Here we are, on the road: August 2014

August 31, 2014 Lorraine’s report

Hello everyone from sunny Reno, NV. Thanks for stopping by. So this week has been one of fun, relaxing after the move Susy had these past weeks. Sure hope she is more settled in to her new home, things still needed to be put away, but she has to decide where it goes and how, etc. Many thanks to her for asking us to help; if you can’t ask your parents, then who else can you ask? While it was hectic, we did enjoy being with our daughter and grand daughter-that is a given!

What stands out to me since being away from her is the Lobster buffet. I did eat a lobster for Thelma, John-2 for him and several for my son, Rick. It was so nummy!!! Before we went on this long road trip, Chuck took us to Disney World-a vacation for the family. I think it was in 2005 or 2006. While we were waiting to get Mark, who had to teach his class and was coming out to Florida on a later flight, we went to a lobster buffet. Rick was with us, he was married to Lora. Susy was with Mark, along with Kaitlyn and Chuck and me. That was the last time we were all together, still living in our various home, before we all moved into something new. That year, Susy moved into her big, new home. Rick was in Burlington, WA, and we were still in our home on Lummi Shore Road. What a grand time we all had. Little did we know how our lives would change! That trip was wonderful! Sure wish we could all get together like that again.

Another event came on Friday; we went over to Sparks for their annual Rib eating contest. What a nice time to go through the area, see everyone eating ribs, etc. and actually try some. Another nummy treat! We tried 3 different ribs, they were all good, but number 2 was the best. Good sauce, good meat on the ribs, and just plain nummy.

So this trip has brought me a little bit of luck. Not much, but enough to keep us going. Chuck wrote about it, and I took a couple of pictures. It was sure fun, not to be loosing and walking away with a little bit of $.

Not sure where we will be this next week, but I’m sure it will be fun. Until next time…

Hugs to all,

Lorraine

8/31/14 Chuck’s report

Once again we missed a Sunday posting last week so this one will cover two weeks again, seems we are having a problem getting back in the swing of writing our blog after taking a break this spring.

Two weeks ago Monday I had another doctor visit at the VA clinic, this time is was a hearing test. They checked things out and told me I had minor changes since this January, good. Nothing more scheduled until late October or November.

Most of the rest of the week we were either running errands or we had Katie with us during the day, at least until Susy got off work. Also, Katie started school on Wednesday last week and we could pick her up from there. Once Susy got off work, we either packed or moved more stuff from her old place to her new one. We did meet her at IKEA on Wednesday morning so she could pick up another bookcase to put in Katie’s room.

Thursday and Friday I worked on the broken front shade on our coach. It is not easy working on these things, pretty tight quarters for sure. As I mentioned last time, we have two shades, one a day shade that we can see through, the other a night shade, almost a black-out curtain and both are motorized. The one that was bad was the day shade, it un-rolled and wouldn’t go back up. I managed to get it down enough to see what happened, found the mounting bracket had bent enough that it came loose and that allowed it to un-roll. The wires to it had wound up when it un-rolled, enough that they were disconnected. So I made the decision to take the whole assembly down to get better access. For those that understand, I had to remove the cover on the left side of the windshield to get to the wiring and also had to remove the shade from the driver’s side window, all this to get better access.

Once it was down, I now had 6 wires to hook-up, three for each shade with no idea of which ones went to which shade. Of course, the wire colors were no help, when we had them installed they used the same color wire when they added a short section to each wire. So first I had to figure out which group was for the day shade, and which was for the night. I accomplished this by trial and error using a multi-meter and test light. Once I knew which ones were for which shade, I had to figure out which wire was for raising the shade, which one was for lowering. I had to call the factory to see if they could help me with this part and the tech was able to give me advice that was a big help.

So finally I had it figured out and hooked up. The night shade worked just fine but the day shade motor won’t turn. The factory guy suggested that may be a problem, when it un-rolled it probably pulled the wires out of the motor which is inside the roller. So now I have to wait until we are going to stop for more than a week so I can order the motor and have it shipped to me before I tackle this again. In the meantime, we will just keep the night shade down when we are parked, it keeps us from seeing out the front windshield though.

