Thursday, November 14, 2013 (Las Vegas, NV)

This morning we packed up and left Pahrump. We really enjoyed our stay and you sure couldn’t beat the price of $12/day and all the amenities that were available. I would definitely come back again some day.

We had a short drive today, just 52 miles so we were at the Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort by noon. This is a huge RV resort with over 700 sites, this is the biggest park we’ve stayed in yet.

After we got set up and had a bite to eat we decided to head to the pool. The pool area was very nice. They have a family pool and an adult only pool as well as a spa. The family pool isn’t heated this time of year but the adult pool is. It was actually pretty cool out as it had clouded up a bit and there were lots of palm trees around the pool so there wasn’t a lot of sun around the pool this time of year. It was so cool out, I didn’t even try to get in the pool and didn’t end up staying out for very long at all. I guess I’ll have more opportunities for sunning myself by a pool in the near future, so I wasn’t too disappointed.

This is the family pool, but is currently not being heated for the winter months

This is the adult pool which is heated

We took a nice long walk around the park with Gracie and yes it is quite large. They have some interesting rv’s parked here.  They have some pretty fancy ones and some pretty old ones.  We are seeing quite a few different license plates from a variety of states, most notably the states that have a cold winter and quite a few Canadian plates. Some people will winter here in the park and for some like us it is just a stopping point before heading farther south.

We had a nice dinner at our rig and had an early night.  The sunset this evening was beautiful.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

Today we woke up to sunshine and it was suppose to be one of the warmest days of the week. We did our early morning workout/jog routine and then came back and got ready for the day.

After our breakfast, I took Gracie for a walk around the rv park.  Yesterday evening when walking around the rv park, I noticed a very distinctive truck/boat/rv setup.  For the last year I have been reading a full time rving blog by a couple from Canada that have one of those custom toy hauler trucks with a boat carrier on top and a Montana 5^th wheel and there it was sitting in our park. So during our walk which just happened to take me by their rv site, I noticed they were sitting outside.  Do I go up and introduce myself or do I just walk on, after a moment's hesitation I decided, what the heck, so I went up and introduced myself.  Diane and Steve were very friendly and it was interesting to talk to them in person after reading about their adventures over the last year.  I was glad that I decided to go and introduce myself.   

After a bit of lunch, Rich and I headed to the pool to hang out for a while, it was such a beautiful day. The pool was wonderful, but a little cool once you got out of the water until the sun got you dried off again. A little reading, a little swimming, my kind of afternoon by the pool.

After we got cleaned up, we went and visited the winery again, we are planning a visit with a former co-worker this weekend and wanted to pick up a bottle of wine to take. We finally decided on a Burgandy, it was not your typical Burgandy, it was nice and light with just a hint of sweetness, yummy I hope they like it.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

Today after our morning workout/jog routine and breakfast we pretty much just spent the day relaxing. Today has been the cloudiest we’ve experienced here in Pahrump, but it was still warm enough to sit outside and read. We did run a couple errands in the afternoon. The clouds made for an amazing sunset this evening. The pictures don’t do it justice, so just imagine the colors so much brighter and bigger.

 

Monday, November 11, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

Happy Veterans Day and a big thank you to all those who have served in our countries military branches.

The plan today was to take a tour of Death Valley. So after our workout and breakfast we headed out without Gracie. That is one thing traveling with a pet, when to take them or when to leave them at home. Since our truck break in experience this summer, we are not comfortable leaving Gracie in the truck and because Death Valley doesn’t allow pets on the trails, we decided to leave her home.

Death Valley has a lot more mountains surrounding it than we imagined and parts of it are so very desolate with no foliage of any type. It has it’s own unique beauty that’s for sure. These are the stops we made on our tour today:

Twenty Mule Team Canyon

20 Mule Canyon

I'm pointing to Desert Holly, it blends into the ground so you can hardly see it

The lack of vegetation was amazing, very desolate area

 Zabriskie Point

Views at Zabrinski Point

Furnance Creek Visitors Center (we didn't take any pictures there),
Harmony Borax Works

These were the two wagons and water wagon that a team of 18 mules and 2 horses would pull loaded with borax

Artists Palette Drive

You can start to see the colors in the middle hills

More colors starting to show

Amazing variety of colors in the soil

Natural Bridge

and Badwater, the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below sea level

Leaving Badwater these two coyotes crossed our path, we stopped the truck to take the picture and they didn't even run off, they didn't appear frightened of humans at all.

