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.

Wrap-Up of 2011 Trip

Thursday, August 18 - Well, we've had a few days at home - busy, busy, days, so I thought I better do my final blog and get on with life in the desert.  Our second "retirement trip" was wonderful, ran a very close second to last year's trip to Alaska.  We just didn't see any bears this year!


As with last year, when we left (March 29), we had no definite return date set, but I really expected we would be home sometime in July.  Wrong.  This year's trip was 139 days, 2 days longer than last year!  That was a surprise, although it felt like we had been gone forever.   This year's trip took us through 16 states--(Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (3 times), Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana (2 times), Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.  We saw severe storms, severe flooding, followed by severe heat and severe drought.

We drove 9,695, only 595 less than last year.  We didn't keep track of the mileage on the Explorer, but we're guessing around 6,000 driven (in addition to the 9,695 it was towed).  Our biggest unexpected expense was repair on the Explorer in Florida -- and that was a chunk.  Unfortunately, we need to take it in now for another noise it has developed. Joe fought the whistles around his window the entire trip, so that is definitely something we need to track down during our "off season."  But the RV served us very well, and we love traveling in it.

We saw lots of deer, and turtles, and alligators, a few dolphins and a few antelope.  Our most exciting sighting was probably the armadillo in Louisiana, although those alligators were pretty cool.  We saw lots of exotic birds, especially in Florida, and especially Bridgette's favorite, the sandhill cranes which we saw frequently.

We didn't wear our rain jackets very many times, although we did wear complete mosquito netting coverage in the Everglades, and we got to enjoy the beach and get in the water (more than just a toe) in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.


Our most exciting "event" was getting to see the last shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.  We had not planned on that one, but were delighted that it worked out so that we could witness that awesome event.  That is certainly a highlight of a lifetime.  However, maybe even more of a highlight was watching Bridgette get hooded as she received her Ph.D. in May.  Congratulations again to Bridgette.

We toured the Daytona 500 Racetrack, as well as the one in Homestead, Florida.  And we got to attend the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis (thank you, Cathy and Joe), another totally unexpected opportunity.  We also toured the Kennedy Space Center a month before the launch, and got to see the shuttle sitting on the launch pad.  We went to our first horse race.  We got to see Indiana harvesting the melon crops, which was fun to see after so many years away from that (and we were so glad we were not out in the fields picking those melons.)  We toured the Oklahoma City Memorial, which was very emotional, but well worth a stop.  We also got to spend a couple days in Branson, Missouri, which was totally entertaining except for the heat there.  We went snorkeling at Key West, toured several museums and old forts, and explored two National Parks -- Big Bend, Texas, and the Everglades in Florida.  We drove by Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, but didn't have time to explore it.  Another trip, I guess. 

We spent a lot of time with family this year, in Indiana with all our relatives there, and in Florida with John and Bridgette for 5 weeks.  Since we were in Vincennes to celebrate Lucille's 95th birthday, we got to see almost everyone in the immediate family, and some of the extended family as well, cousins that we hadn't seen for several years.  However, in addition to our Indiana family, our trip included visits to a nephew and his family in Florida, a niece and her husband in Tennessee, a cousin and his family in Tennessee, and we made new friends with Dave and Mazie's nephew and his family in Ruidoso, New Mexico, where we also hooked up with a couple of our friends.  So last year's trip was all about travel; this year's trip was a lot, but not all, about visiting. South Carolina was the only state we visited this year that I had not been to before, but Joe had even been there, although we took different highways and byways than we had ever taken before, in almost all the states we crossed.

The trip certainly counts as a success.  And there are some of the places we went that we know we want to go back to.   There's a canyon near Amarillo, Texas (Palo Duro Canyon) which is the second largest canyon in the U.S. that sounds very interesting.  They put on a show in July and August out there, so we hope to catch it sometime.  Also, we would like to go back to Branson more "in season," maybe in the fall some year.  And Ruidoso is definitely someplace we will probably return to, maybe every year in August. 

Our grandkids grew while we were gone.  Cody is just 6 weeks away from getting his driver's license.  He just started his Sophomore year, and Kaylee just started 5th grade.  We miss them so much when we are traveling, and that's the driving force that gets us home.

Of course, we have a "to do" list now.  The first thing we had to take care of was getting the license plates for the truck.  It has to have emissions every year so we could not renew that while we were on the road.  But, alas, the batteries died on it while we were gone.  After leaving it on the charger overnight, Joe decided there was no life left in them, so we replaced them yesterday, then Joe drove it down and ran it through emissions.  So we are now just waiting for the new tag to arrive in the mail.  The TV didn't work right when we got home, and we found out the  Direct TV box was bad, so we are waiting for the new box to arrive in the mail (we had error code 14-200, which was apparently fatal).  The shower nozzle in our shower was plugged up with calcium, sand, or something, so when I went to take a shower Tuesday morning, no water would come out.  So Joe changed that out, soaked it in vinegar, and we are back in business on that front.  And our box trailer has a flat tire, as does the little trailer we pull behind the quad.   And at the top of our "to does" is to lose the 10 pounds we gained on this trip, then work on the next 40-50 pounds we need to lose.  That, of course, is the toughest "to do" of them all.

On the horizon, Joe has to have surgery on his other foot as soon as we can get that scheduled.  We hope to do a little fishing this fall.  I've joined the bowling team from my ex-work, so I'm looking forward to that.  And we are going to Big Lake (Arizona) over Labor Day Weekend with Jeff and Brenda.  We are not making plans any further out until we find out about the foot surgery.

We have no big trip planned for next year at this point -- we're leaving all our options open at this time, but we will be going to visit Lucille sometime so we always know Indiana is an annual event (I am trying to skip April in Indiana, though, since that seems to be the height of Indiana Tornado Season).   And probably Florida will be an annual trip as well, although that is a very long drive from here!

I'm sure I've forgotten some important events and visits, so please forgive me for that -- it is not intentional, but early senility has certainly set in.  We loved the trip, and we are very happy to be home now.  For a while.