In Tucson

We are here, we're still tired, and our feet hurt from standing so much.  I think tomorrow will be the last big push towards wedging many items in to small spaces.  It's still in the 90s (in November!) so we're not missing out on any riding opportunities.

Yesterday was a terrible, awful, no good day for me.  In the morning we opened a window.  Park model windows are metal framed and they weigh a ton.  When I went to close the window, the latches that allow it to move in the track were sticking, and somehow my finger got between the window and the window frame and the window dropped on my digit, trapping it.  Fortunately Jim was standing right there, with me screaming from the pain, and got the window open.  We both thought I had lost the tip of my finger.  Fortunately, I did not, and after an hour or two it quit hurting quite so much.  Here is finger.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, we took several bags of trash to the dumpster.  There is a concrete curb on the road that is flush with the ground beside it, except when there is a eight inch depression.  I didn't see it, my right foot rolled off and I dropped like a stone.  My left side took the brunt of it, because I landed on that side.  It's still fairly sore.  

In news of the good, we have internet, the modem arrived before we did.  It's DSL, there is no cable in the park.  Speeds are pretty good.  We actually got the TV to see the modem, so at least we have Amazon prime available.  Unfortunately, we can't make subtitles work, I do not know why.  The Firestick arrived today, so the two septuagenarians will now try to enter this decade and learn how to stream content.  I really think we need a visit from a 15 year old to do this for us.

Part of the last two days have been spent winnowing out the previous owners' stuff in the kitchen.  With the exception of one drawer, that part is over.  We're still working on the correct setting for the refrigerator, thus far the half and half has been frozen solid for two days, as well as a box of spring mix and a head of lettuce.  Patience will be required as we keep turning the dial down and reach the happy medium of not freezing the vegetables and keeping the milk cold enough.

It appears that Ohio has voted against the abortion ban, despite the best efforts of the GOP.  They're a bunch of lunatics.

That's it!  That's all I've got.

Kingman to Tucson, Arizona

We are here.  We are exhausted.  This has been so much harder than I thought it would be.  There are still four garbage bags of bike clothes and regular clothes to be wedged into drawers.  In news of the good, the air conditioner came on after sulking for a bit.  It was 92F today.

This is what it looks like in the Arizona room.  An Arizona room is when they take a single wide park model and add on to it. 

Tomorrow will be spent wedging more stuff into a small space.  We're happy to be here. 

Ely to Kingman, AZ

We are staying at the Hampton Inn in Kingman.  They do not levy a (refundable) charge in case you smoke or vape in your room.  Currently there is a citizen with a bull horn down on the street somewhere.  Jim thinks he's talking about Palestine and Israel, but we can't hear him well enough to determine which side he's on.  It's an interesting choice of activity in a place that is as red as this one is.

We read on Restoration Cowboy that US93 from Las Vegas to Kingman was so rough that the hinges on their toy hauler were broken.  Normally we would go that way, but today we took US95 out of Las Vegas, down to NV163 and then to AZ68E to US93 just shy of Kingman.  That route was way more better.  The great percentage was four divided lanes (not limited access) and the road surface was good.  For future reference here is a map snippet.  It's a little bit longer than US93, but the roads are good.  They did get a little lumpy just past Golden Valley, but not too bad.  Once we hit US93 the road surface went to heck in a hand basket.

This is south of Ely.  It's scenic.

We stopped in Pioche, NV for gas.  It's a former mining town built on the side of a hill.  It reminds me of Jerome, but without the tourists.  I was driving after leaving the gas station so I failed to get a photo of the house covered in Trump flags and posters, and an out building with a banner proclaiming "No More Bullshit."  It's a red part of the state.  This is the downtown.  There is a good wiki, which can be found here.

A mine head from back in the day.  Silver was mined there. There was money to be made in mining.

Heading further south.  This and the Joshua Trees were on US93 out of Ely, before we hit Las Vegas.

These are Joshua Trees.  This batch looked really happy, there were many baby trees, so I guess life has been good to them.

Now we are on NV163, south of Las Vegas.  It's a pretty drive.  There is a fair amount of up down on NV163 as well as AZ68E.

So, how is the Hampton Inn?  It's ok.  It's old, and hasn't had much done to the rooms.  The beds are not great, not terrible.  They could be better.  There is too much scent in the rooms, it's irritating my eyes.  There is parking available for vehicles towing trailers, that's why we're here, for the parking lot. The free internet is really slow, uploading a photo takes time.  We would probably come back here if we do this route again. 

That's it!  That's all I have to say about today.

Caldwell to Ely, Nevada

Today was a loooong day in the car.  Southern Idaho and northern Nevada have to be one of the most unattractive places anywhere.  The day started off like this.  It did clear up earlier than yesterday.

This is what there was to look at most of the day.  Jim and I are thinking that maybe we don't like this route.  It's really boring, and there is a long stretch on 93 that is two lanes.  The road surface is good, but there are a lot of trucks, many miles of no cell service, and you must plan ahead about personal liquid consumption and fuel status.  I think the way we went last year was more scenic, so perhaps we'll go back to that.

There was some scenic beauty in the form of low mountains, or tall hills.

We're in a Holiday Inn Express and Suites.  It's fairly new.  They've switched to the bulk dispensers of soap, body wash and shampoo, it's the Dove brand and it is so scented as to be unusable.  Most hotel toiletries are bad, but this takes it to a new level.  What particularly pisses me off is that they slap a $250 charge on your credit card at check in so that if you smoke or vape, or damage anything in the room they can keep the money.  Damage is a pretty vague term.  The coffee pot in the room this morning didn't work, did we "damage' it?  Their withholding was $100 which is bad enough, but $250 feels like usury. House keeping decides if there were damages.  I don't like this. 

