May 2008 Journal

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May 11 ^th 2008

This will be a very quick journal entry as I am leaving for the airport in about 10 minutes to fly home. My son Keith is sick and I need to check on him!

We’ve been in Las Vegas for the past few days staying at Outdoor Resorts which is a wonderful, luxurious RV Resort.  So far, we’ve seen three shows, Cirque’s show “KA”, The Blue Man Group, and Defending the Caveman which is highly recommended for all couples to see. We did some gambling and won a little and I went on a huge shopping spree.

One afternoon we went out to the Red Rock Canyon which is gorgeous beyond belief. I’ll let the pictures speak although they won’t be posted until I get back to Vegas mid-week. Right now, we are staying at Lake Mead. It’s a beautiful campsite with incredible views of the lake and surrounding mountains. We had planned a kayak trip down the Colorado River but that will get put on hold till I return.

My flight is scheduled to come back here to Vegas on Wednesday night, just in time to meet my son Nick and his girlfriend Danielle who are coming in for a week. We hope to see Bryce, Zion and Moab while they are here. It’s climbing country and they will be looking for some good climbing while they are here.

Right now, I am off to the airport. Will update you all soon. Call me on my cell if you need me!!!

May 6 ^th 2008

We visited my cousins Dotty and Rod in Mesa Arizona last week. Mesa is just east of Phoenix. They have a beautiful house out in the desert and the best thing is that they have room for our RV in their driveway, and even hookups. Our stay was very relaxing! Dotty and I went shopping one day and another day we went to the salon. It felt so good to be in the mall and especially good to have another woman with me!

While we were out, the guys took Rods quads out in the desert for a little fun and Dan even got in some mountain bike and fishing time. Rod taught Dan to play Cribbage and gave us one of his extra boards and we taught Dotty and Rod how to play Mexican Train Dominoes (even thought we messed up on the scoring). They also gave us their extra set of Dominoes too. Hopefully we can find someone to play with us. We’ve really grown to like Dominoes!

My cousin Linda came in town on Wednesday night and we decided to stay all day Thursday so I could visit with Linda. Dotty cooked all day and made us a great breakfast and dinner. We even got some time to sit out in the sun! It was great to see Linda as I haven’t seen her since Christmas.

We left Mesa on Friday afternoon and had one more thing to see before leaving town. I don’t know how many of you have heard about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Tent City” Prison but it’s worth looking up if you haven’t heard of it (search “Sheriff Arpaio’s Tent City AZ”). It’s an outdoor ten city that houses a few thousand inmates out here in the desert. It was built because it was a cheap way to handle overcrowding in the regular prison adjacent to it. Joe Arpaio has seriously cut the cost of housing prisoners in his no frills way. The prisoners all have to live outside (no AC) in these army tents all year long. He say’s “our military has to live in hotter conditions in Iraq and they haven’t committed any crimes”! He’s cut food costs down to something like 40 cents and will only let them watch Disney Channel and The Weather Channel on TV(so they can see how hot it will be that day). There’s no smoking or alcohol and tons of other rules. They even have to wear pink boxers, t-shirts and socks because he got them at the lowest price! He has a very low return rate at his prison because of how tough it is.

I heard about the prison years ago and always wanted to see it for myself so I drove over there on the way out of town. There wasn’t too much to see because most of the tents are in the back of the regular prison and the fencing is mostly covered with camouflage netting, but I did see a bit and got one picture that if you look closely you can at least see one tent.

From there, we headed west to Lake Havasu which is on the border of Arizona and California. The desert is very hot and barren out here. It’s a far cry from the blooming lush desert outside of Tuscon and Phoenix. There’s nothing but brown, brown, brown until you get to the Colorado River and then it’s like looking at a mirage. The river is beautiful, turquoise blue and cuts a wide swath through the brown mountains. Lake Havasu was built by damming up the Colorado and a huge town sprung up because of the lake. It seems like everyone has a boat and most of them are very high priced race boats. I have never seen so many expensive race boats in my life!

Our campground is on the only island on the lake and to get there you have to cross the London Bridge and yes, it is the original London Bridge brought over from England and reassembled here in 1971 at Lake Havasu. It’s a pretty bridge and a whole social area has developed at its footings. It crosses a canal that runs between the mainland and the island and there are tons of shops, restaurants and bars. There are boats everywhere in the canal with people partying; they are docked one after another all along the canal. It’s a huge social area, especially on weekends when everyone and their mother comes out to play! Our campsite overlooks the lake with beautiful views!

Two days ago we rented a boat and had a good time but ended up with engine trouble and had to get towed back to the marina. We started out all set for a nice day. The first thing we did is head north out of the lake and into the Colorado River. The river was so beautiful, there were steep mountains and sand dunes along the sides and it was so picturesque with the beautiful clear turquoise water. There were so many boats everywhere.

We drove all the way up, well over an hour, to the Topock Gorge. From there, we decided to shut off the engine and drift down river while Danny fished. Everything was nice until we saw we were getting close to the rocky wall and decided to start up and move away from the wall a bit. We’ll, the engine didn’t start and we had a mad rush getting an oar out and pushing ourselves off the wall before we crashed. We made it back into the channel and anchored for a bit while Dan played with the engine and tried to get it started. Dan tried everything but it just wouldn’t fire (probably a clogged fuel line or something preventing the boat from getting fuel).

After about an hour of trying to start the engine and finally giving up we decided we would need to get some help but the problem we had was that there was no cell service up in the gorge. Once again we were in for an adventure! We flagged some boats down and asked them to call for help for us when they got into a service area. We gave our information to at least five different boats hoping that one of them would come through and call for us. Luckily, one did come through and they even drove back up to let us know that help was on the way. Of course it took over an hour for a tow boat to arrive and then almost another two hours to get towed back. The marina ended up giving us our money back and the day wasn’t totally shot as we did get to hang out on the boat in the gorgeous gorge. While waiting for our rescue we had lunch, layed in the sun and Dan did some fishing. It wasn’t a total bomb of a day but certainly could have been better!

Today we rented another boat and decided to try it again. This time all went well! We spent the whole day cruising around on the lake. We saw quite a few Burrows today. They run wild in this area and have little paths all over the mountains. We even saw a small baby with its mother. I had hoped to see some Big Horn Sheep but we didn’t. One area we stopped by had Indian petroglyphs drawn on the rocks. The area is called Hum-Me-Chump (meaning: the rock where the river once churned to make this place inaccessible to the living) and it’s considered sacred ground to the Mojave Indians. Another cove we explored had Swallows busy building mud nests low down on the cliffs beside the river. They were constantly flying back and forth from the riverbanks to get mud to build their nests. Lake Havasu also has lots of Grebes. We saw the Western Grebe and Eared Grebe. Grebes are similar to Loons and swim underwater hunting for fish. It’s so nice seeing so many new birds we have never even heard of!

Tomorrow we are going to head to Las Vegas and spend a few days there before moving on. The big question after Vegas is: Do we head to California or to Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion first? I guess we’ll figure it out in a day or so. For now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy a movie.

Past Journals

July 2011

June 2011

September 2010

May 2008

April 2008

March 2008

February 2008

December 2007

November 2007

October 2007

September 2007

August 2007

July 2007