Thursday, November 28, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

Happy Thanksgiving

Doesn't turkey smell good while it's cooking?  Rich cooks the turkey in our family and he does a very fine job.  The morning started out with yummy smells of turkey cooking.  We were expecting Taylor and Jayden, his little boy somewhere around 11:00 a.m.  They are coming up from Surprise, AZ which is around 3 hours away.

We spent the morning getting the rest of our Thanksgiving dinner prepared, the fruit salad made, the potato's peeled, the yams peeled, the rolls were rising, I think we are ready.

Taylor and Jayden arrived around 11:30, we are so glad they made the trip to spend the day with us.  We had never met Jayden before, he's 2.5 and what a cutie, just like his dad.

Taylor & Jayden

Little Jayden was a little shy at first but soon warmed up and was showing off his boundless energy.  Where do little kids get all that energy?  He was a very well behaved little boy - good job Taylor!

We had a very nice dinner, picnic style sitting outside in the nice warm temps, I think it got to 75 degrees today.  That is one thing we realized, we are a little short of dining room seating in the 5er since we only have two chairs but it was a perfect day to eat outdoors.

After our dinner, we took a little walk around the park to work off our dinner so we could make room for pumpkin pie.  Jayden was learning to ride his tricycle, he liked it when we went down hill and he didn't have to pedal.  He's a typical little boy, pretty rough and tumble, he took a spill or two but it didn't even phase him or slow him down.  While we were walking, we tried to connect up with my mom and my brothers and their families via Facetime, it was a little jerky and sometimes hard to hear, but we did get to say hi to everyone.

Jayden loves rocks, so had lots of fun playing in these

We had an excellent visit and it was so good getting caught up on Taylor's life.  He sounds like a very mature young man and is very involved in his sons life.  He's a good dad and I'm proud of him and I'm glad they made the long drive to see us.  We hope to spend more time together while we are here this winter.

Monday - Wednesday, November 25-27, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

Monday

Well we made a decision - we have decided that based on feedback we've gotten about Yuma and the Mesa area where we were thinking about spending time this winter, we've decided to stay in Lake Havasu City for the winter.  This park is very nice and the people are all so friendly and apparently there is lots to do in this area, so we decided, what the heck, we can always take day trips to Yuma and Mesa and check them out and see if they would be areas we would be interested in the future.  We have been doing lots of walks through the park checking out the lots for rent and we found one that is available.  We met with the owner this morning and got all the details worked out.  It feels good to have made a decision.

One thing that we were told we needed to do was to take the ferry across the lake.  There is a Indian casino with a restaurant so we decided today was the day for the ferry ride and lunch.  

Brand new ferry, very nice

After our lunch and ferry ride back we decided to take a walk along the canal down by the London Bridge and walk off some of our lunch.  It was about a mile walk along the canal to this very nice Rotary park.  Apparently when the weather is nice people line the canal with their pontoon boats and spend the day hanging out.  It looks like a nice place to do that.

beach along Lake Havasu

Tuesday

Was a pretty kick back day, we didn't do much to report. 

Wednesday

Today was the day we were getting ready for Thanksgiving, we have our nephew Taylor and his little boy coming.    We spent most of the day cooking and getting some laundry done.  We were taking a walk around the park and snapped a couple pictures of another amazing sunset.

Friday - Sunday, November 22 - 24, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

Friday

After our morning routine was finished we had decided to do some exploring around town.  Rich was in the mood for pancakes and they have an IHOP in town, so off we went.  We both had a very nice breakfast that included pancakes.  I had some fancy raspberry and white chocolate chip and whip cream pancakes, Rich's were the buttermilk pancakes.  Pretty yummy.  They had a big screen tv in the restaurant and the big news item was all the rain that the area had experienced overnight and that was still forecast for today.  We asked the waitress when it had rained last and she couldn't remember.  Apparently in the summer, they get some pretty heavy gully washers, but this time of year, rain is not the norm and if the news was any indication it was a big deal. 

