Rain!

We arrived here on 13 October. Today is the first day that was other than warm and sunny. It rained; here's proof. Any questions?



I posted this and didn't do a good job of explaining what all is going on. First of all, when it rains in the desert like this, you really smell the dust. It's weird but that's mostly what you smell. In Florida it was humid and when it rained you smell the rain. Here our humidity has been in the single digits; today it is in the twentys. That's a giant change.

This is a reasonably close representation of the amount of rain we received. It's a photo of the concrete pad next to our trailer. There were a couple of other photo opportunities that I missed where there were more droplets but; well; let's just say you wouldn't have gotten wet!

Also last night was the first night when we could not see the stars. We have moved from a heavily populated area (Tampa Bay) to this lightly populated place and there was a huge increase in the number of stars visible to the naked eye. Last night they were gone; tonight they are returning so I can tell the front has past us. My wife looks at the mountains and says she has been mountain deprived. I think I've been star deprived. (And, yes, I'm depraved as well but that's another blog!)

Oh, and I've got something screwed up in blogger - it's only about 22:30 on 31 October here but I notice that this is postmarked 1 November. Gotta be something simple but I'm simpler. LOL

Have a good and safe one!

Visit to Vegas

Went over to Vegas the other day. We've been carrying a bunch of stuff in the back of the truck and wanted some air conditioned storage for it. Couldn't find any in Pahrump so over the hill we went.

Stopped and checked out the storage and went to get back into the truck when I discovered I didn't have my keys. Went all over the storage place and couldn't find them. My wife looked in the ignition; no keys. Finally I looked into the truck and something clicked: when we parked we'd been charging the cell phone and I put the cord in the back seat and there were my keys. Bah!

The guy at the storage place just happened to have this wire hanger... and I had happened to leave the window down about a quarter of an inch... so after five minutes work we managed to hit the unlock button. It set off the car alarm but that was easily fixed once I had the keys back! Dumb! And it should be only about fifteen years before my wife stops laughing about it. Jeez!

We are wandering around Pahrump trying to learn about the place; deciding if we'd like to live here. Need to meet with some people in the city planning office to learn about development plans. And I found this place: need to learn about it too!



Have a good and safe day, y'all.

More Pahrump

Ok, I thought it would be a good idea to pass on a few photos of the town and county around here. We are hanging around just relaxing. Later in the week we'll get really ambitious and get over the hill to Vegas.

Here is another shot of the mountains from the valley floor. They are at least 20 miles away.



Our park is a mile or so from Homestead Road. Here is where Homestead kind of changes character.



At the very end of the road is this place. It is one of the legal brothels here in Pahrump.

http://www.chickenranchbrothel.com/
http://www.sherisranch.net/




This is the "real" Pahrump. This is about as close to a downtown as Pahrump owns. Of course, the Walmart is down the road out of sight!



Talk about life in the fast lane! BTW, I forgot to list the Escapees website: http://www.escapees.com/ - it's a great organization for rv people. Have a good one!

Pahrump???

Yep, there is a place called Pahrump, Nevada. And we are there!

We've belonged to a camping club called Escapees. They cater mostly to people who live in their rvs full time. We are staying in one of their parks called Pair-A-Dice. Nevada humor, I think! Anyway, it's a nice spacious place in this little town. There are 4 or 5 casinos; 2 grocery stores & 2 hardware stores. Not a lot more.

It is out in the desert between two mountain ranges but is only about 60 miles from Las Vegas. We went to a casino for dinner last night; they all have a cafe and have almost driven everyone else out of business. That's sad.

Driving down here we came up over a rise and saw the road snaking out in front of us. I measured it as best as I could and the next time we were on a rise was 15 miles later. It's a big country. Not many people either. The photo is from our park looking at the mountain between us and Las Vegas.

Have fun but be careful!

Tonopah???

Yep, this is coming from Tonopah, Nevada. It is a town that needs to be here so people can buy gas and have a place to stay between Reno and Las Vegas. There used to be mining here; not sure if it is gone or not but the tourist is the big deal here. We haven't seen a single police officer is 200 miles; in Tonopah I've seen four. Traffic citation revenue must be a large part of the city budget.

We are parked behind a motel-casino-restaurant-rv-park. Had a drink in the bar; dinner in the restaurant and won about $3 in the casino. Obviously it's best to leave soon!

