Well it has been 3 months since I updated our blog. Combination of being very busy traveling to Texas, working at Amazon, traveling to CA for Christmas and then getting our winter camp set up in Quartzsite, AZ I have not been able to devote a block of time to complete a blog post. Maybe a little bit of the blog writer being LAZY. I hope to catch up with our doings in the next week. I plan to split up blog posts into several different time periods. So here is the first one with our travels to Texas.

My last day of work at Likely was October 12^th. The plan was to work until 5pm go home and hook the trailer up and drive to Susanville to spend the night at a rest stop. This would have been a 2 hour drive and we would be set up to continue the drive to Reno for Vicki’s flight to Vegas. But Peggy, my counter part, showed up at 3 pm and told me to hit the road. Very nice of her. Allowed us to get on the road early and we decided to drive to Reno and spend the night at an RV park. This was an uneventful drive and night.

RV Spot in Reno

The next morning we got up early to drop Vicki at the next exit for her to meet up with her boss to go to the Reno airport for the flight to Vegas for a 2 day meeting. Much easier to drop Vicki at an exit than take her to the airport and deal with that with a trailer hitched to the truck. All went well and I continued south on US 395. This is a good 2 lane highway without much traffic and again was uneventful. The mutts settled down after they figured Vicki was not coming back and they were very good. They have become good road warriors.

I had lots of pretty views of the Sierras to my west. With the trailer hooked up to me I was driving 55 mph and the speed limit was 65 to 70 mph. I got passed by many many trucks but they did not seem to mind. When I would come to an area where passing was safe I would slow down to allow them to pass and when they passed me I would flick my lights to let them know it was safe to pull back into our south bound lane. Most of the time they flicked their lights thanking me.

Here are some pictures of the trip.

Sierras west of RT 395

Looking south on a empty  RT 395

I spent the night in Beatty at an RV park without unhooking. Beatty bills itself as the Gateway to Death Valley. Again nothing special happened except Sadie and Buster would go to the door every time they hear a noise outside thinking maybe Vicki came back.

Beatty RV Park

View outside Beatty looking east

The next morning I wanted to fuel up in Beatty due to their low diesel prices. But I missed the station and decided to keep on driving since I had enough fuel to make it to Vegas. Well I did find a station in the middle of nowhere with good prices and stopped. An interesting place. See pictures below.

Sign on diesel pump

Fuel stop on way to Vegas

As I continued south I drove pass Creech Air Force Base just north of Vegas and I saw a drone on the run way. First time I ever saw one of these. Wonder where he was going? I continued driving through Vegas to Boulder City where we would spend the night. Luckily I was driving in Vegas in the middle of the day and not during rush hours. Vicki’s meeting was over at the end of this day so after unhitching, setting up and getting the mutts settled I drove back in to Vegas to pick her up. Her meeting was actually in Henderson just south of Vegas. I was hoping to find and In N Out for dinner but not going to happen. The group Vicki was meeting with decided to go out to eat together. Went to Olive Garden. But all guys of the group decided to do other things their last night in Vegas, go figure. So I had dinner with 5 ladies. Tough duty.

Next morning, the 15^th, we left Boulder City and drove down to Kingman, AZ to catch I40 that would take us most of the way to Texas. We crossed the Colorado River next to the Boulder/Hoover Dam. Very pretty area.

We drove east on I40 through central AZ and Flagstaff and onto Meteor Crater RV Park just west of Winslow, AZ. Visited the Meteor Crater, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park over the next two days. All very impressive and something to see. Of course we went into Winslow and did the required pictures of the girl in the truck. We had dinner at an upscale hotel which was a major stop on the railroad back in the day.

After 2 nights at the Meteor Crater RV Park we pushed on to Albuquerque, NM to check out the balloon festival.

Entering New Mexico we were treated to some great views. This was the first time we visited the state of NM.  We need to come back and visit this state.  Very pretty with some great State Parks.

Only stayed one night in Albuquerque and caught the last day of the festival. One night in a RV Park during the festival is very expensive.   Sometime in the future we need to do the whole week at the festival. This was something to see. It was sensory overload with all the balloons going up. I heard whistles as we approached the field and wondered what was going on. As we got closer to the launching fields I saw officials in referee uniforms controlling the action. It appeared to me it was very well organized. Each balloon was given a time to begin inflating and then what time lift off was. The refs controlled the actions with their balloons. Here are some pictures.

Vicki making sure Smokey does not tip over.

We had to keep moving on and drove onto Amarillo, TX staying there for one night and did not unhitch. Had pizza delivered to the campsite. We were hungry, tired and did not want to cook. Next day got up to big winds and jumped on US route 287 for the rest of the drive to Alvord, TX. We saw 30+ miles of wind mills.

It was a great trip but very tiring as we pushed to accommodate our schedule. Sometime we will need to slow down and enjoy the trip.