After breakfast and Not too far from our rv resort  is a new shopping mall that we decided we needed to check out.  They had a couple stores I'd never heard of before, Dillards and Kirkland.  Dillards was a very nice department store along the lines of a Macy's store.  Kirkland was kind of a like a Pier One store, lots of pretty knick knack and fou fou items.  Then there were some of your standard box type stores like Petsmart, Walmart to name a few.  They have a very nice movie theatre and we're told that the movies are $5 and it is never crowded. 

After we came back from our mall exploring, since the weather wasn't great out - it did rain now and then, but nothing like the rain you see in the Willamette Valley, so not sure really what the big deal is, we did a little reading and then another walk around the park.  

After dinner, it was time for a movie and then we called it a night.

Saturday

Again after our  usual morning routine we decided to do some exploring on the other end of town.  Lake Havasu City is a lot bigger than it first appears when you drive through town on hwy 95.  They have a Hastings in town, another store we hadn't heard of, but it is a huge bookstore/movie store.  They sell new and used books/cds/dvd's and some hobby type items.  The movie rental section is huge, it's almost hard to pick out a movie because there are so many options. 

After spending quite a bit of time in Hastings, we drove up one of the main streets in town and it kept going and going and finally looped back around to the highway, it went from stores to residential until you got back to hwy 95, like I said:  "this town is a lot bigger than it appears".

We stopped to do our Thanksgiving grocery shopping and we were amazed at the lack of crowds in the grocery stores.  We kept comparing it to shopping in Bend on a weekend before a holiday and couldn't believe how empty the stores seemed.  I guess all the winter visitors aren't here yet, we are told that January/February/March are the real busy months here. 

We didn't do much else news worthy the rest of the day after our shopping excursion.

Sunday

We had scoped out a church to attend this week called Living Word Family Church, so off we went to attend the 9:00 a.m. service.  When we pulled up, it didn't look too busy, hmmm that's curious, but in we went.  The greeters were very friendly and introduced us to several people and let us know that the adult Sunday school started at 9:00, so that explains the lack of people. 

After church we stopped at the local Starbucks for our traditional after church latte.  We were very happy to see that they have a Starbucks in town.  After our coffee we headed down to check out the "London Bridge".  We had driven over it when we first arrived at our first campground, but we had not gone down and walked around it.  We were waiting for sunny skies which would make for nicer pictures.  The bridge is alot  bigger than both Rich and I imagined and the story is quite interesting.  Click on the link above for the story.   

The bridge is quite large

After our tour, the rest of the afternoon it was warm enough to sit outside and read if you sat in a sheltered spot from the breeze.  My kind of afternoon, a little reading, a little snooze, more reading and visiting with folks walking by. 

Thursday, November 21, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

We woke to partly sunny skies.  We decided to check out their fitness room this morning.  It was pretty nice though the workout equipment was different than we were used to, it was more like hydraulic cylinders and resistance pressure instead of weights.  There were actually a couple guys in there working out this morning. 

After our workout and breakfast, we just kicked back around the 5er.  I spent  several hours working on getting our blog updated, I hate being so far behind.  Rich spent some time in the laundromat doing up a load of sheets. 

The weather was definitely changing as it was getting more and more cloudy and windy as the day went on.  After lunch, we took another several hour walk through the park checking out the different lots.  It takes a long time to walk the park because everyone is so friendly and willing to stop and chat for awhile.  We had Gracie with us and she met several friends along the way.  One little yorkie named Phoebe could have been Gracie's twin, she was very cute.

While we were getting dinner, the sun was going down and we had another pretty sunset.  Also, here is a picture of our site that we didn't get posted yesterday.

After dinner while we were watching a movie, the thunder and lightening came along with several strong gusts of wind that shook the 5er.  Then the rain started, hmmm so they actually do get rain here occasionally.  It didn't seem like it rained all that hard, by bedtime it had stopped.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

Wow, we woke to dark clouds this morning and it actually sprinkled on us as we were coming back from our morning jog.  It didn't even sprinkle enough to really wet the ground and then it was over.  By 11:00 a.m.  the sun was back out shining. 

