Mid week fishing

You know, a person could get to like mid-week fishing trips.  This is Touchwood Lake after the May 24 long weekend.  Had fun with a few little Jacks on the fly.  They were quite fond of my "red and silver tinsel streamer on a jig hook with a stinger added" creation stripped through the weeds.  Also the gold and silver version.

So long Cavalier!

No need for so many vehicles anymore, so the Cavalier went off to help the Kidney Car Fund.

Camping with the Safiehs

A little spring camping trip to Wabamun Lake.

Change of Career!

April 30, 2015 marked the end of my career with Parks Canada and the beginning of my new career as a gypsy and leech on society.  There's dancing in the streets in a couple provinces!

Now we just gotta get the house sold and move on!

Lake Mohave

After watching that great Super Bowl game, in which my team* demonstrated their true superiority, we packed up on Monday and moved a couple hours north to Katherine's Landing campground on Lake Mohave, about 10 minutes north of Bullhead City and Laughlin.  This will be our staging area before we make the push north.  Besides being close to last-minute shopping and cheap, it's got a dump station for that final winterization before we become poor ba$tards again.

We toured this area on a previous trip and decided if we were going to spend a few days this campground would be a much quieter area than the casino parking lots.  Cost is $10 for a 7 day pass (although it's dated for 12 days, so maybe there's a winter discount) plus $10 per night in the campground.  A very reasonable price, especially compared to other government-run places I've seen.

*I'll admit, the Seahawks only became my team sometime in the first half.  Hard to believe that Denver could fall apart so utterly and completely.

The sites here are very wide, but not deep.  Probably would have fit better cross-ways.  

Somehow we've only had a handful of these this trip.  

From a little hill beside the campground.  This is southwest, towards the marina and lake.  

Northwest, loop A.  Find our site?  (Hint: look for Sarah.) 

One of the other landings north of the campsite.  

Davis Dam, the creator of Lake Mohave.  

Found an unmarked gravel road on the Nevada side and followed it down to the lake.  This is a view of the campground from across the river and up the hill.  

One of the side trails brings you down to this little beach on a bay.  Mouth of the bay is to the right.  Nice spot for tent camping, or pickup & camper.  Definitely no trailers or motorhomes through the canyon enroute to here!  

The main gravel road leads to this beach/campground.  No charge to stay, 14 day limit.  Pit toilets and a garbage bin provided, otherwise no services.  

To the right of the previous shot.  

And to the right again.  No designated sites; vans and motorhomes parked along the beach, or anywhere.  Nice spot!  

When we got here we realized we'd not had our Mexican meal yet, so Thursday night we went out.  Wendy liked the Saguaro-stemmed glass, but resisted the urge to slip it into her purse.  

The last dutch oven meal of the trip - Cowboy Stew with biscuit dumplings (not added yet)! Can't wait for summer to break it out again!   

Not to be outdone, Wendy made desert:  pudding cake with ice cream.  Yum!  Take that, Cathy!  Extra points again if you can figure out who got each bowl...  

That's it for now.  Sadly, we'll be on the road tomorrow (Sunday) heading north, so probably no more posts til we get home.  Try to make the weather a little warmer for us enroute, and we'll try to bring some sunshine back with us.  Cheers!  

Alamo Lake, hanging around, and food

It's doubtful that I can top the topic of toilet installation, so I won't try.

Thursday was a recouperate day for someone with a sore back and foot, so we mostly hung around camp.  Quick trip up to Parker for groceries.  We picked up a stuffed burger maker at Bass Pro in Phoenix, so we decided to try that out.

I don't know who is left in the state of Oregon to look after things, but there can't be many.  Every third license plate seems to be a variation of this.  I'm imagining that entire towns are deserted while their citizens frolic in the desert.  

Stuffed burgers ready for the grill.  The one on the left is Gab's - don't worry, it's stuffed too.  Cheese and bacon, although she requested it be stuffed with a pork chop.  

On the grill.  The ONLY way to grill is with flames... 

And done!  Still a little rare in the middle, but as you can see one was trying to purge.  And as I reminded Wendy, this is the states where people actually prefer rare hamburger.  We're still alive, so it must not have been laced with e-coli like we're warned all the Canadian hamburger is.  

aaaand a few sunset pics to finish the day.  