Here is the view from the room.  Does it not look cold and bleak out there?

Linda Sue asked in yesterday's comments how long we thought we could do this.  I think until the inevitable health calamity side lines one or both of us.  My bigger question is how long will we be willing to make this drive?  This year's route is visually desiccated with long days.  We could do shorter days, but that adds a hotel stay and three extra meals on the road, or we could go via Missoula, which provides more things to look at, but that's four hotel days.  I'm not opposed to buying a vehicle and leaving it in Tucson and flying down, but there are the issues of keeping the pack rats out of the engine if it's in the carport, or keeping the battery charged if it's in an enclosed storage unit.  It would be cheaper and less taxing to UPS our things to the park model and fly down.  I'm weighing the risks involved of being in an airport and then on a plane vs. being in a hotel.  It really is always something.

Here is humor. Dean Phillips is trying to primary President Biden.  It's an odd thing to primary a sitting president.  Rick Wilson has thoughts.

 

That's it!  That's all I've got.

Spokane to Caldwell, Idaho

Today started out raining.  Then the fog moved in for several hours of driving.  It wasn't really clear all day.  We saw this a lot.

It's a hilly route.  The big trucks are supposed to stay in the right two lanes of the climbs, but often they do not.  Then all the cars get stuck behind a truck whose driver thinks he has more horsepower than he does.  This was a big thing being driven up a hill.  No idea what it might be.

 There was a brief sun break along the way.

As we were coming in to Ontario, Oregon, we saw a Love's that has an attached Subway.  It was about 20 miles from the hotel.  So we thought, cool, we'll get gas and dinner.  Sadly, this was not to be.  The entire parking lot was full of fire trucks, the road in was closed by the police.  I have never seen such a response to anything.  Unfortunately I was driving and missed the shot of the parking lot.  Anyway, there was a tanker fire.  If you look at where the arrow is pointing, that's a very tall ladder putting water on the tanker.  There is another one just like it 180 degrees out, also putting water on the truck.  We don't know what liquid was in the tank, and the news does not know, either.

Dinner was obtained from a different Subway, and we'll get gas in the morning.

We're at the Best Western in Caldwell.  It's old, but has had some updating.  Oddly enough the floors in the room and bathroom are not carpet.  I think they're laminate.  Probably easier to keep clean than carpet.  The mattresses are new, and aren't terrible, neither are the pillows.  The down side is that we're close to a train track and the trains seem to like blowing their horns, a lot.  There is a lot of traffic noise, with sirens.  So, I don't know if we would come back here, either.  La Quinta is looking better to me than it did.  It was much quieter than it is here.  The internet is pretty good.  Note to self, check out the location of rail lines before booking a hotel.

Tomorrow we are up and out to Ely, Nevada, yet another garden spot in these United States.

Packing and Leaving

Ho Hum.  Packing is tedious.  Yesterday we went to pick up the cargo trailer, at the location to which they told us to go.  Nope!  The previous renter did not return it.  It would have been nice to have gotten a phone call to that effect, and the location of an alternate trailer, but no.  There was exactly one trailer available in the Spokane metro area, 15 miles in the opposite direction that we had already driven.  I called to confirm it was actually there, and the nice lady said it was, but that it had been returned marked stolen and she wasn't sure she could rent it to us.  Upon further investigation, she discovered it had been marked not stolen and so we could come and get it.  That ate up the entire morning.  Drive downtown, and then drive out into the hinterlands.

A key learning here is don't leave on a month end.  There's too much pressure on rental equipment.

Packing the bikes was about as bad as I thought it would be.  The bike rack had to be restrained in the trailer, and the bikes needed to be restrained from violent side to side motion.  Things were easier when we had a rack that fit tightly in the bed of the pickup truck.  It ended up looking like this.

The sarcophagus in all of its glory.  Most of this stuff will not be coming back.  Maybe all of it will not come back.  That also went in the trailer.  We had to unload the box in the house, take the box out, and then wedge it all back in to the box.

This is the size of the box, 100 feet of deer netting came in it from Amazon.  We've wrapped the arbovitae to keep the deer from eating them.  Last year was an extraordinarily cold and snowy year, the deer generally don't eat them.  However, I want those trees to survive and look better than they do, so they're wrapped.  Jim is standing by the box to provide perspective on how big it is.

We have another fungus in the side yard.  This is growing on the stump of what used to be a pear tree.  It's pretty cool looking.

Apropos of nothing, when we lived in Tucson, we put bagged trash out in the street, and the truck would come by with a man hanging off the back, who would jump down and pick up the bags.  It was kind of great, you could put just about anything there, and a lot of it, and they'd take it away.  Their major ask was that there were no sharp things that would cut their hands, like palm fronds.  Those, we boxed.  Anyway, trash is different here.  These trucks are so interesting to me, the hydraulics involved are fearsome.  Because there are bins that the trucks are designed to pick up, when they're full you have to stop putting stuff out.

Halloween was last night.  We got the most people between 7:00 and 7:30.  As always, we had too much candy.  

We're leaving for Tucson in the morning.  Tonight the atmospheric river will be arriving from the south west.  It will bring warmer temperatures and much water.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes to drive out of it.