We can't check into our site at Havasu RV Resort until 1:00 p.m., they were very specific about that when we called to make our reservation.   This has been the first place we've been to in our travels that has not let us check in early.  The check out time here at Crazy Horse was noon, so we took our time this morning and didn't start our pack up mode until around 11:00 a.m.  We pulled out of our site shortly after noon and headed to the dump station.  This is only the second time in our travels that we've had to use a dump station.  We've been pretty spoiled with staying at parks with full hookups. 

By the time we got dumped and to Havasu RV Resort, we had about 15 minutes to wait, so we pulled over on the side of the road and had a quick sandwich.  We tried not to make eye contact with any drivers that went by because we didn't want them to stop thinking we were having mechanical issues.  It was finally 1:00 p.m. and we could check in. 

We got to our site and got set up.  The sites here are huge and there is lots of space, it is really nice here.  After we got set up we took a walk around the park.  Wow, everyone here is so friendly, you can't walk by but someone stops and chats.  Alot of the sites have casita's on them, some small and some not so small.  Because of all the lengthy chats, it was almost dark before we got back to our 5er, so I didn't get a picture of our site, we'll have to get one tomorrow.  We still are not used to this time change. 

We BBQ'd hamburgers for dinner which were quite yummy.  They have good WIFI here, though it is unsecured, so I spent the rest of the evening working on getting our blog caught up and Rich did some channel surfing and some reading.  Looking forward to doing some more exploring tomorrow. 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

We woke up to sunny skies, looks like it will be a pretty nice day.  We went out and jogged around the park since we didn't have access to a gym.  The lake is very still and is actually much clearer than I anticipated. 

After getting cleaned up and breakfast we decided to check out some of the other RV parks in the area to see if we would like to stick around for awhile.  Lake Havasu City is a pretty nice area.

The first park we went to was called Havasu RV Resort and is an owner owned park.  Wow, it was very nice and we really liked the feel of the park, it is very clean and well kept though it is not at all near the water.  The more we walked around Crazy Horse Campground this morning, the less we liked it.  It was rather dirty and not well kept at all and sometimes the air smelled bad.  It is nice being next to the water which is about it's only redeeming feature in our book.

We went and checked out a couple more parks in the area, they were huge and we just didn't like them.  So we made the call to Havasu RV Resort and made a reservation for a week starting tomorrow. 

We made a grocery run and then back to the 5er for late lunch.  This time change has our schedules all messed up.  The rest of the afternoon we spent reading and relaxing.  We had another nice sunset.

Monday, November 18, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

We woke to sunny skies. We slept in a bit so decided to skip our workout routine today. The morning got off to a bit of a rocky start with Rich calling Verizon to increase our data usage as we were notified we were close to exceeding our data for the month. Long story short, after two lengthy phone calls with Verizon, we found out that because we purchased our new "jet pack hotspot" before our monthly billing cycle was finished, that somehow Verizon prorated our data usage and we had gone over and were going to be penalized for the month even though Rich had called and increased our data for the month. None of it made much sense and it was very frustrating, so we’ll have to see what our bill looks like next month, ugh. So it looks like I won’t be posting to the blog until after the 21^st.

So after our breakfast, we got into the pack up mode. For some reason, we didn’t get on the road until around 11:00 a.m., not sure what took up the extra time this morning as we usually are leaving around 10:30 on our travel days. Our destination is Lake Havasu City which is around 160 miles and about 3 hours travel time. We don’t have reservations anywhere but are headed to Lake Havasu State Park.  This is unusual for us, we'll have to see how this works out.

We had an uneventful drive except the banks power monitor showed a check engine light. Hmmm, we’ll have to get that checked out, this is different than the check engine light the truck showed.

We arrived in Lake Havasu City around 2:00 but it was really 3:00 because of the time change. We were following our "trusty" GPS and it took us out of town and turning on this road with no State Park signs, yikes, not getting a very good feeling about this. We saw a police officer sitting alongside the road, so stopped and asked him where the State Park was and yep, we are not at all in the right location it is back in town a couple miles. Well at least the road that the GPS had us on looped back to the highway so we didn’t end up getting stuck anywhere. Getting stuck with no place to turn around is always a concern when travelling with the 5er.