Friday we were off to Alamo Lake for a little exploration.  I thought it was farther, so we packed a picnic lunch, but it turned out to be only about an hour and a half from Q.

If you read the bottom right of the plaque, it says it's one of the best bass fishing lakes in Arizona.  I could be wrong, but I suspect there are three lakes in Arizona.  Still, looks like a place to spend a little time in the future.  Power/water sites are $22/night, and dry camping is $15.  You know I'm a little on the cheap side but I think for the extra $7 you know where I'll be.  Especially since it's a little higher elevation so a little cooler at night.  Park entry fee, too - $7/day or $75 annual.

Rather than backtrack on the pavement, we took a "primitive" road east towards Wickenburg.

Started out like this - La Paz county has some pretty high grade 'primitive' roads.  

Changed to this once we crossed over to Maricopa.  I think Phoenix keeps all that county's crews tied up.  

Then we crossed a bit of state trust land.  The state obviously doesn't own ANY road equipment.  Not complaining, mind you: it was nice to finally have some reason to be driving a 4x4.  

Tops of the Saguaros are all white - looks like maybe getting ready to blossom?  Probably a week after we're home.  

The land of the multi-armed cactus.  Maybe there was some nuclear testing around here in the past, I don't know.  

Also rolled through the land of the Joshua tree.  The desert all looks the same to me, but somehow all these species seem to know what parts they prefer.  

We chased this storm into the mountains north of Congress, and managed to get some raindrops on the windshield.  It's surprising what can seem cool when you haven't seen it for a while.  I wonder if snow is the same?  Anyway, had our picnic lunch in the pulloff overlooking Congress - same picture as previous trip, only this is Sarah's first time.  

Made it home in plenty of time for another sunset.  

Somewhere along the way we decided that we'd move up to Lake Mohave on Sun or Mon (probably Monday - have to partake in the Great American Event on Sunday), so Saturday became a "get into Q and pick up all the things we were going to but didn't so far" day.  We did manage to start the day off with another batch of biscuits and gravy, though.  We'd picked up some ground turkey so I gave it a shot with Jackie's spices, and it turned out great!  Thanks Jackie, your gift was and will be much appreciated!  

As you can see, I'm still over-cautious about putting too much milk in - so once again it was more like sausage gumbo than sausage gravy.  Oh well, a good excuse to practice more!  

So right now it's about an hour before game time, when we'll crank up the TV, open a few (more) beers, and enjoy the great american pastime.  That could be watching a football game or watching the commercials, take your pick.  Tomorrow we bid the cactus adieu and start the migration north (sob).

Lots more of very little

Boy, it's easy to neglect the blog, even if I'm not doing much of anything else.  But when I checked the camera I'd actually taken a few pics in the past week and a half, so I can use those to jog my memory.

First, finishing off day 3 of the balloon fest:

See, trailer park people even get nice sunrises sometimes!  

Swear he's lookin' at me...

She's standing under the beagle's paw... that was one HUGE balloon! 

He never got airborne Sunday, though - bad left front paw - they just couldn't get it to fill with air.   Of course I have no clue why, and since they couldn't fix it I guess they didn't either.  

Here's the directory from the brochure, in case you want to ID all the balloons from the past couple of days,  Not great quality, sorry.  Let me know if you want the full size originals and I'll email to you.  

We headed out from Lake Havasu City on Monday, bound for Phoenix.  Since the generator's been acting up (works fine for 1/2 hr, then cuts out even though the engine keeps purring) we decided to see it we could get it looked at in Quartzsite, and fortunately Bob the generator guy could fit us in after lunch.  Perfect timing!

That's the culprit: voltage regulator.  Changed it out and gave it a 2.5 hour test run - worked perfectly.  $270 touch; have to work a few days to pay that off but it's well worth it.  

Too late to head to Phoenix, so back up to Plomosa road to park beside the road (that's it on the left) with the other RVs that seem to like ditch-camping.  Oh well, it's just a night.  