On Friday I picked up our new passenger side mirror I had ordered. It wasn’t a hard job to install it, just awkward to handle it. I finally got out our ladder and was able to rest the mirror on it until I had it installed in place and close enough to tighten the mounting bolt. Of course, I was unable to adjust the mirror due us being in our site with the slides out but at least it was ready for the final adjustments when we got ready to leave.

Saturday and Sunday we finished up cleaning Susy’s old place. Her landlord stopped by Sunday afternoon and was pleased to see how clean the place was, enough that she will get back her whole damage/cleaning deposit, yea.

Monday we packed up to leave, we got things put away and moved over to the sewer dump. While we were dumping the tanks and hooking up the tow car, I also adjusted the new mirror. I finally figured out the (a) correct way to adjust this thing. It’s a bit different than an ordinary car mirror as this one has a pivoting arm from the coach to the mirror plus the mirror itself moves in 3 different planes. It was sort of like trying to position spaghetti without using a fork. But like I said, I figured out and got it close, in fact, I think I will only have to make a minor adjustment when we leave here.

We were going to drive to the Sacramento Delta area for a couple of days. This is not too far from the earthquake in Napa so we wondered about damage. Luck for us, there was very little where we were going although they told us they really felt the earth move.

We had been there before and wanted to just check things out once again before we headed on in to Reno. Our GPS decided to send us the back way, down a small road on the dike that was almost a one way road, glad we didn’t meet anyone along that route. Next time I’ll know to stick to the main road rather than follow the GPS. Once we got to the park, they couldn’t find our reservation. I usually don’t make reservations but this time we were staying under RPI and they require us to call them and they will call the park and make the reservation for us. So I did have a reservation number, gave it to the gal at the desk and finally they got everything sorted out and checked us in.

This park doesn’t assign sites, sort of first come, first serve for sites and they only have a few that have 50 amp service. So we unhooked the car then drove around, looking for a 50 amp site. We finally found one, not sure if we could get satellite reception through the trees but it was the first one we tried. We backed in, hooked up power and turned on the satellite but no luck. So we moved on to another site, this one didn’t have 50 amp but didn’t have any trees in way for our satellite.

This park is maybe 30’ below the river and the driveway is down the dike. Once in the park, the roadways are built up with the sites as much as 3’ below the roads. The first site was not bad for access but the second one had more of a drop to access it. I tried approaching it at an angle as I backed in but still managed to almost high center in the road. I tried three times and was scraping the bottom of the compartment doors on the gravel each time. Finally I gave up and returned to the original site and didn’t back up as far into the trees. This time we did manage to get reception and finished setting up. Seeing as how we were only going to be there for two day, that meant we wouldn’t put out all our stuff. I did need to wash the bugs off the front while Lorraine finished setting up the inside.

Then it was time to explore the area. I just picked a town from the GPS and used it to send us on our way. We managed to find a couple of SMALL towns plus we drove through Isleton and Rio Vista, towns big enough to be on the map. I think we’ve decided this is not the place we might live when we get off the road, not enough to do/see but still a nice place to visit.

Next morning we headed out to explore a different area. We did stop at a farmer’s market type place to pick up a few things, the tomatoes we especially good. We also ran into Antioch to pick up a few things from Costco then spent a quiet evening at home.

Wednesday morning we were back on the road once again, finishing our drive to Reno. I think they have been trying to repair the highway to here but it still has lots of miles that need more work. But we got here with no issues, got checked in and set up. After getting set up and washing the bugs off the front, we headed out to get me a new pair of sandals. I’ve been wearing shorts and sandals pretty much for the last three months and my sandals were getting a bit “skunky” and worn. We found a pair that fit and I wore them out of the store, yea. Shoe shopping is not high on my list of things I really want to do.

Thursday we had a quiet morning at home, I even gave Misty a bath. Then we headed back into town, Lorraine wanted to do some restocking type shopping. After putting the groceries away, we drove up to Boomtown Casino where we had a coupon for two free BBQ rib dinners. This was a fairly good buffet type BBQ, the ribs were good too. And we tried our luck on the slots while we were there too, of course.

