picture taking on Chuck's part.

Till next time…Lorraine

11/9/08
Chuck's report

We left Bakersfield on Tuesday morning, planning on a 5 hour trip to Las Vegas. We got about an hour out of town and were stopped in a traffic jam for over an hour. It happened when a U-Haul truck hit a power pole and dropped the wires over the freeway. This is the first time we have set and listened to the CB radio for any length of time, boy you don't want your kids to hear that kind of language.

So after the traffic got moving again, we headed on East. We went through lots of farm area, looks like the oranges are getting picked about now. There was also lots of miles of nothing but sage bush and wind. Our motorhome handles pretty well in the wind but there were a couple of places we were hit broadside by a strong gust and it actually moved us into the next lane. We saw some smaller coaches all over the road.

We got to Las Vegas about 4:00, lots of road construction and too much traffic. We needed to get fuel and it appears you can't get there from here, with some of the on ramps closed. It took about an hour to get into and out of the Flying J but we finally got fueled up and headed towards our campground.

When we got to the campground, the guard couldn't get his act together and it took a bit longer than normal to get checked in. By now it was dark and we wanted to get set up before it got too late. He raised the bar that was across the road and we started through. When we got just about even with the gate, the bar broke and hit our motorhome between the passenger mirror and the windshield. The gate didn't close, it just broke at a bad time. Lucky for us, we had a product called Diamond Shield installed while in Red Bay this spring on the front end so no damage was done to the coach but it didn't sound very good when it happened. I talked with the manager the next morning and couldn't believe he wouldn't give us hundreds of thousands of dollars, guess I just don't live right or something.

We got set up in a spot for the night, it only had 30 amp but was fine for the night. The next morning we moved into a different spot with full hook-ups and 50 amps, Ah, life is good. Now we could run both air conditioners, microwave and Lorraine's hair drier all at the same time without tripping a breaker.

On Wednesday, we ran some errands, went to a Super Walmart, I got a hair cut and Lorraine did laundry, a busy day.

On Thursday, we decided to head to the world famous Las Vegas Strip. Although both of us like the Vegas area, we don't really like going to the strip, too busy and everything is spread out too much to walk from place to place. We only stayed for a couple of hours and came back to a casino closer to our park.

We met a nice couple here, Joe and Goldie Barbour, who are also full timers. They have a Tiffin Phaeton and have lived in it for three years. We went to a lunch buffet and played some slots with them on Friday. They have to leave on Monday, we hope to spend some time with them this morning before they head out.

On Saturday we took a trip to the Valley of Fire, the first Nevada State Park about 35 miles east of Las Vegas. Our friends from Bellingham, Joe and Alice that we met with last week, suggested we might enjoy this park. It has outcroppings of red rocks and lots of formations. We did enjoy our trip (thanks Joe and Alice) and it's close to town. It wasn't very crowded there, I wonder how many people even know about it. Once again, that's a big reason we like this lifestyle so well, we can take time to explore the area without having to hurry back to work.

This morning, Sunday, we woke up to rain. It was raining pretty heavy for awhile but by about 9:00 the sun was out and the sky was blue. For those back in Washington, it doesn't stay gray and dreary for a most of the winter everywhere. One more reason we like this lifestyle. (Is it ok to gloat a little bit?)

Now of course, being in Las Vegas, we feel we have to harvest some of the money we left here as seed. So far, we have been successful, both of us are a bit ahead of the game, Lorraine more than me but at least I'm still playing on their money. We will be here for another 10 days so that can change but so far, so good.

We got an e-mail from our friends (Mike and Linda) who are setting up a trip to Mexico after our Quartzsite stay. At this time we are planning on going with them but Lorraine and I both are having some second thoughts about it. We have read a lot about the gang activity along the boarder, mostly killing locals but some travelers are getting shot also. Mike and Linda have tried to assure us the area we will be in is safe. We will need to make up our mind soon as we will have send in a deposit.

Well, that brings us up-to-date once again. So until next time - - -

Thanks Chuck