On the Road Again

Sunday, Jan. 15 -By popular demand (Bridgette requested), I was persuaded to resurrect the blog and write about our travels again.  We haven't had very good (sometimes none) internet service, so I'm having to catch up a week and a half.  Don't know how many of the highlights I will remember, but we took lots of pictures, so I'll see how it goes.

Countdown to Takeoff:

Well, Joe's foot doctor released him to travel, so we are leaving for Death Valley National Park this morning.  We started talking about this trip with Dave and Mazie Johnson back in September, and after a week spent getting the RV packed and ready (a nice benefit of retirement, not having to do everything in one day), we are ready to hit the road.  It's a short, two-week trip, taking in Oatman (camping at Laughlin, yeah), and Death Valley, and ending up at Quartzsite for the big RV show.   Dave and Mazie came up Friday afternoon, and had one slight mishap on the way -- somehow the outside cover on their refrigerator disappeared on they way to our house, but we found a replacement at our local RV parts store, so no problem.  Well, a slight problem, the paint doesn't match.

We decide to grab breakfast at McDonald's as we head out, so we left our house about 7:30 a.m. -- off to a good start.  As we put Phoenix in the rear view mirror, we could see some hot air balloons flying just north of town, and as it turned out, we went right past them as they were landing.

Along the highway to Laughlin, we go past a wide spot in the road named "Nothing."  It used to have an old gas station or somethere there, but they must have torn that down, and now it really lives up to its name.

As we neared Kingman, we saw a smattering of snow on the nearby mountains.  Little did we know that we would be seeing snow again in the days ahead.

Arriving in Laughlin:

We arrived in Bullhead City, right across the Colorado River from Laughlin, and checked into the county campground there, right on the river.  At our fuel stop in Kingman, we paid $3.459 for gas, then saw it in Bullhead City for $3.139 -- that seems to happen to us fairly often.  We should have checked the Gasbuddy.com link that nephew Paul sent us.  Oh well, maybe next time.  We got the RVs hooked up, and Joe and Dave decided to rest (take a nap) and Mazie and I headed across the river to do a little gambling.  We only made it to two casinos before Mazie found her favorite machine (Bombs Away) so she didn't move the rest of the evening.  After I made my contribution to the Laughllin economy (I think I put the $$ in my machine and they came out of Mazie's),  We finally called it a night and went back to check on the guys.  That concluded Day 1.