As it was, we wished we had brought Gracie so we wouldn’t have had to rush through the last part of our tour, oh well that’s hindsight. We had an amazing day seeing some amazing sights. It is amazing to me that our Creator God has the imagination to make so many different kinds of landscapes.

The one thing we forgot to take into account in planning our tour was that today was Veterans Day and the park probably had more people touring than a normal Monday, but even at that the park didn’t feel crowded. Nothing like the crowds we saw at Yellowstone National Park. One perk today was that it was a free park day, so there was no entrance fee into the park.

I would definitely go back to Death Valley, the one thing we didn’t get to see was Scotty’s castle which is in the northern part of the park – it was just too far and too much to try to cram into one short day. I guess that will be for next time.

Sunday, November 10, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

We took a day off from our work out routine and slept in a little bit. After breakfast we headed to a local church, Faith Fellowship. They were a very friendly congregation and we enjoyed the service and the pastor’s message.

After church we pretty much just relaxed the rest of the day with a walk and some reading time. A very relaxing day.

Saturday, November 9, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

We again got up early and did our workout/jog routine. We had breakfast at home; no free waffles today and then spent some time online researching RV parks for our next stop.

We went for a walk and went into inquire about the winery tours and found out one was scheduled in the next half-hour. So we hung out in the gift shop and did their free wine tasting while we waited. The tour was very interesting, much more than I imagined. You have to grow grapes differently here because of the hot sun in the summer, so they have a lot more vines and foliage. The vineyard changed ownership twice since it was established in the 1990’s and the first commercial wine wasn’t made until around 2005 and not released until I think it was 2008? They don't grown all the grapes for their wines here in at the winery, only two varieties; the rest they get from other small vineyards in Nevada and California.  They are a very small winery, so their processes are mostly done by hand. We got to see where they actually make the wine and how they bottle and label it by hand. My mom and dad made wine and so it was very interesting for me to see how they did it here at a winery.

One section of the vineyard

In the afternoon we decided to take a bike ride with Gracie around the local neighborhood. As you can imagine, the architecture is much different here than we are used to in Bend so it was fun to check out the neighborhoods. We did run across this pomegranate tree in someone’s side yard. I’m surprised we didn’t see more fruit trees.

Ripe pomegranate tree

Friday, November 8, 2013 (Pahrump, NV)

We woke up early and took advantage of the gym on site here to get back into our workout/jog routine. It isn’t a huge gym, but it gets the job done.

After our workout we went and partook of the free waffle breakfast that they offer here at the resort. We got to chat with a couple from Canada that are headed to Mesa for the winter. They gave us some information on the resort that they stay at which we will have to check out. After breakfast we took advantage of the RV wash bay they have here to wash the truck which still had remnants of "mag" from our trip over the Santiam Pass in Oregon on our way to Bend last week.

We took some time in the afternoon to check out some of the local RV parks in the area. Some were pretty nice and some were just OK, my big question was whether or not their pool was heated yet. A couple were and a couple weren’t. Apparently with the nights cooling down, they turn off the pool heaters. We did see two nice resorts we would check out if we stayed here again – Lakeside RV Resort and Treasure RV Resort. I think of the two, we would opt for the Treasure Resort.

 They have a Dairy Queen in town, so of course we had to stop for a blizzard. The temperature yesterday and today was in the 70’s – perfect weather. You can tell the tourists from the locals because the tourists are in shorts and tee shirts and the locals have jackets and long pants on. I guess with the temps getting around 120 degrees in the summer here, that 70 degrees would feel rather cool.