Red Rock Canyon

Judy & Herb wanted to take a tour of Red Rock Canyon and we lucked going there on a beautiful sunny day.  Since it was a Tuesday I didn't think it would be that busy.  Well, I was wrong and the parking areas were very crowded along with the one way road.

I copied the info below from the government website.

Welcome to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area Red Rock Canyon was designated as Nevada's first National Conservation Area.  Red Rock Canyon is located 17 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip on Charleston Boulevard/State Route 159.  The area is visited by more than two million people each year.  In marked contrast to a town geared to entertainment and gaming, Red Rock offers enticements of a different nature including a 13-mile scenic drive, miles of hiking trails, rock climbing, horseback riding, mountain biking, road biking, picnic areas, nature observing and visitor center with indoor and outdoor exhibits as well as a book store. The unique geologic features, plants and animals of Red Rock  represent some of the best examples of the Mojave Desert. In 1990, special legislation supported by the Nevada congressional delegation, changed the status of the Red Rock Recreation Lands to a National Conservation Area, the seventh to be designated nationally. This legislation provides the funding to protect and improve the area. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is enjoyed by the local population as well as visitors from the United States and many foreign countries. Two million visitors each year enjoy the spectacular desert landscape, climbing and hiking opportunities, and interpretive programs sponsored by the BLM. The BLM is the largest administrator of public lands in the West. It adheres to the policy of multiple use, thereby providing recreational opportunities, protection for cultural sites, and the management of natural resources, including wildlife.

The views in canyon were great and we took a number of photos.  

I'm preparing this blog on my tablet & it's getting late so this will be a short post tonight.

Quick Trip to Las Vegas

We got settled in at the campground and finished up some chores.  We also met friends Ron & Dee at one of our favorite restaurants, Guadalajara for a nice long dinner.  It was great seeing them again.  We also went to dinner with Linda & Sherwin while we were camped at the fairgrounds.  Two Mexican restaurants right off the bat.  Welcome to Tucson.

Friends Judy & Herb invited us to spend some time with them at their timeshare place in Las Vegas & Gerry saw slot machines paying off big, so we packed up the car & headed there.  It's a 430 mile drive and we made good time getting there.

I am preparing the blog on my tablet, so this will be a short one.  We did take a trip down to the "strip" and stopped at the Bellagio Hotel to check out the exhibit at their Conservatory.  They change the exhibit a number of times each year.  This time it was a celebration of Chinese new year, the year of the Rooster.

Jud

Most of the exhibits were made with fresh flowers and workers were replacing old flowers all day long.  We always enjoy stopping by the Conservatory when we are in Las Vegas.

Many casinos are now charging for parking & the Bellagio is one of them.  They do give you the first hour for free & that gave us enough time to enjoy the exhibit.  We've never had any luck gambling & winning there so we left before the hour was up.

That was part of our day here.  More to follow.

The Bus Is Parked

We had a 9:00am appointment at La Mesa RV to have the new springs installed on the motorhome.  Since we were parked at the Pima County Fairgrounds and La Mesa RV was only 13 miles away, we took our time getting ready and watched the sunrise.

 We made it to La Mesa RV on time, was processed by the service advisor and then sat around for a couple hours chatting with other customers in the same situation.  One lady was telling us about their RV park and all the things to do there including card making and stained glass.  Boy did Gerry's antennae go up real fast when she heard that.  The lady is in a park about 6 miles from us and I think they are going to hook up there.

Finally, they finished the work except for one part that they had to order.  Once the part comes in we will drive back there for the installation.  It will be a quick job and we should be in and out fast.  

Gerry followed me to the park where we will be staying for the next 3-4 months.  It's Justin's Diamond J RV park on the west side of Tucson.  It is further out than CCRV but we wanted to spend more time in this side of Tucson.  We are close to Saguaro National Park west, the Desert Museum and Old Tucson studios.  They have some activities here with a club house.  

After stopping by the office Gerry came out with registration complete and ready to help park the motorhome.  The site is close to their golf course and we hope to get in some use there.  Oh, did I tell you that it is miniature golf?  Well, it is and that is about our speed now.

We have to get all set up and do some shopping along with resting up before our next trip.  It's to Las Vegas via car on Jan 16 to visit with our good friends Judy & Herb R.  They have a timeshare there with 2 bedrooms.  They know how much we like Las Vegas and were nice enough to invite us to join them.

There are hundreds of geocaches around this area and I hope to pick up most of them in the next three months.  Hopefully it will be cold enough to keep the rattlesnakes in a stupor and we can avoid them.  

