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1 to 15 January 2019 16 to 31 January 2019

Wednesday January 16, 2019

I wanted to take a photo of all the stuff I was putting away, but I ended up taking a selfie of me!

We spent part of the afternoon at the pool with Gaétan and Michelle.
And, as per normal, we had a Happy Hour at theirs place too.

Thursday January 17, 2019

Traveling day! We are on our way to Quartzsite. It is only 120 km from here.

First, we went to say our goodbye to our friends Gaétan and Michelle. We are very happy to have met them. They are great people.

Ready for take-off!

We did not hook-up the car to the MH because we will be stopping for propane before we hit the road.

I will actually have to turn around for the fill up on propane.

With our propane tank full, next is the fuel tank that needs to be filled. We are not really low on gas, but we will be using our generator a lot, so might as well be full to start with.
And we finally hit the road towards Quartzsite. We are driving next to the Castle Dome range.

We came to this "bridge to nowhere" a few years back, it was for geocaching.

This makes sense. A person with a flag is a flagger!

The road is nice and with light traffic, it was a nice drive.

Another Border Patrol Check Point.

There are wild animals in the desert.

We are getting closer to Quartzsite because we can see a lot more RVs in the desert, dry camping (Boondocking).

Elevation 879 and founded in 1879, coincidence?

We left highway 95 to drive into La Posa North LTVA. LTVA stands for Long Term Visitor Area. It is part of the BLM, Bureau of Land Management.

Once we were settled in, we went to one of the many flea markets in town.

Jannie and Jan sent us a text to invite us for a glass of cheap wine in the afternoon. They are the first to arrive for the Gathering of the Entegra Coach. They will be about 45 of those high end MH.

Last year, a camper lost his daughter and before he left for the funeral, he built a small memorial in her honor.

The different type of RVs you see in Quartzsite! Like this travel trailer. It seems it has a pontoon front with movable walls.

Since the government shutdown almost a month ago, nobody works at the LTVA to maintain the place, like making sure the garbage is picked up, toilette are clean, etc. The town of Quartzsite needs all those RVers to come and enjoy the desert and spend money in the town. So the people of Quartzsite and business, pitch-in to help with the garbage and other things usually done the by employee of the government. They even made the landfill open to the public at no cost. The fresh water and the dump station is also run by volunteer.

Looking east while the mountains are illuminated by the sun going down.

One of the many beautiful sunsets in Quartzsite.

We are boondocking (dry camping), no water, sewer or electricity. The MH batteries (not the engine battery) only purpose is to keep the residential fridge running. It is doing so by having an inverter converting the 12 volts DC into 120 volts AC needed by the fridge. When we want to watch TV, we need to run the generator. When the generator is running, we have 120 volts AC in the whole MH. It also runs the battery charger to replenish the batteries. We have to run the generator about 2 hours in the morning and usually from 4.30h until our TV shows are over, about 9 pm. This keeps the batteries charged, so the fridge can run on the batteries when the generator is not running. Usually, after 9 pm, I do some up-dates on the laptop until the battery on the laptop dies and Michele does some reading or plays on her tablet.

Friday January 18, 2019

I was up early this morning, probably because I went to bed early last night!

The place we picked to park is a little way from everybody else. This way, when we run our generator, it does not bother anybody. Not that our generator is very loud.

The view towards town.

A 180 degree view from the left side of the MH.

As the generator is running this morning, I use that time to transfer water from the water bottle to the water tank in the MH.
The water is sucked out of the bottle by the water pump. I switched the water source before the pump from the water tank to the bottle. Now the water from the bottle goes into the plumbing of the MH until needed.

On the other side of the MH. I simply attached the shower hose to the fill port for the water tank of the MH. I just need to open the cold water tap of the shower to move water from the bottle to the water tank. It is simple and it works.

We visited two thrift shoppes before lunch. We went with the car and the traffic was bad. If you think about it, Quartzsite's population is around 3,500 peoples. In the winter months, with all the RVers in the desert, the population goes up to around 250,000 peoples at times. That puts pressure on the infrastructures like the city streets.

