Category: Personal

Matt & Melissa – the newlyweds!

February 11th 2020

Today we will continue our un-dusting process, everything we have is dusty, so it is a process, shaking, rinsing, washing, and wiping. We are still in the desert and will be boondocking again as we start our trek back to Ontario but it’s just hard to put a dusty sun shade on a clean coach. We are leaving the coach on Friday as we are taking a week off to enjoy a week of vacation on the Las Vegas strip in our time share. That was one of the reasons for our month long stay in Vegas…a week of storage is almost the same as a week in the RV site so why not, that way we can unload the towed to use it as our transportation around Vegas as we have friends flying in on Friday to join us at our time share

Well today we drove to downtown Vegas to meet up with some newlyweds, Matt and Melissa just got hitched here in Vegas and we thought it would be nice to hookup for cocktails. Laurie and I have known Matt for a number of years, we all worked together back in our automotive dark years…Matt now owns and operates a thriving catering business and his specialty is barbecue, and he does a pretty fine job, we did not know Melissa when she was in the automotive world, and is now in insurance, but she often helps Matt at some of his catering events.

So congratulations to the newlyweds, and hopefully we will get a chance to get together again, it’s always great catching up with friends from the Niagara region, and this was a great start to our stay here, as we got married here in Vegas a couple of years ago as well.

After our meet up down town we headed to the blue sign store to pick up a couple of items, before going to the buffet at the casino that the RV park is attached to. In true Vegas style the Tuesday night buffet is a two for one special, so dinner for two under thirteen dollars, oh it’s not a huge selection but there was more than enough to satisfy our taste buds, there was some roasted turkey for Miss Laurie, and some ribs for me and cake, pie and ice cream for desert , a pretty good deal, and just steps from the coach.

Got through most of my projects today, kayaks off the toed, the bikes mounted on the coach, even the kayak racks were removed to make us parking garage friendly. As well as being a little more fuel efficiency, while fuel efficiency is not the number one reason we pick a toed or a coach the better the fuel mileage is, is an added bonus and with the kayaks off the roof our mileage increases drastically. But the main reason for stripping the truck was to fit into parking garages, almost everywhere in Vegas there is a parking garage, so the racks are very restrictive as to where we will fit…but it makes it much harder to pick it out in a parking lot…just saying.

Vegas…Baby

February 10th 2020

We head to Vegas today, it is less than three hours up the road…but I suspect it will take us about five hours…we have been in the desert for two and a half months, and things are a little dusty. So a spa day for Thunder is in order, and most of our route is state highway so most of it is just two lane road. I started to write a blog yesterday but it just never happened…I know most of you find it hard to believe that I had nothing to say…well that isn’t totally true but I was having trouble trying to be politically correct enough to put in print, with what I was reading and thinking. I think the most alarming finding, is that after swiping through Facebook it’s just hard for me to believe that so many people are taking what they read on Facebook book as the truth… People you have to fact check what you read to assure your self it is true, and for heaven sakes don’t share something you haven’t checked.

But back to Las Vegas, Miss Laurie and I love Vegas, we love the excitement of the strip, we love all that happens in and around Vegas, oh there are all kinds of tourist traps, there are also some of the most amazing shows, the grandeur of the casinos, the way Vegas keeps reinventing it self, it is truly a city that never sleeps, but is surrounded by so many amazing land marks, Hoover Dam, Red Rock park, Death Valley, and so many other things to keep you busy doing something.

Well we are settled into our spot in Las Vegas, the sites are tight (we knew they were it’s Vegas) so every place you look at is tight, most people don’t come here for the season, no we are one of the longer term visitors. Well the trip here was not without some drama…we had another fuel filter issue…if you remember back in early November we had a fuel issue after some bad fuel, and had to change the primary fuel filter in Oklahoma and have had no issues since, well that was until today and while climbing into Kingman on I-40 we started to have the same stumbling effect. We were headed to Kingman to refuel and to the Blue Beacon truck wash…now I had to add changing the fuel filter to the list.

At the Pilot Flying J, we topped up tank with fifty gallons of diesel fuel, we then found an open parking lot where I changed the fuel filter, then off to the truck wash to clean up our act…and a couple of hours later we are headed north on US-93 toward the Hoover Dam and Nevada. We had left our spot on Plamosa Road at around 9 am and were settled into Arizona Charlie’s RV park in Las Vegas by 3.30 pm, so a little longer that I had planned, but I hadn’t planned on the fuel issue which had us just creeping up some of the grades near Kingman. All in all it was a good drive, light traffic, good weather, and while we tried a little different route through California which was an easier drive was very flat and straight but not as scenic as the road through Lake Havasu.

We are settled, with full hookups, the plan for the rest of the day, is just relaxing, we have passed through another time zone so we are now in the Pacific time zone which puts three hours behind our home residence. This little park has a round two hundred sites, but has a small foot print, there are obviously a number of units that are here long term, but at $850 a month all inclusive not a bad rent factor for someone moving for work.

Tomorrow we are hooking up with some Vegas newlyweds, there are lots of newlyweds in Vegas but we know these newlyweds from our previous life in the Niagara region…so stay tuned.