That was our day, how was yours?

Vail, AZ Pima County Fairground RV park

We were up bright and early for our departure from Las Cruces to Vail, AZ  (Tucson)   Nothing much interesting happened along the way to Lordsburg where we fueled the motorhome.  The diesel fuel was $2.69 for credit price and we used our FlyingJ fuel discount card and got it for $2.59.  Since we took on 80 gallons, we saved $8.00 on the fill up.

Our destination after that was the Pima County Fairgrounds outside of Tucson.  The shortest route there is to take MM 275 exit from I-10 onto S Houghton Rd, however it is a very busy exit and limited view on the driver's side.  Just down the road is the Rita Rd exit and it is much easier to cross.  Once we got past the 275 exit lane the traffic came to a standstill.  There was a bad accident about a mile down the road and everyone was switching to the left lane.  A very nice truck driver let me in and we arrived at the scene the same time as the firetruck. (No fire)  There were 3-4 vehicles involved in the accident and I could not see what really happened.  There was one car visible from my side window.  It's front was really smashed up.  We got through the area and arrived at the Fairgrounds a few minutes later.

That is when we were in for a surprise.  Last year they had installed a number of new campsites with 50amp service and water.  Now they were all torn up with trenches throughout the campsites.  In addition, the parking area next to the campsites was torn up.  There were detour signs directing us to the registration building.  

They said they were adding new full hookup sites and were working hard to get them open in a short while.  We wound up on a 50amp full hookup site on asphalt near the Budweiser pavilion.  It is fine for an over nighter and to be out of the old dust bowl of the previous sites where we have stayed.

It looks like they are transforming the Fairgrounds into a very nice campground.  If they keep the price of the campsite low like they have been ( $25/night for 50amp full hookup), it will be a popular place to spend some time.  They have added sites near the tree line so there will be shaded sites also.

Gerry and I joined Ron K for dinner at Montgomery's and wound up chatting for a few hours.  I always enjoy Montgomery's however the service was slow this time and I only got to enjoy one happy hour beer.  We went back to the motorhome and chatted some more and Ron decided we looked tired and went home.  We will see him again and we can continue to catch up on all the happenings out here.

That was our day, how was yours.

Las Cruces Railroad Museum

We decided to go geocaching in Las Cruces today and one of the caches lead us to the Las Cruces Railroad Museum. It is located in the 1910 Santa Fe Railroad Depot.  We made a quick find of the geocache and decided to take a tour of the museum.

Las Cruces Railroad Museum

 The building is the same as it was when it was closed a number of years ago.  The volunteer staff greeted us and we had a nice chat with two of them.  The lady in the picture was from Baltimore and retired to Las Cruces.  Her partner (not in view) lived in Hagerstown, MD which is a few miles from where our daughter lives.  Talk about a small world!

1 Ticket On The 3:10 To Yuma, please.

 The large object below is an actual train whistle.  It had a number of tones and was about 3 ft high and looked like it must have been very heavy.

 There are a number of railroad artifacts in the museum along with three operational model railroads.  One is set up for visitors to operate and is quite large.

 What do you think this large piece of machinery is used for?  Answer below.

 There was this beautiful stained glass window in the museum.  Gerry was attracted to it since she also does stained glass, but not this elaborate. 

 In keeping with the theme of the railroad museum and the surrounding area there was a very nice mural painted on the wall of the building across the street.

 There were a number of photographs all over the museum and this one sort of grabbed our attention.  If you travel out in the Southwest you will see numerous trains hauling their cargo east and west.

 The Wrigley model truck was great and fit into the decor of the museum.  It was about 2ft long and done to scale.

I was especially interested in the museum since it was part of the history of the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Railway, since my great grandfather worked for the company in the 1870s.  I've been trying to find their payroll files for many years without success.  

The museum is small and can be seen in an hour or so.  There is also a caboose on the grounds but the sun was behind it and I couldn't get a nice picture.  Maybe next time.

The large hook like device was used to grab the mail bags as the train came through the depot.

 I also checked gas buddy to see who had the cheapest diesel fuel in the area and a Valero station about a mile away was the best.  I checked it out on google earth and it looked like it had easy access.   We drove by to verify we could get the motorhome into the station.  It was a good thing we did since the approach ramps were short and very steep and we couldn't drive the motorhome into the station.  Too bad since at $2.39/gallon, that was a great price for this area.

We plan on pulling out in the morning for Tucson and it looks like it will be a nice driving day.  It's been a long drive from PA to Tucson and we are looking forward to taking it easy for a few days.