After lunch, we went with our bikes to the flea market next to the big tent of the RV Show that starts tomorrow. You want RV stuff? They have it all!

We were here in 2017 and we believe their are more people and vendors this year.

They sell just about everything here!

After walking around for about two hours, we headed back home.

Before supper, I had time to tackle another small project.
This one is about making a temporary connection between the batteries and a cigarette lighter to monitor the batteries level more directly.
Now I have two alligator clamp on the batteries.

Wires going out from the batteries, through the steps/batteries cover to the 12 volts DC cigarette lighter adapter.
This allows me to monitor the batteries and prevent them from discharging them too low. It works really good.

One more time, the view looking east and west of the MH.

We had a good day.

Saturday January 19, 2019

The Quartzsite RV Show starts today. We are going!

We started the day with touring the many MH and 5th wheels on display.
One of the major chassis builders for MH is Spartan. They had this chassis on display.

This is a computer station that I would love to have in our MH.

We had lunch at the RV Show.
Michele had the curly fries and I had the Phillie sandwich.
The fries were really greasy and the sandwich was plain, all for $20.

By the time we got home, we sat outside enjoying the sun and reading.

We were waiting for the moon to come up. We wanted to see if it would be red or not. Not!

An OK sunset.

As the sun sets on the west, it illuminates the mountains to the east. It was much prettier than the photo.

A good day.

Sunday January 20,2019

I was back at the RV Show to make a few purchases.

One of the vendor's truck.

Here are some of our purchased. A dash cam for the MH. It is more as a "proof of innocence" than pleasure. This way if somebody cuts me off and I run into them, it will not be because I was following too close.

I also bought some latex gloves for when I dump the gray and black water tanks.
But, the biggest purchase we made was the SteerSafe for the MH. This add-on will make driving the MH much easier.
They will come and install it tomorrow, so more info tomorrow.

I went for a bike ride in the afternoon. This is the view from the overpass over I-10. We are looking south.

We have been boondocking since Thursday and with the way we are conserving our fresh water, we will be here one more day, maybe two.

Monday January 21, 2019

I got up early this morning. We are getting our Steer Safe installed.
Surprise! The moon has not gone to bed yet!

I am on my way to pickup the installer at the gate and coming back with the installer behind me.

So why did we buy a Steer Safe?
The chassis of the MH is a Ford F-53. They have a tendency to wander when driving down the road. If you look away from the road for a second, you are going some place else.
The Steer Safe helps correct this "fault" from the chassis. It keeps the MH in a straight line when driving down the road. Will it correct 100 % of the wandering? If it corrects 75 % of the wandering, I will be very happy.

All the parts for the right side.

This is the left side installed. If you want more info on how it works, check out the wed site Steer Safe.

The installation only took 25 minutes and that is because I was asking many questions to Wayne, the installer. Wayne is a very nice guy.

The right side installed.

I cannot wait to take it for a drive and see if it will make a real difference when driving.

With the installation done, Michele goes into town to check out the Thrift Shop. She is back shortly after she left, the thrift shop was closed.

We went geocaching in the afternoon. We left the MH and headed east towards the mountains.
We had to remember, the trees have prickly things on the branches.

One of the caches was located near a pet cemetery.

Looking towards the mountains. We traveled 7 km from the MH and are no closer than this. We have to turn around because the car is not high enough off the ground.

The wind was blowing pretty hard today. Lots of dust in the air. Still, a good day.

Tuesday January 22, 2019

A day without photos?
But still, lot happened today.
First I went and got water for the MH.
Michele went to the thrift store in Quartzsite. Open!
We still have a lot of wind and dust!
One question needs to be asked, do we go and dump our black/gray water or hold-on another day?
I think we are still good for another day. More to follow!

As we always say, our plans are written in sand and it is windy.
So, after looking at the weather over the next week or so, we decided to move to Nevada. More like Laughlin, Nevada. Across the Colorado River from Bullhead City in Arizona. Why Laughlin? Simply because one of the casino has an RV Park with a good deal. For $109 a week and two free meal at the casino buffet, you cannot go wrong, right? We also checked and there are many things to visit in the area.

