U-Turn

Monday: another change in direction!

Last May we had an unfortunate connection with a neighbor's tree that resulted in a big dent in the top rear corner of the Alfa. We had it fixed at a well-rated shop in San Jose. At the time we felt that although it looked pretty good, the price they charged our insurance carrier was way high. We also had them fix a few other smaller things, and were not pleased with their prices.

The repair looked pretty good. From the back, the Alfa  looked like new.

It hardly ever rains in California between May and October. This year we didn't have a big rain storm until mid-November. At the time we really didn't go up and check for leaks. Perhaps we should have.

On about the third morning of this trip, as I was looking up at the ceiling from the bed, I noticed a rather large water stain in the corner.

Because of the way the shadows are cast, you can hardly see it when standing in the bedroom. And when the slide is in, it is covered completely.

When I first spotted it, we decided we would take it back to where we had it fixed, when we returned home. 

But this morning Craig suggested we head back south and take it to Alfateers in Fontana. We were about 150 miles away, but we knew we would be so much happier with their work than fighting with the other guys. Plus there are several other minor things that need attention, including an air whistle on the passenger side, some places that need re-caulking, and tank sensors that are not reading correctly.  

We called to see if they could take us, and headed on over. They can't do anything until tomorrow, but we are now safely parked and hooked up in the parking lot. 

I hear it's still pretty chilly on the beach :-)

A Day On My Own

I'm a little sad we didn't head south to Quartzsite, because I will miss meeting some of the other bloggers.  But I don't regret spending a couple of beautiful days on the coast of California.

Today, while Craig enjoyed his football games on TV, I spent a few hours on my own.  I visited the Santa Barbara Mission and a few other historic places around the area.

The mission garden had a few blooming roses.

I liked this collection of cactus plants sitting on some steps.

Three burners and an oven.  Just like our RV!

I also enjoyed wandering around the shopping district in Santa Barbara.  I rarely buy anything, but like to "people watch."  I did stop at the Sur La Table and bought a good oven thermometer for the Alfa.  We use the oven almost every day, but find the temperature control a bit primitive.

Tomorrow we are heading north, and plan on stopping at Morro Bay for a couple of nights before going home and getting back to work on the house.  (GROAN)

We're Not in Arizona Anymore

After leaving Las Vegas Thursday afternoon, we intended to work our way south and go to Quartzsite for the big tent show.  

After filling up the propane, fresh water and diesel fuel we drove about 100 miles to a Golden Valley RV park that accepted Passport America. After two great PA experiences, this was a bit different.  The book said they would accept PA for three nights and the rate would be $12.50. Reality was they would only take it for one night, and charged $21. My PA book is recent. The other two places we stayed with the PA were quite nice. This one was a gravel parking lot. None of that is important. It was just a stopping place because the weather was getting ugly.

Poor Craig. By the time we got parked and he was out hooking things up, a storm arrived with icy sleet. I stayed inside and warmed up some clam chowder for lunch.

When we woke up Friday morning the water hose was frozen. 

I had said that we were going to be flexible and our destinations beyond the Death Valley were dependent on the weather. It looked to us like Western Arizona is going to be cold for the next week. 

So we did what having a house on wheels makes possible. We packed up and drove 400 miles to where it was a lot warmer!

We started the day with fresh baked, Trader Joe's croissants. They start out frozen, and all you have to do is put them out to thaw and rise overnight and bake them in the oven. They are a special breakfast treat that we have every so often. (I probably should have pulled the blind for a better picture, but this is one happy, warm man.)

We burned some of the calories with a four mile walk along two of the beaches in the area. Yes, in just the right light the waves look violet in color.

Looking down the beach in the other direction, the sun's reflection  dazzles the eye. 

This is a life style we could really love!  

Where are we? Santa Barbara, California.
High 59 degrees this afternoon.  

We are at a dinky RV park, but it has great cable and Craig is watching the playoff game.
  
More beach walking, or other exploration for me tomorrow!
More football games for Craig.

Red Rock Canyon

The West has so many wonderful places to hike and beautiful sights to see.

On Tuesday we headed about 20 miles outside of Las Vegas to the Red Rock Canyon. 

You guessed it, it has some pretty neat red rocks!

There is a one way scenic drive with many easy pull outs and small parking lots.

In the visitor center I met a rather large lizard.

Good thing he was made of bronze.

I had read about the many trails in the park the night before, and picked out a promising six mile loop. It started out along one side of the mountain and we saw some petroglyphs on the walls.  There was a sign drawing our attention to them.  Without the sign we would have missed them.

In the same area the plants were more varied and vigorous than later on the loop.  How many types of plants can you see in this photo?

Then we hiked across a desert area.  Lots of cactus and shrubby plants. 

As we made our way into the canyon there were some areas where we had to scramble over rocks.  I love the roughness of these areas, but wish there were just a few more small, unobtrusive trail markers.  There was no way to get lost because we were in a canyon, but we did lose the trail a couple of time.

We felt we had to hustle along on the last section of trail because the sun was starting to sink behind the mountains, and it was getting colder. There was a thin layer of snow in some of the shaded places. 

