Bouse

OK, today we did NOT travel - other than to move a half mile or so to the permanent spot we'd found last trip.  Last night we pulled up a little short rather than navigate the last ditch in the dark.  This is about as close as Wendy gets to shorts, so you can tell it's warm out:

Why do I like Bouse?  Here's a hint.  This is our camping spot:

And looking 180 degrees from the same spot on top of the rise, here's our nearest neighbours:

Look real close, to the right of centre, just below the gap in the mountain.  If I said we weren't the sociable type would that surprise anyone?

And a couple gratuitous cactus pics to finish off the post.  A Saguaro and a ?Palo Verde? tree being buddies:

and a Barrel cactus momma with 5 babies:

Stay warm, relax, and Happy New Year everybody!

Re-tired!

Or, I could title this one as "headed for Bou-se, only made it out to Needles" for the Three Dog Night fans out there.

When I did my morning walk-around, the outside tire on the driver's side seemed a tad bulgier on the bottom than it should be.  Sure enough, inside tire was flat.  No issue, I have a spare, the weather was warm (well, a little cooler in the morning so I switched back to long pant for the job), and the pavement was new and smooth.  The only annoyance was the 50 mph wind, but it was coming from the other side of the mh so I was in the lee.  Easy-peasy.  Here's the tire in case anyone's wondering why I didn't try to put a plug in.

So, loaded it up in the Jeep and headed south, figuring to get a new tire in Parker on Monday when the shops opened.  After all, this is only the second time I've ever had to use the spare, so what are the odds of having another flat the same day?

Apparently, pretty good.  I wound up missing a turn in Fort Mohave and heading down through California, which isn't a huge deal since it's about the same distance either way.  Anyway, about 6 miles south of Needles we had a significant BANG, and the culprit turned out to be the inside dual on the OTHER side.  We limped it to a wide area to pull off, and Wendy stayed with the mh while I took off back to Needles in the Jeep to try to find a tire shop open on a Sunday with the right size tire.

Long story short, the Gods were smiling and the tire guys at the Needles Shell station were open and doing nothing.  Not only that, but they gave me a pretty good deal on 4 tires (since I now needed two anyways, may as well change all the drive axle.  Proud of me Jack?).  Switched over the one, and I headed back out to change it and bring the motorhome back.  Got back to the Shell about 45 minutes later and they finished changing over all the drive tires.  In the process we found that there really wasn't a decent tire to keep as a spare, so I bought a 5th matching tire for that.  We left Needles about $1400 lighter in the wallet, but overall happy to have new skins all the way round now (steering tires were replaced before the last trip south) and feeling fortunate to have been able to get this all done on a Sunday during the holidays.  We also felt much more fortunate that some other poor soul who rolled his car about 20 miles south of Needles - the ambulance and fire truck went out while we were at the tire shop.  A little perspective is always handy.
Anyway, once we were re-tired in Needles we headed back over to the Arizona side on I-40 to continue to Bouse the "old" way.  Topped up the propane in Parker and made it to Bouse about 6 PM or so.  So our "short day" turned somewhat longer, but everything worked out in the end.

To Laughlin (almost)

Day three of the trip is always the best.  It's the day we drop down into sunny southern Nevada, which means we're safe to take water on board and can maybe change into short pants.  Cedar City and St. George were both cold and snowy so we waited until we dropped down into Mesquite to de-winterize.  7 bucks to dump and take water, not a bad deal.

That's not cotton fields behind the Arizona sign, by the way.  Not to worry, though - this isn't the real Arizona.

After spending some time in Mesquite, we stopped off in Henderson to find a T-Mobile shop and get our internet sorted out.  Then we dawdled down highway 95.  

There's a brand spanky new rest area just ahead of the Laughlin turnoff, so we took advantage of it to spend the night, looking forward to a short day Sunday to our destination (a little foreshadowing there).  

Utah!

December 27 was a beautiful sunny day for the trek from Great Falls to Scipio Utah.  We saw lots of these along the way (OK, you can't tell but the car's got an Alberta license plate.  Or a Saskatchewan one - there were tons of those too.  Bastards (and I mean that in the nicest way)).

I haven't checked but I bet I've taken this picture every trip:

White-knuckled it through two hours of Salt Lake City traffic again (I know you're wondering why I always take that route and complain about SLC... to tell the truth that's the ONLY part of I-15 I don't like.  The ability to toodle along on the 4-lane and not block traffic, plus the plethora of truck stops and other services just in case makes me feel better winter travelling).  Stopped again at Scipio Flying J / Rest Area, where it was cold overnight (24 F). This pic was of course from the next morning.

Departure day

After closing off Christmas on the 25th and scurrying to put as much decorations as possible away, on Dec 26th we loaded up, hooked up, and hit the road.  Fortunately the temperature had improved and we had highs above zero for the trek to Great Falls.

2013 holiday begins!

Hey all - Looks like it's been a while since I updated this blog.  Probably because we haven't been anywhere or done anything interesting!  But here we are, ready to head out on a new winter holiday so I'm back to it.
We started off as per normal - this is what the poor motorhome looked like a few days ago:

At the time the temp was 

Yup, -29.3 C.  Sorry for the blur, must have been cold inside too.  But we couldn't leave yet - had to have Christmas first!  I'll spare you other Christmas shots though as that's not what this blog is about.