Remember the black/gray waters? I took a shower tonight, no over flow. All seems good. Michele has her doubt.

Wednesday January 23, 2019

It is almost 9 am and it is 5° C, but it was much colder in the middle of the night...

We had frost on the car this morning.

We are moving today. We were on the road by 9 h 15 am.
Goodbye Quartzsite! We came in here Thursday January 17. We have been here, without services, for 6 nights. Not bad at all.
It is time to go. We have 200 km to go for our next home.

As we got out of Quartzsite, we saw lots of traffic. A few kilometers later, it was back to normal with few vehicles on the road.

With all the rain we had last month, the desert is pretty green.

As we got into Parker, we changed routes and headed to California to get to Bullhead City.

We will drive thru Needles and then move back in Arizona.

The first 10 to 15 km in California were very twisty and hilly, but later it got to be a very nice road.

The sceneries are juts beautiful.

We got the Steer Safe installed on the MH last Monday.
My impression after only 10 minutes of driving, it is just great. It made a very big difference on the driving/handling of the MH.
I love it. The MH is much easier to drive than before.

The city of Needles is also where the famous Route 66 goes through.

Everything is about Route 66 here.

Remember the black/gray water? Well, as we were driving, we could smell some odors from those tanks in the MH. Michele in not impressed. To kind of solve the problem, I turned on the bathroom fan on hoping it would draw the smell out before it traveled in the front of the MH. It worked! But Michele was still not impressed!

Right outside of Needles, we moved back to Arizona and head to Bullhead City.

We are way to early to get in the RV Park in Langhlin. Also, Nevada is one hour earlier than Arizona. So, we made a stop at a Walmart, before Bullhead City and walked around the store for a while.

Now, that is drawing the attention to your business!

Here we are!

We took the bypass around Bullhead City, this way we did not have to go through all the signal lights in the city.
We are looking across the Colorado River at the Casinos in Laughlin, Nevada.

Going down the hill and go across the Colorado river.

The two hotels on the right are the Don Laughlin's Riverside Casino. The RV Park is behind the hotels.

We will be staying at the Don Laughlin's Riverside Casino RV Park.

As you cross the Colorado River, you enter Nevada.

Mister Laughlin gave his name to the town.

Welcome to Laughlin, Nevada.

After having registered and got our free buffet tickets, we went to our site to get settled. First, we check out the alignment for the satellite dish because we think a tree may be in the way. I am keeping an eye out on the dish.

It turns out to be OK. My happy face!

OK, when you only pay $109 with two free meals at the casino buffet, you cannot complain about the size of your site!
We are mostly here to visit the area, not to relax like when we stay for a month at an RV Park.

Most of the casinos are on the other side of the Casino Boulevard.

What we see from the back window of the MH.

We went to the visitor center located next to our RV Park. Boy did we get info about the area. Lots of info. We are starting to wonder if a week will be enough to do it all. We may add another week to our stay.

Thursday January 24, 2019

We added another week to our stay. Same price and the same free tickets for the buffet, $109.
Another view from our site.

Today is the day we drive around town and check out the thrift Shops for Michele.
Laughlin is a small town, around 9,000 peoples, while Bullhead City is much bigger at 38,000 people.
As we drove to Bullhead City, we looked across the river and saw the Colorado Belle casino. We will visit this casino for sure.

Bullhead City has a large boulevard going across the whole city. It is easy to navigate.

Michele found some discount coupons for two gyros for only $6. Why not!

We found and visited many thrift shops for Michele. We even drove an old lady back to her house. She was having a hard time breathing, nothing bad.
One of the many parks along the Colorado river.

Once we were back home, I had to deal with a small problem.

The sewer connection is located a LONG way from the connection on the MH. I had to modify one of my sewer hose by removing the "elbow" and replacing it with a strait connector. To top it all off, the RV Park does not want you to let the sewer hose lay on the ground. It has to be off the ground...

