Scotty's Castle and Ubehebe Crater

January 18 - Day 1

Scotty's Castle

Scotty has quite a colorful history, and there are lots of books written about him and about Albert and Bessie Johnson, the Chicago millionaire who had the castle built.  Construction on this elaborate Spanish-style mansion began in 1922, and stopped in 1933, when Mr. Johnson discovered that it castle wasn't actually built on the ground he owned.  It was never completed.  But it was quite a sight, especially for the time period during which it was built, and occupied.

Inside Scotty's Castle

We bought our tickets for the "inside" tour, then met up with our tour guide, dressed in period clothes.  We went from room to room, and she gave a pretty good history of Scotty, who was actually a con man, and Albert Johnson (we assume no relation to Dave and Mazie, but one never knows) who came out here to see the gold mine he had invested in with Scotty, and fell in love with the area.

There was a great room, a library, Scotty's bedroom (which he never would sleep in, probably because no alcohol was allowed), the Johnsons' bedroom, and guest rooms, the kitchen, and others.  We took many, many pictures, but I've narrowed it down to just a few.

Outside Scotty's Castle

Joe and Mazie hiked up to the graves of Scotty and his faithful dog, Windy, but Dave and I opted out of that trip, and we walked around the grounds below.

We decided to take the "underground" tour as well, so we met our next guide over by the unfinished swimming pool, which would have been magnificent had it ever been completed.  It was huge, but when Mr. Hearst heard about it, he built one bigger at his castle over near the coast.  Mr. Johnson had underground tunnels built on the outside of his castle, those too were left unfinished, but we got to see what a massive undertaking that was.

We got to see the room where the house generators were, which went through many varieties as more modern ways to generate power became available.  In the second picture, our guide demonstrated that some of these still worked by getting the lights to come on.  We also got to see a hallway of house batteries, over 100, that were eventually used to provide electricity to the house.  Those batteries made 115 volts D.C.

Back above ground, we walked past a beautiful Joshua tree.  We had come through part of the Joshua National Forest on our drive on Sunday, but had never really seen one of these trees close-up.

Ubehebe Crater


Finally, we left there and headed to Ubehebe Crater, which was just a few miles back down the road.  This crater is one-half mile wide, and 500 ft. deep.  It was caused by a massive volcanic explosion a few hundred years ago.  I know the colors in these pictures just don't do justice to what we've seen.  Quite spectacular!

This was getting to be a long day, so we finally headed back to camp.  David especially loved this excursion to Scotty's Castle, in fact it was his favorite of the whole week. 

Arriving Death Valley

Tuesday, January 17

Oatie

Since I didn't get to bring the little burro home with me, I added another pet to our traveling zoo.  It's name is, of course, Oatie (as in Oatman).  I understand that my granddaughter was appalled that I wanted to bring the little burro home with me.

Back on the Road

 We treated ourselves to breakfast at IHOP this morning, which was right down the road from the campground, then broke camp and hit the road just past 9:30 a.m.  We hit Las Vegas about ll:15 and skirted it to the west side, not even stopping (can you believe that!).  It was 45 degrees.  On the highway to Pahrump, we came upon a small herd of mountain sheep right next to the road (no picture).  We drove through the area where the Red Rock burro herd lives, but we didn't see any of those.  There was a little snow on the mountainsides here.  This was a pretty drive.

From Laughlin to Pahrump was about 3 hours.  We arrived in Pahrump about noon, fueled up, and stopped on the Home Depot parking lot for lunch.

We went from Pahrump to Beatty, then crossed over into California and arrived at Death Valley National Park about mid-afternoon.  We stopped at the kiosk at picked up literature, then descended down, and down, and even down further, from 3300 ft. elevation in Beatty to below sea level.  We could see what looked like a lake or river in the distance, but it turned out to be the salt flats.

We camped at Stovepipe Wells Village campground, a little below sea level, with mountains all around.  We were in a campground with full hook-ups, which was just on strip of 14 sites.  Behind us was the National Park campground, but it didn't have RV hook-ups, which we needed. 

David grew up hearing stories about Scotty's Castle from his father, who never got to see it, so tomorrow's agenda is Scotty's Castle.

Oatman

Monday, Jan.16

I discovered this morning after my shower that I forgot to load my hair dryer and curling iron (I thought my camper set was in here), so I'm in for more hair issues. 

The Old Town of Oatman

Today's agenda was to drive to Oatman an old mining town on Historic Route 66 that still has some life.  We've been hearing about this town for years, it's famous for the wild burros that wander into town.  It's about 30 miles from Laughlin/Bullhead City, back in the foothills of the mountain range.

It has several little shops, an old hotel where Clark Gable once stayed, and where we had lunch.  We went in and out of the shops but no burros had arrived yet.  They are pretty proud of their jack asses here.

 They must have been forewarned that Joe was coming to town, because there one signed I'm sure was just for him.