 

Back On The Road Again

December 31, 2016 - Baytown

It started raining during the night and rained hard for a day.  We wound up leaving Baytown, TX bound for Kerrville, TX.  The HWH factory rep said that when I brought up the leveling jacks they should hold and it would be ok to drive.  We decided to hit the road on December 31 and put everything away, brought in the slide out and raised the jacks.  Kerrrbamm!  Oh oh Houston, we have another problem.  The leveling spring on the other front jack broke and now we had two broken jack springs.  

We decided to trust in the factory rep, so we brought up the jacks and started down the road.

I wanted to stop for fuel and take advantage of diesel for $2.07/gallon but on the way there the jack warning alarm started up.  I checked the jacks at the service station and they had fallen down enough to set off the alarm.  No way I could drive 1,100 miles with that beeping all the time.

It was time to find a local mechanic who could tie the jacks up somehow so we could continue on down the road.  We did find a mechanic at a truck stop who said he could fix it, but it would take a couple hours before he could get to it.  Sure enough, he came out to the motorhome and directed me to park in a covered bay.  As you can see the rain was coming down hard and the parking lot was flooding in places.

 The mechanic crawled under the motorhome and said he could fix it in 15 minutes by using coat hangers to hold the jacks in place.  It was a jury rigged solution but the only one available to us at this time.  It was New Years Eve day and everyplace else was closed.  He also gave us two more coat hangers in case the first ones didn't hold and we would have to repeat the process.  He finished the job and was exceptionally reasonable with the bill for the work.  

Finally around 1:00PM we rolled out of the parking lot heading for Kerrville, TX.  It was a 325 mile drive and we had a reservation at the Kerrville-Schreiner Park.  The traffic was light and we made good time driving through Houston and San Antonio and arrived at the park just before sunset.

When we went to park in the campsite, we noticed it was set up backwards.  The sewer hookup was on one side and the water and electric on the other.  The w/e hookups were on the wrong end of the site and we had to move the mh almost into the next site.  We couldn't use the leveling jacks and the campsite had a bad slope to it.  Using wood under the tires on one side, we managed to get it leveled enough that we were able to make do for the night.

As I mentioned earlier, it was New Years Eve and evidently the campers and nearby neighbors like to shoot off fireworks all night to celebrate.  There were a number of gunshots going off also.  It started just after sunset and went on until about 1:00AM.

January 1, 2017 - Kerrville

In the morning it was back on the road time and we continued our drive to Van Horne, TX .  Once again the traffic was light and we made the 375 mile drive without incident.  The wind was blowing hard the whole time.  Some of the gusts slammed us pretty good.  Other than that it is boring out there with nothing interesting to look at with everything being so brown.  

When we were about 25 miles from Van Horn the sky became very dark and full of lighting strikes.  Also the wind picked up and was hitting us on the side and made for some difficult driving.  We pulled into the campground and barely got the motorhome set up for the night when the skies opened up.  We had 30-35 mph winds rocking the side of the motorhome.  It was the roughest ride we have had in this motorhome.  It continued for 30 minutes and then calmed down and the temp dropped about 30 degrees as well.

They have a cafe at the campground and we waited for the rain to stop before we walked over to the cafe for dinner.  We really enjoyed the meals and wound up chatting with a couple who are staying at Voyagers Resort in Tucson.  We exchanged cards and made plans to get together with them when everything is settled down.

January 2, 2017 -  Van Horn

 We had a short drive of 170 miles today to Las Cruces, NM so we  left the park late.  Once again the traffic was light.  I always take I-10 through El Paso and made good time today making the 35 mile drive in 40 minutes.  No slow downs and the people drove like they should.

Our stop for the night was at a Passport America RV park called Coachlight RV park.  It's $18/nite for Passport members and we've stopped here before.  It is a no frills park next to a hotel, but the price is right.

One of our favorite restaurants is called Cattle Baron and we always stop there when we are in the area.  Once again we enjoyed our meals and their super great salad bar.  They even had French Onion soup and I went back for two cups.  The service was great and to top it off they "carded" us.  We had to show identification with our birth dates on it.  I guess we look young for our age.

We plan on stopping here two nights and then on to Tucson, AZ.  Our destination there will be the Pima County Fair grounds campground for two nights and then into La Mesa RV for service on Friday morning.  Hopefully the jack springs repairs will be quick and we can settle into Justin's Diamond J RV park Friday night.

That's what we've been up too lately.  How about you?

Happy New Year