This was just one of many unique rock walls. This section of trail was easy to walk.

Just before we got back to the parking area the trail became an unmaintained road that was restricted to high clearance vehicles.  We saw couple of Jeeps along it.  At one point there was a vehicle parked and we could see the occupants were looking at something on the side of the mountain.  

We looked too. 

Can you see anything? Look carefully.

At first we couldn't see anything, but then Craig spotted a bighorn sheep.

As we watched six more appeared.  They were at least a quarter mile away and stood very still.

It was exciting to see them in the wild. 
I feel lucky.

Hoover Dam

[From Craig]  Hmmm, what can we say about one of the most-visited and photographed sites in America?  Well, it's not fiction, there definitely is a dam there on the Colorado River, in Black Canyon between Nevada and Arizona.  

The official descriptions say it's in Boulder Canyon, because the original surveys and justifications were written that way. By the time it was approved in 1928, the planners had decided to put it in Black Canyon but didn't want to upset the politicians by switching the name of the canyon.

The first thing we noticed when we drove up, was that the "high tension towers" closest to the dam were all really slanted, like electrical Towers of Pisa only more tipped. Looking at them further from a better vantage point, it's obvious that the angle is because they support wires that come almost straight up from the generator buildings below the dam, to the next towers high above. So the designers set them at the angle halfway between the source and destination.

We parked and went down to the security checkpoints that lead to the Visitor Center. There we learned we couldn't take in the nice lunch that Merikay had packed: no food is allowed past the checkpoint. This is an understandable policy in view of all the instances of exploding food that have occurred around the world, so we went back outside to eat lunch and walk the road across the dam.

We had lunch near these two statues of tall skinny eagles that were the largest bronzes ever cast in the US when they were made.  As you can see in comparison to the people, they are pretty tall.

We walked toward Arizona on the downstream side of the road. This is the view down the dam toward the generator buildings on each side. Water runs from intakes on the reservoir side through the dam to these buildings, where the generators make electricity for Los Angeles and surrounding states.  

There is a spillway like this on each side of the dam. (Everything about Hoover Dam is symmetrical between the Nevada and Arizona sides.) If the water in Lake Mead gets too high, it starts to spill over the right side in this picture. At first it just goes through that little grate on the bottom. But if it starts spilling fast it will go through the big hole in back. This happened big-time in 1982, which was the high-water year in Hoover Dam's history.

These are the intake towers on the Lake Mead side of the dam.  They take in water well below the surface, so that less dead fish and floating debris go through the generator turbines.

Near the dam, Lake Mead is pretty narrow and looks like the river that it is. Around the bend in back it gets much wider, and is a big recreation/boating area.  

The white bands around the water are calcium carbonate left behind by high water, especially in 1982 when the water was highest.


Next we walked back to the Visitor Center, and got through the security checkpoint now that our lunches were inside us. There we learned that of the three types of dam tours, only the shortest, least extensive one was available that day because the elevators down into the dam were out of order. If you come to Hoover Dam and are big fans of tours like Merikay and I, be sure you call ahead to make sure that the dam elevators are working!

As part of the "Visitor Center only" tour, we sat through several interesting presentations about how the dam was built. Thereafter we could go out on the Observation Deck from which we took this picture of the face of the dam. 


See how the dam is divided into 12 or more sections width-wise, and each of them is divided into many horizontal slices? Each slice is a single pour of concrete into a big form about 5 feet high, that averaged about the size of a city lot (thicker at the bottom, thinner at the top). After pouring each section, they went on to the next one across the dam, so that each section set at least 3 days before the next one was poured on top of it. Which amounts to about 3 years of continuous concrete-pouring!

Knowing something about California's earthquake bans against "unreinforced masonry", we were amazed to learn that there is not any rebar (steel reinforcing) in the main body of Hoover Dam. There is plenty in the intake towers, generator buildings, and other surrounding structures, but none in the dam itself. No way would California admit this dam into their state, if someone ever wanted to move it there!

Finally we went up to walk across the new bridge that goes across the river downstream from the dam, so that not all of the Nevada<-->Arizona traffic has to go across the dam itself. In a store later, we saw that they sold old postcards that showed an aerial view of the dam without the bridge, and new ones that were exactly the same view with the bridge.  The bridge is named for a local politician and for Pat Tillman, who was the NFL player who enlisted to go to Afghanistan in the middle of his career and was killed by "friendly fire" there.

They could not have designed a better place from which to take pictures of Hoover Dam! The rectangular array of white-froth spots in the lower river mark the outlets from the generator turbines. The cables you may be able to see just above the top of the bridge are part of the last remaining cableway that was used to pour the concrete in the dam.

We tried waving our arms from the bridge but couldn't see our shadows. It's quite a place!

From Merikay: My impression after seeing some of the enormous public works projects that were accomplished during and after the Great Depression is that government can and must do the big things.  Yes, six big private companies joined forces for the building of the dam, but without the government it would not have happened.  

Many of the improvements to our parks were also done during those hard times.  These programs saved many lives because they provided jobs for men who might otherwise have had none.  