We are visiting the Don Laughlin's Riverside Casino tonight.

The strip.

The pool for the casino's Hotel. We can use it too!

The view of the Colorado river from the pool.

The casino is OK, like all the other casinos. We played a big $2, had two scotches for free. You usually give a dollar per drink to the waitress. People can still smoke in the casino, gross. Gambling is not really our cup of tea.

Friday January 25, 2019

We had to walk the Labyrinths of Laughlin this morning.

We do not know much about why the labyrinths are here. We are here just to say we got our "tick in the box" as having done it.

There are 5 labyrinths here. We walked them all.

While writing the blog, I did some researched and found an actual web page for the labyrinths. Click here to find out more about the Labyrinth. I found that there are more then 5 labyrinths, 9 in total. We will have to go back and do the other ones.

The view from where the labyrinths are located.

After the Labyrinths, we made a stop at the Colorado Belle Casino. It is not a real ship, but a building built like a ship.

The inside is just beautiful, classy!

Yes, you can buy marijuana legally in parts of Nevada.

Our next stop was at the Colorado River Museum.
I did not know that the USA had boarding schools for the Indians like we did in Canada.

The story of Olive Oatman. She was held prisoner by the Indians in 1851. She never really told anything about the 5 years she spent with the Indians.

The museum was OK. It is very small and they are in transitions between the old museum and this newer museum.

One of the many public boat launch along the river.

Michele with her new friend.

We made a quick stop at the local Walmart. No, this is not Michele's electric chair...

And we are back at the casino to spend our daily $2.

We also came for the seafood buffet with our free coupons. We are very disappointed with the seafood buffet. I think it is more a "seefood" buffet than seafood buffet. We have had better buffets that were not seafood with more seafood then this one.

We still had a good day.

Saturday January 26, 2019

I have a 50% off for breakfast coupon at the casino buffet. Michele did not come for the breakfast. That breakfast buffet was much better than the seafood buffet from last night.

Usually, we take a day off between visiting days. But today is hospital bed race in Oatman and we want to visit the village of Oatman. Oatman is a small town frozen in time, a tourist trap, tacky, but we are going anyway.

We are taking the scenic route to get to Oatman. We will be leaving Nevada, enter California and move on back to Arizona.

We are still on the California side and the arrow is indicating a mountain near where we will get to Oatman.

A closer look. The same mountain indicated by the top arrow. The bottom arrow points to the road going to Oatman. We will travel from an altitude of 140 meters to about 800 meters in Oatman. The village got its name from the Oatman family massacre that took place in 1851, remember Olive Oatman, she was the daughter.

The road is nice and at one point we join the old Route 66.

The sceneries!

Oatman, here we come! We parked at the entrance of the village. The place is almost empty at 11 am!

It looks pretty poor as a village... Population, 128 permanent residents.

The story behind the village...

It took a while, but the village is waking up.

I forgot to mention, they have wild burros running around the village. That makes it interesting to come here.
Love the warning sign.

He looks happy to see us!

The main street is pretty short. It is mostly small "Mom and Pops" stores with 2 or 3 small restaurants. The Oatman Hotel has its inside walls covered with one dollar bills. It is estimated there is over 100,000 one dollar bill stapled on the inside of the hotel.

At high noon, a bank robbery took place.The actors are collecting money for the Shriners Hospital for children. Over the years they collected over $97,000 for the Hospital. The show was very good. Lots of fun.

Be aware!

Did we stay after 10 pm?

It always amazes me when I see stuff like this step in front of a store. In Canada it would be a no-no. In the U.S., I guess it is up to the person to be careful and not trip on the steps! Like adults should!

Cool bikes!

One of the small stores had a small motorcycle museum on the second floor.

Burros are simply a different branch of the donkey family.

Yep!

After the bank robbery, we went to the Olive Oatman Restaurant for lunch.

Many things are about the burros.

Michele chose the fried bread and I got the Patty Melt with fries. All very good. We did share as usual.

A good way to say, Ladies Room.