We finally found the state park and drove around and looked at the vacant sites available and weren’t impressed at all. The park looked like it had been torn up and was still under construction. They had just added electrical hookups to all the sites this summer so maybe that was part of the reason. There wasn’t water or sewer at the sites, and if you chose a water site you had to add on an extra $5 which made the total $35/night. Hmmm, wonder how much a rv park would cost. So we made a quick call and found a park just down the road where we could have a pull through site on the water with electric/water connections for $40/night. We’ll take it. We have totally gone over our budget this month in our campground category, we’ll have to make it up in another category.

So we found the Crazy Horse Campground and got checked in and headed to our site. It was pretty tight pulling into it and the sand looked a little scary at first, but we made it in and the 5er didn’t sink in, so we are good to go. The site is much nicer than the state park so I’m glad we made the change.

By the time we got everything all set up, it was pushing 5:00 p.m. and the sun was going down.

We did take time for a quick walk around the lower part of the campground. We ran into a lady walking her dog and stopped to chat and she and her husband have been coming to the park for the last 7 years and they stay until April. The monthly rate is pretty reasonable and includes two gray/black tank pump outs a week.   Not too sure about how good that would be on your tank systems to have them pumped out so much, you'd have to watch the company very carefully to make sure they didn't break anything.

After a quick and easy dinner, we just relaxed the rest of the evening. Tomorrow we’ll go exploring the rest of the park and the town.
　
　
　
　

Sunday, November 17, 2013 (Las Vegas, NV)

We woke to blue skies and sunshine again today, I’m loving it. We went and did our workout at the gym and actually had two other people using the gym with us this morning. As we were leaving, one of the gentlman made a comment about the marathon in town today…..hmmm that makes sense on why we’ve seen some signs along the strip talking about traffic delays today.  It also might account for all the crowds we saw along the strip yesterday.  We got back to the 5er and did a little more research on the marathon and found out it doesn’t start until 4:30 this afternoon and part of the route is down Las Vegas Blvd. Good, it shouldn’t interfere with our plans to visit the Valley of Fire State Park today.

After breakfast, instead of attending a local church, we decided to check out Westside’s online service that we heard about when we were visiting a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty cool to be able to attend our home church online. I think we mostly will still try and visit local churches in the area we are visiting, but it will be a nice option if we can’t find one we’d like to try.

We got on the road about 11:30 and headed north to our destination which was approximately 40 miles away. It was a beautiful day for an adventure, though it was a bit hazy, maybe from all the wind yesterday? The scenery north of Las Vegas is pretty boring and not all that scenic, lots of quarries and power lines, so it was nice to leave the freeway and head toward the state park.

We had a delightful day taking in the sights and taking a couple scenic hikes. Luckily we could take Gracie on these hikes, so she got to get out and get some exercise also. We are very lucky that she likes to hike with us since she is so small, but she is quite the trooper and loves to go. Some of the areas we stopped at were the:

Beehives which are unusual sandstone formations weathered by the eroding forces of wind and water.

The Visitor’s Center had the usual displays and information on the park. Mouse’s Tank which was a ½ mile round trip hike. Mouse’s tank is a natural basin in the rock where water collects after rainfalls, sometimes remaining for months. There are also numerous examples of prehistoric petroglyphs.

Look at that blue sky and the red rock - beautiful

The sand was pink



first sightings of the petroglyphs



A close up of a section of petroglyphs

The end of the trail

The trough of water at the end of the trail - the story goes that a renegade hid out from the law for months in this area and survived using the water that had collected in this trough.  Do you see the heart shape???

Some more of the interesting rock formations and there was a bit more vegetation growing in this area

Rainbow Vista where we just stopped to take some photos.

The colors were much more vibrant in person

White Domes are sandstone formations with brilliant contrasting colors and a 1.25 scenic trail.