So, Tuesday we were off to Phoenix.  A couple nights at the Wild Horse casino (no pics, see previous years).  Unfortunately Wild Horse has turned into a truck parking area now, so we spent a day scouting some other overnight spots northeast, east, and southeast of the city.  Found some potential, but because we wanted good internet and phone, plus proximity to shopping, we were kind of limited this trip.  

One of the locations we checked was where the Barrett-Jackson auction had just finished up.  We didn't clue in until we'd gone past the 4th or 5th tent of cars waiting to be loaded on the trucks.  At the same time there were a bunch of horses and paraphanalia being unloaded for a show the next weekend.  This is probably as close as I'll ever get to Barrett-Jackson, and I'm fine with that.  

After a day of searching, we wound up back at the first place we checked: Lone Butte casino just about 5 or 6 miles from Wild Horse.  Not very convenient for truckers though, so only a couple a night pulled in.  Some long timer RVs here - one guy from Utah's been here off and on since November.  This place replaces Wild Horse as my first choice for free overnight in Phoenix (Mesa actually).  Coordinates are 33.28897 -111.94025 if you want to check it out.  

Two nights at Wild Horse and three nights at Lone Butte - not too much exciting - laundry, shopping, etc.  On Sunday we headed back to Quartzsite to meet up with Don & Kim Philips who were coming down from Laughlin for a day.

Toured the Plomosa Road 14 day area a bit - it's a pretty small area and not much room to get more than 1/2 mile or so off the road (beyond that is posted day use only).  Not my preferred area: even though rigs are pulling out like crazy since the RV show is over I still counted 50 (yeah, fifty) other RVs visible from where we parked (right at the edge of the camping area).  On the plus side, better phone and internet than the Bouse side.

Plomosa road, on the Quartzsite side.  33.76325 -114.18194.  Notice the TV antenna is up... I finally gave in and bought a digital converter box in Phoenix.  With that we could pick up about 25 channels in Phoenix and about 10 here.  STILL nothing on TV worth watching, though.  

Stopped for a refreshment with Don & Kim (thanks Don!) during a warm walk through the Q vendors, after meeting up with them about noon.  There's a couple stories to be told about the late meet, but you won't read them here.  Notice one sensible person's having a coke.  BTW, that thing on the table is a rock that Kim got so attached to she decided to fly it home with her.  

Kim's dinner - nice skinless chicken breast, salad, and raw veggies.  I told her I'd post this so she could prove she's eating sensible.  Sorry for the blurry pic.  

Sunset along Plomosa road.  Ignore the RV: you can't take a scenery shot around here without getting one in the pic somewhere.  

Wendy doesn't take too many pics with the "old" camera but I guess the sight of me doing some work was enough.  No, I'm NOT talking on the great white telephone.   

Out with the old... 

In with the new.  

As you can see from the pics above, today was toilet replacement day.  The seal in the old toilet has been more of a strainer than a seal for the last few weeks so it was either try to find and install a kit for the 20 year old toilet or just put a new one in.  Given my previous history with changing parts in old equipment, I thought maybe this had the best chance of success.  Still had to adapt the plumbing a bit, but managed to get it all in and (so far) leak-free.  And the seal works great.  I passed by the toilets in Phoenix because I knew The Gambler in Quartzsite had a bunch for $125... but when we got down there with the measurements it turns out the only one that would fit and wasn't a hand flush was actually $200.  It IS porcelain, though, so we're getting a little more upscale.

As luck would have it, the black tank announced to us this morning that it was full (don't ask how), so before the change we got to go into Q (RV Pit Stop) and dump and flush (somewhat) the tank.  So it wasn't as odoriferous as it could have been.

While we were in, we of course filled the water tank and also took the opportunity to fill the propane, so, hey, we're good for another few weeks out here.  Especially on propane, since we're not running the furnace anymore.

On a down note, Wendy managed to twist her foot and fall getting down off the couch (where she was retracting the stupid TV antenna before we headed for the dump station), cracking her back on the table as she fell.  So now she'll be hobbling around for a few days with a gimped foot and a sore back.  I tried to convince her that copious amounts of vodka would take the edge off, but she won't believe me.  I'll keep working on her, and maybe we can get an action shot of the new toilet in use (as a telephone) for the blog...

I'll see if I can come up with something a little more exciting for the next report... thanks for stopping by and checking on our ho hum holiday!