Michele loves this mirror frame.

Why not store some gasoline cans in the men's bathroom.

Some of the stores are almost like museums, but everything is for sale.

They had the hospital bed race in the afternoon.

We visited this small and short mine for free.

The aliens are coming for us!

My new ride.

Carole Lombard and Clark Gable got married here in Oatman in 1939.

The room they used in 1939.

The main street where everything takes place.

Goodbye and thank you!
We spent a little over 3 hours here and liked it a lot. If you are in the area, come to Oatman for a visit.

Michele was having fun with the phone.

And we are back in Nevada.

What a day! Lots of fun.

Sunday January 27, 2019

Today is a "rest day."
I spend the whole morning and part of the afternoon working on the next blog update. Lots of stuff to write about.

In the middle of the afternoon, Michele suggested we go for a walk on the River Walk between the casinos and the river.
Bullhead City across the river. You can see a large parking lot across the river. It belongs to the casinos and they have a water taxi transporting people from the parking lot to the casinos for free.

Here is one of the water taxis.

Our walk on the river walk takes us to the Aquarius Casino. We went in to get our member's card and see what deal we could have.
We got 25% off any meals in the casino buffet. Maybe another breakfast coming up! We did not play any of the gambling machine.

The next casino is the Regency, but we could not find the door to get in from the river walk???

So off to the next casino. We did get in and got our member's card, but no deals on food!
We did play, we played $1 dollar each and we play the 5 ¢ machine. Michele ordered a Corona and me a brandy, gave $2 tip. I won $5 total, so we came out ahead by $1. We are high rollers!

Michele really like when a city paints the utility boxes like these. It makes it less industrial.

WOW! What a week. Langhlin/Bullhead City were not in our plans yet here we are and for two weeks.

Monday January 28, 2019

It was warm outside today, why not go and finish the labyrinths we missed the last time.

You walk to the center to re-center yourself!

The biggest of the labyrinths, also the most elaborate of the 9 labyrinths.

The view from the big labyrinth.

We also went geocaching. One of the caches was located at the entrance of Laughlin, near the statue of Mr. Laughlin.

Some of the caches were a little scary!

What a neat idea! And nobody stealing them!

We had very good steaks for supper.

A good day and we found 9 caches total today.

Tuesday January 29, 2019

A nice relaxing day at home for us today. Well, at home was a big word. We did cook the 14 pound turkey we bought for $0.59 a pound.
Our convection oven and propane oven are too small to cook the whole turkey. I cut it in half and cooked them one at the time. This is one half cooked, looks good!

This was too much meat for one serving. We de-boned the turkey and placed the meat in plastic bags in one or two meals portions. They went to the freezer right after they cooled off.

A day of simple happiness.

Wednesday January 30, 2019

After our relaxing day yesterday, we will be having a busy day today.
We are going to leave Langhlin (#1) and drive to Selingman (#5) on the Interstate 40. We will leave the interstate in Selingman to follow Route 66 going west. We will also stop at the caverns (#6) and come back home (#8) after a little less than 370 km of driving.

North-west Arizona offers some very spectacular sceneries.

Some of the rock formation leave little to the imagination!

We left Laughlin at less than 500 feet of altitude and went up to more than 5,000 feet of altitude.

The first 3,000 feet of gain in altitude were over 22 km and it gave us some spectacular vista.

In Selingman, we left the Interstate behind us to drive Route 66. We will be traveling about 140 km on Route 66.

Selingman had a lot of stuff related to Route 66.

Right out of Selingman, you were back in the high desert and nice sceneries.

Route 66 is more than 2,448 km long and it goes from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. 645 km of the 2,448 km are in Arizona.

One of the places we really wanted to visit was the Grand Canyon Caverns. Why Grand Canyon Caverns when the Grand Canyon is over 200 km away? Probably to capitalize on the words "Grand Canyon" to attract people.

A big dinosaur at the entrance.

From Route 66 to the caverns is about 2 km. They have many "attractions" on that road.

Good thing I was not driving too fast!

Really?

Here it is!