Route 66

We drove on through the town to see what was on down that road.  It took us past some old gold mines, one still working, and through some beautiful scenery to the top of the mountain with Kingman somewhere on the other side.  We saw the remains of rusted out, old wrecked cars, that apparently had missed some of the curves.  Mazie and I did a little rock climbing here.  This is still part of the old Route 66.

Burros

We turned around and drove back into town, and just missed the 12:00 gunfight, but this time the burros had arrived.  The Oatman herd is 10 females and 1 male, and there were two babies with them.  We were told that once the babies get about 6 months old, they take them and they get adopted out.  The shops sell little bales of hay to feed to the burros, so they are not afraid of people and will come right up and head butt you if they see you carrying a bag.  The babies can't be fed, though, because they might choke, so they have signs posted on their heads to not feed them. 





My Favorite

I was ready to take this little one home with me.  It was as soft as a teddy bear.

Gunfight

We had lunch at the old hotel, did a little more shopping (I had to find me a burro for the front dash) and hung around long enough to catch the 2:00 shootout.  Then back to the RV, and a little more R&R (happy hour for the guys, gambling for the girls).

We went through one other casino, but Mazie was anxious to get back to her Bombs Away.  She won a little again, and I lost.  Do you see a pattern here????  The guys were supposed to join us for dinner, but they got lazy so we grabbed a bite and headed back to camp.  Day 2 was over, and tomorrow we should arrive in Death Valley

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.

Tally of 2011 trip

Saturday, September 14 - I finally got out the calculator and added up my columns of figures from this year's trip.  According to my records, we spent $5,073.27 on fuel for the RV, and we traveled 9,695 miles, which gave us an average cost of $3.70 per gallon.  The highest we paid was in Carmi, Illinois, the last night out before our first arrival in Vincennes on April 15, at $3.919.  Gas actually went over $4.00 per gallon in Vincennes before we left, but we didn't have to fill up until we got to Princeton, Kentucky, where the price was $3,869 on May 4.  I calculated that we bought 1,370.75 gallons of gas, which gave us an overall average of 7.0727 per gallon.  Our goal is 7 mpg, so we did make that.

Our second big expense when we travel is lodging costs.  We were gone 139 days this year (2 days longer than our Alaska summer), but we had 67 free nights (a combination of 5 weeks in Florida at John and Bridgette's and our two Indiana trips (19 days), with 5 nights at relatives in Tennessee, 2 nights on Walmart parking lots, and one free camping at a casino in Oklahoma.  Our total lodging costs were $2,041.67 for 72 paid nights, which averaged $28.35 per night.  Overall, our average for the 139 nights was $14.68 so all those free nights helped a lot.  The most we paid was in Key West, 3 nights at $63.00 each and that was with a Passport America 50% discount.  We stayed in a lot of state parks, which is our first preference, especially since now most of them have electricity and water, and many have sewer, some have cable and laundry facilities, and a few even have Internet. 

We bought the MiFi Hot Spot card in April in Indiana, which worked out very well.  We no longer had to seek campgrounds with Internet, or spend a half day at McDonald's, getting caught up on the blog.  We disconnected our home phone lines are are now strictly cell phones and the Hot Spot at home.  So far, we haven't seen any downside of that decision.

We only bought propane twice, both times in Vincennes--$28.12 in May ($2.19/gallon) and $31.31 in July ($2.09 per gallon).  I quit keeping track of our other expenses (groceries, eating out, entertainment, dingy fuel, and misc.) so those are all the numbers I have for the whole trip. 

An interesting fact on our miles -- we drove from Arizona through Texas (along the Mexican border) and cut over to Corpus Christi, then up through Arkansas and across Missouri to Vincennes, for a total of 2641 miles.  When we left Vincennes, we went back to Corpus Christi (through Memphis this time due to flooding of the Midwest and Mississippi River), then across Louisiana (including New Orleans) and the coastline of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle to get to John and Bridgette's in Ruskin, Florida.  That scenic route was 2689 miles -- 48 miles more than our Arizona-Indiana scenic route. 

Returning to Vincennes through Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, was about 1936 miles, and home from Indiana (Bloomington area was our last Indiana fuel stop) was 2005 miles.  This route included a week in Ruidoso, New Mexico, but it was about 650 miles less than getting to Indiana the first time.  Our side trip from Tampa to the Kennedy Space Center and the 76 miles from Vincennes to our fuel stop outside of Bloomington was the rest of the miles.

The cheapest gas we found was when we got home -- $3.299.  We paid $3.39 in South Carolina once.  The highest gas was in the Midwest, but gas prices were all over the map during the entire trip.  Thank you, Paul, for sending me the gasbuddy.com link -- that helped.

So that concludes the 2011 trip, and I'm going to file away my budget sheets.  We don't have any definite plans for the next big trip, but there are lots of places we want to go, so we'll see what the future brings.