Lorraine had a bit of good luck and then just before we were ready to leave she called me over to see what she had just won – 400 free games. It took awhile to run off that many free games but it was certainly worth the wait. On a $0.40 bet she won almost $300, not bad. I was up $4 too so we called it a night, quit while we were winning. We came back to the rig and watched part of the Seahawks final preseason game against the Oakland Raiders. Seattle sure didn’t play well, sure hope they got that out of their system and have a good game against Green Bay this Thursday when the season starts and the games count.

One of the reasons we came to Reno this time was because of the championship BBQ Rib cook-off in nearby Sparks. One of the things we said we wanted to do during our travels was attend BBQ and Chili cook-offs and we haven’t been to this one yet. So that was our destination for Friday morning, we wanted to check it out before the temperature got too hot and also wanted to try to beat the crowds.

We could smell the BBQ before we even got off the highway. We found a parking spot not too far away then walked through the vendors, didn’t find much we wanted/needed however. We then walked through the BBQ contestant area, boy the smells were making us hungry. These places had signs and trophies showing they had won BBQ contests across the nation in the past few years. We decided to try samplers from three different places, the second one was the best of the three. Don’t ask how we picked these three, it was almost close your eyes and point, I don’t think you could make a bad decision. We would have liked to try more but were full and more people were showing up, causing long lines at the BBQ places. We had a good time however, something we may want to do again some year. Another function we’ve enjoyed in years past is Hot August Nights, a car show that rivals none. People bring cars from all around the country, to show and cruise. This is held the first part of August, we may have to see that again some year too.

The BBQ contest was held near and sponsored by John Ascuga’s Nugget Casino so we gave it some of our “ slot business” while in the area. We didn’t have any luck there so didn’t stay too long. Our next stop was the Peppermill Casino in Reno, once again no luck so we came back home.

We are staying at the KOA at Boomtown Casino about 6 miles West of Reno. This place has a truck giveaway and had drawings on Friday and Saturday evening. We were given a coupon for 10 free entries plus we could “earn” more depending on how much we gambled. They draw 25 tickets on Friday and 75 on Saturday so we wanted to be there in case they drew our name. No luck on the Friday draw so we came back to our coach and called it a day.

Saturday we headed out once again to visit some of the casinos downtown. Once again Lorraine found a machine that liked her, she got all the same symbol on the whole screen. This time for a $0.40 bet, she won $160, nice. We spent the day checking out the three casinos downtown, Circus Circus, Silver Legacy and the Eldorado before returning back home. We had time to take Misty out for a walk before the first drawing at Boomtown so that’s where we headed.

Boomtown also has a all you can eat Lobster buffet on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I don’t eat lobster but Lorraine really likes it so after the drawing (no luck) we waited in line for the buffet. Once we got a table, I started cleaning lobster while Lorraine ate, she didn’t even get a salad to start things out, ha. Soon she had her fill and went back out to the slot machines to wait for the 8:00 drawing. Once again Lorraine found a machine that liked her, all aces for $40 this time. But no luck on the drawing so we went back to our rig until the 10:00 drawing. And just like before, no luck on that one either, they drew a total of 100 tickets and never got one of ours, shoot. The truck was to be given away next weekend so if we had our name drawn we would have had to be here then so now we can make plans for next week without having to be back here next Saturday. But it would have been nice to win that truck, we could have accepted the truck, taken $25,000 in free play or $20,000 cash, of course, that would have meant they would have drawn our ticket out of the 500 in the drum but someone has to win and it might as well have been us, right.

Our travel plans are pretty barren, we’ll probably head to Yosemite National Park when we leave here. I’ve never been there while Lorraine was there years ago with her brother. I’ve checked out a couple of places to stay, either 1000 Trails or the Elks Lodge, not sure yet. No plans for after that yet, will need to work on that soon however.

The weather has sure been nice this past week, one could even say it’s been hot. We been seeing high temps into the 90s since we’ve been in Reno, the highs in the Delta area were only into the high 80s. But with low humidity, those temps aren’t too bad, especially since we have air conditioning. The gal at the check-in desk told us they have been experiencing thundershowers earlier in the week but no signs of them since we’ve been here. And California could certainly use some rain, its so dry there. I think they are in a three year draught.

Now to go through the pictures Lorraine has taken this week, I’ll even try to get some from her phone too.

The Sacramento River through the delta.