According to the weather on the radio, it will snow here in a few days, but only rain in Bullhead City.

Our family? Funny how our son looks like me and our daughter look like Michele!

How many of you can say you sat on the world's largest dinosaur saddle?
Me!

They also had a nice little restaurant at the caverns.

It is 11.30 h. It is time to move to the giant dinosaur head for the cavern tour.

After using the elevator to descend 210 feet or 21 stories into the caverns. We go through this tunnel. It took 2 years and 90 cases of dynamite to blast the shaft for the elevator and this tunnel. Another year to bring electricity in the cavern.

The same temperature year around (13.3° C).

This sign pretty well tells everything about this cavern.

They even added a small dining room inside the cavern and it is not too expensive to eat here.

Some side caverns do not go very far.

We were only four visitor plus Justin, our guide. We had a personalized visit.

The Mystery Room is where the air goes, which enters and leaves the caverns from the elevator shaft (sometime at many miles per hours). Experienced cave explorers are digging to follow where the air goes into this passage. Caverns legend says smoke bombs were set off in the mystery room around the time that the elevator was put in and that the smoke came out 60 km away near Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon. Science tells us that smoke could never travel that far without dissipating! Where the air goes has yet to be discovered.

This Bobcat fell into the natural entrance about 1850. He was found a short distance from that old entrance, dying of dehydration since there is no water in the caverns.

The Hall of Gold is the largest room in the caverns at 190 meters long.There are enough Civilian Defense supplies here to support 2,000 people for 2 weeks. These supplies were brought down in October 1962 during the Cuban Missiles Crisis. This food is perfectly preserved, including medical and sanitation supplies.

It does resemble grapes.

This giant prehistoric ground sloth has been extinct for the last 11,000 years. This one fell into the natural entrance sometime between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago. The bones were found in the late 1950s and were sent to the University of Arizona for identification. They, in trade for the bones, built this life-size replica for us. Notice her claw marks on the wall where she tried to scratch her way out before dying.

The owners of the caverns have good ideas. They installed a small stage where small concerts and weddings take place from time to time. The right arrow points to a bedroom. Yes, you can rent a room for the night in this cavern.

The seat for the small stage comes from the American Film Institute in Hollywood. When the institute undertook the renovation in 2012, they donated the seat to the cavern's owner because the seat will be better preserved in the caverns, remember the bobcat?

The Snowball Palace was formed 15 million years ago. This formation was created underwater. The water table was higher 15 million years ago. The darker area is damage done by visitors touching the formation with their hands over the last 40 years.

These stairs were built in 1957 and measures 34 meters long.

This display shows what was left/lost by visitors over the years. Including a pair of ladies underwear!

We really enjoyed the visit of the caverns. They have some displays outside too, like this petrified log.

And more dinosaurs.

The good and the not so good photo!

I do not know if I would have paid to go down tied to a rope?

Back on the road, not easy to see, but above the number 18 the word "Indian" is written. We are on an Indian reserve.

Michele is having fun with the camera.

Nice sceneries.

One of the few places to stop along this stretch of Route 66.
Michele with the "Love Bug." Remember the movies?

It was just an OK place!

Another place to stop along the way.

This stretch of Route 66 ends in Kingman, but it does continue on the other side of Kingman.

We had lunch at Arby's and tried the Mega Five Meat burger. One was enough for both of us.

OK, what do we think about this stretch of Route 66?
We found the road between Bullhead City and Selingman had more beautiful sceneries, almost dramatic. The Route 66 between Selingman and back to Kingman was OK, but not as scenic as the first part of the trip. We really liked the caverns. It was still a good day overall.

Thursday January 31, 2019

As usual, after a day of visiting, we take a "day off." Well, not really off!
It is laundry day. We had not done laundry since January 16, not bad!

Thursday is Italian Buffet at the casino. We used our 2 last free buffet coupons. Remember the seafood buffet that was not that great? Well, this one was great!

Some more info about the casino.

We really enjoyed the buffet tonight and we had a good day.

Until next time.

Life is good...