Sunday, March 1, 2009

Out of the City and Back to Sanity

Hey People, I have to apologize for not posting anything for a whole week. I just know you've been waiting with bated breath to see where we go next. We left Las Vegas and spent several days in Lake Havasu City where we had such a crappy Internet connection that I could hardly download my email, let alone read any blogs or make any entries. I use a Verizon air card to connect to the Internet when we travel but I found out that Verizon is very "iffy" in the area thus the weak service if we had it at all. So I've got a lot of catching up to do on reading your blogs as well as posting about my exciting life (snicker).

Anyway, we finally got out of that insane city, Las Vegas, last Thursday. We were set to leave on Tuesday morning, all loaded and even going down the street, but before we reached the corner to turn onto the highway I discovered that our electric step had not gone up. Now you just can't go driving down the highway with your step hanging out. For one thing, it looks funny, and for another it's highly unsafe. You could damage something that would be expensive to fix. So Ole backed the rig up and parked it back where it had been for 10 days, got his tools out and started to troubleshoot the incident. He finally was able to determine what the problem was and get it fixed by noon the next day, too late to take off for our next destination. So instead we decided to do some touristy stuff OUTSIDE of Vegas and took off for a place called the Valley of Fire. Of course we had to drive all the way through Vegas to get on the way - here's a shot taken just before we got to the "spaghetti bowl" which of course was 100% under construction and a real mess.

The Valley of Fire was only 20 miles or so north of Las Vegas, but of course it took us longer to get through Vegas than it did to go the remainder of the trip. The Valley of Fire was Nevada's very first state park, so they're pretty proud of it as they should be. It's beautiful and very intriguing. Here's our first glimpse as we drove through the entrance.


All the formations come from the wind sculpting the rock over the centuries. I thought this one looked a lot like the Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota - only this is nature made, not carved by man.


Here's just a few of the petroglyphs that you see all over the park, put there by Indians some 1000 years ago. Isn't it amazing that they're still there after all this time?

Here's Ole and the grand dogs exploring a bit. Daisy and Beau loved sniffing all over and they were very good about staying right with us and not wandering off at all.


So we enjoyed that day a lot and made it back to Nephew's house in south LV by 6 o'clock. The next morning (Thursday) we took off for parts south and landed in Lake Havasu City where we have friends that we meet up with at the Black Hills Motorcycle Rally every summer. We met them 10 years ago in the parking lot of a hotel in Lead, SD that we were both staying in. The guys were out in the parking lot cleaning up their bikes and struck up a conversation. Us gals were still in the room getting beautiful for the day, and when we came out the guys had decided that we would ride together for the day. We've been riding together ever since.

They are wonderful people. They raised 11 children, 2 of which were their biological children, 9 that were adopted and of those 9, 5 were of other ethnicities. Now they have 22 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. People who do those kinds of things are truly special people (Hi, Linda from Up North). I only had one child and I thought I was busy!!

Anyway, we spent a couple of days with them, went out to dinner a couple of times, attended a motorcycle show and a car show and just generally lolled around with them. Then it was time to go.

This morning we headed south again for a few more miles and ended up back in Quartzsite, mainly because it's time to do laundry AGAIN!! Remember that story? At least I know they HAVE laundromats here and they're easy to get to.

When we arrived here this afternoon it was pretty warm - up in the 80s. So Daisy parked herself in the shade of my van and supervised the set up of camp.

She was a good supervisor because it didn't take long and Ole was in his lawn chair with something cold to drink and napping in the sun.

So tomorrow is laundry day and then I plan to spend the afternoon sitting in the sun with a good book. I've had our mail forwarded here so we'll be here a few days waiting for that to come. By that time Big Brother will have caught up to us as he wanted to stay in Vegas longer.

I talked to Lovely Daughter this afternoon. She keeps reminding us it's time to come home - ha, ha - what world does she live in anyway!! It's COLD back there!!

Love Lena

2 comments:

Meggie Marchstives@gmail.com said...

My cousin and her husband from Galveston loaded her three cats into their RV last winter and spent a month in Quartzsite. She sent us picture after picture after picture of cactus, which, evidently, she found absolutely fascinating. They and the cats and the RV are now in Daytona for bike week. Anyway, I'm glad you guys found an actual Laundromat this time (and yes, I remember the "Remember the Story" you posted earlier). Our washing machine is merrily doing its thing right now while my two cats sleep on either side of my laptop. Love your updates.

Anonymous said...

I had to laugh at this entry. We plan our long trips around campgrounds with laudromats too. I'm glad you're having such a great time.