Camping in this weather is new for us. It is only a couple degrees below freezing but I seem to have to learn these things one by one.

The first night I shut off the water and unhooked one end of the hose. Unfortunately, it didn't drain so in the morning I needed 2 teapots of water and about two hours trying to thaw it.

The second night I shut off the water and unhooked both ends of the hose being careful to drain it. Something happened to the tap however and it broke leaving us without water in the morning.

The third night I shut off the water and unhooked both ends of the hose being careful to drain it. I also drained both our waste tanks so they would be in no danger of freezing. Unfortunately I forgot to carefully drain the drain hose so it froze & it took a teapot of water in the morning to thaw it.

This is the fourth night; scary isn't it! Being me is SO interesting. Have a good one.

Catchup....

Well, lots of shit has happened. For various reasons, I've fallen behind. Let's try to get it all in order. The 5th, we drove from Woodburn, Oregon to Weed, California. Went to Starbucks in Woodburn for coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Sandwich made me ill shortly after we got on the road. I wanted to stop driving but my wife didn't really want to drive in the mountains. SO I got to drive. Stopped once to see if I throw up but couldn't however, the attempt did seem to make me feel better. Found some mints and ate them all day. Did the Siskiyou mountain range - not much going on since it was a lovely fall day but you can see where lots of ice and snow would make it more interesting. Went to some park from the Escapees book - it was a hole next to the freeway but about 60 feet lower. No tv, cable, wifi, etc. I went to bed as soon as we landed.


The 6th was quite a day. Left Weed earlyish. Felt better; at least. Drove across one of the most lonely roads in California. The towns were population 200 size and there were only two of them in a 120 mile segment. Nice day though. We were uncertain about where to stop in the Reno, Nevada area. We were actually driving along looking at this rv park when someone flagged us down; we had smoke coming off the left rear wheel. One look told me 'wheelbearing' so we pulled into this park. Decided to stay a week. Anyway, it was only about 15:00 so I called around; made an appointment with a guy to fix it Tuesday a.m. Had dinner at the Boardertown casino; not awful but not memorable either.

Today I went over to the casino for breakie - finest piece of ham I've seen in quite a while. Only $8 too. Then I spent the morning watching a guy fix the trailer - $500 later things are cool, I think! Had to replace both bearings on the one wheel and another on the right side of the rig. Then he did grease all the rest of the bearings.

Wandered around Reno quite a bit yesterday. Got home 17:00 after lots of grocery shopping, etc. Went out to dinner. Looked for a place that the GPS knew about - it was some house out in Lemmon Valley; not a restaurant, for sure. So we tried another one; turned out to be another casino but at least they had a restaurant. Got home and watched 'In the Heat of the Night' on tv.

Now to see what kind of trouble we can get into today! I'll try to add some photos later. Have a good one.

OJ Simpson

The news is full of the fact that OJ Simpson, one of the finest football (American) players ever has been convicted of trying to steal some of his own memorabilia. Simpson is over sixty so he is of my generation. When I was younger I watched some football (not a lot, never a real fan) and really enjoyed watching his performance. Now he has been convicted of trying to steal this stuff. Here is a quote from the Yahoo! news article:

The case was set in motion by Thomas Riccio, a collectibles broker who tried to bring in the FBI when he heard that two memorabilia dealers were planning to sell a trove of Simpson artifacts. Failing to get their attention, he helped set up a "sting" by promoting an anonymous buyer who turned out to be Simpson.

Riccio, who has peddled goods including video of Anna Nicole Smith's breast implant surgery, saw a chance to profit by recording the confrontation between Simpson and collectibles dealers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong.

He rented a cramped hotel room away from the Las Vegas Strip for the meeting and planted a digital recorder atop an armoire. Riccio then sold the recordings of the six-minute confrontation for $210,000 before turning them over to police eight days later. Although they couldn't be authenticated, the recordings became the heart of the prosecution's case, along with audio recorded by gunman Michael McClinton at two wedding parties.

What gets me is that this sleaze bag who sold video of a surgery (!) got over $200K for a video of what was basically an argument. What a wonderful world this is. What wonderful people there are taking video's of others for their own profit. What crap. And who the hell would buy photos of some bimbo's operation; even if it was breast implant surgery. Oh jeez, there I go again.

Have a good one!