Beautiful white colored rock, we are now walking on white sand

Beautiful contrasting rock colors

More beautiful contrasting rock colors

A slot canyon we walked through

We stopped at Atlati Rock and saw some more ancient Indian rock art

more petroglyphs, if you look close you can also see some graffitti which is too bad, now they have a plastic shield over the rock

Stairs and viewing platform to get to Atlati Rock and the petroglyphs

and then Arch Rock.

The arch is in the center, it kind of blends in with the other rocks

By this time we were losing the sun, so decided it was time to head back home to our rv.

What a great way to spend the day with beautiful scenery and some nice hiking. I’m glad we made the trip. Driving back through Las Vegas, we saw tons of traffic backed up on the streets they had closed for the marathon, good thing we didn’t have to go down or across Las Vegas Blvd to get home. I feel sorry for all those people stuck in their cars for who knows how long….yuck.

We had an easy dinner, talked to my mom on the phone and did some laundry and called it a day. We are heading for Lake Havasu City in the morning.

Saturday, November 16, 2013 (Las Vegas, NV)

After our regular morning routine and breakfast we were headed for the Las Vegas strip, specifically the Stratosphere and the Big Shot thrill ride.

Heading toward the Stratosphere, tall tower in the far distance

The Stratosphere had America’s tallest free standing observation tower at 1,149 ft, I’m told now that the new twin towers in New York are higher. Anyway, it’s very very tall. We rode the elevator up to the 108 floor. Boy when you first step out of that elevator and walk to the edge, it gave me a bit of vertigo. I had to hang back for awhile until I got adjusted to being that high. They have several thrill rides, but one of them was closed due to the wind today. Did I forget to mention that it was very windy out today?

One of the rides at a bargain price of $110 was called Skyfall. They dress you up in a jump suit and harness and attach you to a wire and you jump off the side of the building and free fall to the landing spot on the ground. That’s definitely not something I would want to try, no sir.

Skyfall - see the cables along side the tower, it's a long way up....

view looking down, if you look close you can see the target (it's a blue speck) at the base of the tower, it made me woozy just looking through the glass window

 

If you look in the toward the top of the picture in the center you can see a woman that just jumped......and no it wasn't me.  =)

Here is another view from the bottom of another jumper almost ready to land

It took me a while to get my courage up to just try the Big Shot, which shoots you up at almost 4g’s and then drops you back down again and it does this four times (I was counting) at varying heights. There are not good words to explain the ride and the feeling, except when you go up you leave your stomach on the ground and when you go down you leave your head in the clouds...... you’ll just have to try the ride when you are next time in Las Vegas.

Bigshot tower

Bigshot seats you are strapped into and let me tell you, you hold on for dear life.....

The view from the top of the Stratosphere is amazing, I can only imagine what it must look like at night with all the lights. I would definitely come back to the observation tower, but I don’t think I have to ride the Big Shot again, I think I’ll leave it at once is enough but I am glad I experienced it.

After our adventure at the Stratosphere, we drove back down the strip toward our rv park. It was amazing how many people were out and about today. I can’t imagine how much money all these casinos cost to build and how much money they must bring in a day, it’s mind boggling.

Not a good picture, but if you look you can see the line of people waiting to get their pictures taken in front of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign

Crowds of people at an outdoor restaurant

More crowds walking the streets

We got back to the rv and took Gracie for a nice long walk before we got ready to go meet up with Brian and Kathy Burleigh. Rich and I worked with Brian at ODOT and Brian has since retired and moved to North Las Vegas. Brian and Kathy live in a gated community called "Ardiente". We got to the community gatehouse and checked in with the attendant and got our guest pass. Don’t try to pay Brian and Kathy a surprise visit because you won’t make it past the attendant unless Brian or Kathy have called and told them you were coming.

We had a wonderful evening visiting with Brian and Kathy and checking out their new home. They gave us a tour of their home as well as the community clubhouse and grounds. They are beautiful and I see why they chose this community. We had fun catching up on each other’s activities over the last six months or so as well as doing a little reminiscing about our times at ODOT. We had a lovely dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ. The food was really yummy and the company was great. Thanks Brian and Kathy for the fun visit and all the laughs.

Brian & Kathy Burleigh at Famous Dave's