I know there are probably to many people doing redundant office work for the government, but I would rather see more men and women working to build, restore and improve our country than in the military.  I would rather see more of our tax dollars going for infrastructure than for war.

It's all part of the big picture, and I'm glad we are getting to see it.

Las Vegas

Since I have never been to Las Vegas, I thought it might be fun to see the place.  CSI Las Vegas was one of my favorite shows when we had TV at the house. 

I checked my Passport America book and found a resort there.  I called and yes, I could get the PA discount and could make a reservation.  I booked for three nights, and although I didn't have to make a deposit, I requested an email confirmation.  Good thing I did, because when I checked in the desk lady didn't want to give me the discount.  I showed her the printed confirmation that noted the PA discount.  "Oh" she said, and found us a spot.

As I was walking out of the lobby (a quite nice place) a silly looking old lady wearing leather pants and a golf cap approached me with a hand full of coupons for the area. She was hustling people to sit through a sales presentation the next day. The lure was a "free" notebook computer, plus two free nights at the resort.  It was OK with Craig, so I said yes. We sat through the presentation saying "no" to everything.  At the end of  it all we managed to pass on the "no name" notebook as well. We would have had to pay $39 in shipping and handling. The salesman turned it into an extra free day's stay.  The best part was that we don't have to come back.  They let us add it onto our current stay.  So we ended up getting to stay at a decent place with two nice pools, a hot tub, and an exercise room  six nights for only $75 total.  Can't beat that! 

Pool at Oasis RV Resort, Las Vegas Nevada

On Friday, shortly after arriving, Craig hit his head on the underside of the slide while hooking up the water, and felt he needed to be driven to an ER.  Head cuts bleed profusely, and he had taken some Aleve earlier in the day which acts as a blood thinner. I looked at the cut when I gave him a wash rag to press on it and declared it "not too bad." But he was shook up by the blood running in his eyes and dripping on his shoes. By the time we got to the ER the bleeding had stopped. A doctor checked it and said he was fine and didn't need any stitches.  He felt silly, but I was happy because I would rather take him to the ER for a little thing than a heart attack or major accident.

That night we walked around the strip and went into a couple of stores and the MGM Casino. The weather was pretty cold and we were tired so we went back to the Alfa early.

I did a weeks worth of wash Saturday morning after the presentation, and then we went to The Mob Museum.  Several people have told me it was a great exhibit, but I have to say I was not wowed by it. 

I have seen several documentary shows on the History channel that covered the same subjects.  Some of the pictures and most of the stories were things I had seen before.  

Not money well spent.



Sunday there were two NFL playoff games Craig wanted to watch, so I went shopping at one of the outlet malls.  I'm not much of a shopping fanatic, but I enjoy looking for clothes more now that I'm thinner. I bought one new top and some fun socks.

Monday we went to Hoover Dam, which is the subject of my next post.  I feel we are making every day count, but are also taking our time to do mundane things like grocery shopping and the wash.

I could really get to like this lifestyle!

Beware of what you wish for.  While in Death Valley I said that I wished I knew more about geology. Like many RV parks, the Las Vegas resort has a free book exchange.  Guess what I found.

It is an older text book from California State University.  I have started to read it and am sure it is for a Geology 101 course.  I remember a lot that I have read so far, but my knowledge is mostly from grade school science, the Discovery Channel, and signage at park visitors stations.

It is never too late to learn!
What do you want to know more about?

Death Valley, Mosaic Canyon

Wednesday, after leaving the dunes we continued our exploration of Death Valley with a short trip to Salt Creek to see if we could spot some Pupfish.  It seems they are very shy at this time of year, and we couldn't find any.  The few pictures we took didn't seem post-worthy.

After a little picnic lunch at the creek, we went on to Mosaic Canyon which is just down the road from Stovepipe Wells.  Here we walked up a canyon with walls that were (in places) a polished marble.  Very different from anything we had seen before.










The floor of the canyon was a coarse gravel like stone that didn't seem to match the walls at all.  When we looked up, we could see areas of similar dark colored stone high above. I am fascinated by the formations.  I told Craig I wish I knew more about geology.

As we walked thru the canyon it was easy to imagine a roaring rush of water ripping and scoring the stone walls. 

Wednesday was our last day at the Stovepipe Wells park. We enjoyed our time there very much, and I think we did most of the  walks that were accessible with our little car. There are many more canyons to discover, but we don't like to drive more than a couple of miles on the gravel roads with the Accent, and the other trails are farther in. 

Maybe the next time we are here we will rent a Jeep for a few days.  They are available at Furnace Creek.

Because it was our last day, I decided to give the pool a try.  The gal at the reservations office said it was heated, and I had seen some teenagers swimming the day before. There was a large solar array on the roof of the game table area enclosure.

It may have been heated, but it was not very warm.  Craig put a toe in and declared he would stand by as my life guard. Once in, it wasn't too cold, and I did enjoy it.  It is January after all!

So ends this chapter of our travels.  The next morning we packed up and drove to Las Vegas.  Another world!