No new pictures!

A couple of "lay low days" for us.  Tuesday night we went to a hypnotist show at one of the casinos.  Wednesday was a very lay low day recovering from a late night I guess.  I did a little shopping for clothes in a larger size!  Yesterday we went to a couple of the casinos we hadn't gone to yet.  Today we will be packing up and leaving Laughlin headed to Boulder City, NV.  We still are trying to come up with a plan for the Grand Canyon.  The grandest obstacle in the trip is of course, Sir Arlo and what to do with him for the many many hours we'd be gone.  He has never been in a kennel so that is a huge issue for us.  Hopefully we will get it all worked out before we head on a more northern route to see the redwoods and OR and WA coasts.

We discovered last night that the manufacturer of our motor home closed its doors on Wednesday - so much for having our blister repair done by them!!  We shall see how this all pans out, but I must say it was not a major surprise for me - I don't know if it was for Rick.  The handwriting had been on the wall for some time I feel with their refusal to do the "right thing" with the blister issue.  After taking the factory tour last month and the continuous chaos and confusion anytime we needed to contact them for parts etc. was amazing to me - the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing.  In fact I got a phone call yesterday from a freight company that had an order from Alfa for me and wanted to know if I would be at the SD address that afternoon.  HUH - I hadn't had any order from Alfa pending!  Of course the freight company had no idea what the order consisted of so.........they were going to send it back to Alfa - gee wish I had accepted it so I could have at least known what the latest confusion was!

Laughlin, NV

So we arrived in Laughlin yesterday to stay for a few days.  Rally weekend has ended and it's pretty quiet here.  HOT but quiet - it got up to 98 yesterday and probably the same today - HOT but yes it's a dry heat!!!   a very very dry heat!  My skin looks similar to an alligator and I should invest in Vermont Bee Balm and/or Bath and Body Works stock because I feel like I am keeping them in business single handedly!  

We are surrounded by mountains of course - but Rick has suggested I may have posted enough mountain pictures (what can I say I guess a girl from Vermont has a "thing" about mountains) so I will post Rick's picture of the Laughlin Strip at night.  This was taken from in front of the "house" last night - high above the strip.  Unfortunately we can't see the river from here but we can roll down and down and down from our site to see it - or walk in the heat - or take the shuttle (thank goodness for that shuttle)

Our last weekend in Kingman

So yesterday while Rick was doing this ...
Laughlin River Run sight seeing  ..............

I was doing this ....  I needed a "pine tree fix" and the owner of the campground we are at now told us about a place 20 miles or so from here - way way up in the Hualapai (pronounced Wallapie).  So after several hours cleaning and doing laundry (it really can take hours to clean a motor home when you don't keep up with it) Arlo and I set out for our adventure ..... up and up the mountains we went.

Below is the Lodge of the Hualapai Mountain Resort - rather rustic and dated accommodations in their seven rooms.... but the food - oh my goodness the food.  I had the best steak I've had in a very long time - cooked perfectly and tender, tender, tender .. very yummy!

So today after Rick and I helped Arlo celebrate his third birthday we headed back up the mountain (without Sir Arlo who really needed to rest after all the celebrating we three did).  I really wanted Rick to see this place - I just knew he'd love it.  Doesn't he look like he is enjoying himself?  He probably didn't need a pine tree fix but it just seemed like HIS kind of place.  Plus, they have elk all around the place ...

Click on the picture below to enlarge it and see one species of elk - posing for "The Amigos" ...  sure would have loved to have had "The Amigos" there with us to enjoy (we miss you guys).

So back to Sir Arlo's birthday..... he got a breakfast fit for a Sir - steak and eggs.  Sure glad he has a birthday only once a year!

a new addition

Tomorrow Sir Arlo gets a nephew ............ isn't he adorable?  His name is Snoopy Whelan.  And we ALL hope that Sir Arlo will love and enjoy his nephew and be very nice to him when they finally get to meet.  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY SNOOPY ... congrats Pat and Beth.

The volunteer beer servers

So the adventure for today was to volunteer with this Lodge and put RICK on this side of a beer cup ......  an oddity for sure ...... and who knew we knew how to pour beer after beer after beer.......
But we sure had fun!
The local Elks Lodge had a booth at the local Harley dealer (Mother Road HD in Kingman, AZ) for the bike rally in Laughlin, NV known as The River Run.  I try to volunteer at the lodges we stay at but there was no rv hookups at the Kingman Lodge but they had a sign up sheet for beer server volunteers - it was a match made in ................... Kingman .... and it was a blast.

our trip on route 66 (to Oatman, AZ)

Well I finally got these photos to upload - it's only taken a couple days!

On Tuesday we went to Oatman traveling on Route 66 from Kingman.  It amazes me that at one point this was THE major road.  Below is a picture of it winding through the mountains - how about those switch backs.  It is 28 miles from that tower in Kingman out to Oatman and probably 14 of those miles were on these kinds of roads.  

Oatman is an old mining town that is really commercialized now - with staged gun fights in the street throughout the day.  And burros - I'm still not sure I understand about the burros but they are "wild" burros that live in the hills surrounding the town and come into town at will and people feed them carrots..... I guess that is the concept I have difficulty with - wild animals being hand fed by people???  What am I missing here?  Also, according to the locals I spoke with they just sort of tolerate them and realize that most people come to town to see the burros so they are a good source of income for the town!

We had Arlo with us on this trip because we thought he'd be home too long otherwise.  Not the best way to visit this town but it's what we did.  I also found out that it probably isn't the best idea in the world to have a dog around a burro.... something we won't do again for sure.  

more travel pictures

I wanted to do several posts of pictures taken along our way up to this point but because I am having trouble uploading pictures - it is slow and I can only seem to do five pictures per post - I think this will be the last picture post.  I want to start doing posts of where we are at the moment and what we are doing.  So I think we'll add past travel photos to the picassa share site which we will add to the links section to the right.   Or use this link  http://picasaweb.google.com/tpw0607    

Ah one of my favorite cities - New Orleans.  Chad discovered recently how much fun this city is too - not sure Amy agrees right about now.  The people here just really know how to have fun fun fun and have such marvelous attitudes...... I wish I could remember the french saying that reflects this city but the translation is "let the good times roll" and Na'lins sure knows how to do that.
This is a picture of the first major mountains we encountered in our travels.  This was taken somewhere between New Mexico and Arizona.  Having grown up in Vermont I thought I knew about mountains - NOT.
And this is the bikes on a side road somewhere in Las Cruces, NM.  The trees that look very bare are pecan trees that have had a rather harsh trimming.  I thought pecans only grew in Georgia and was surprised to see them in New Mexico and there are LOTS of pecan orchards in NM.
Isn't this a great morning shot?  Sometimes this is a benefit of having to do the 6:30 or 7:00 AM morning dog walk.  This was at a nice campground we stayed at in El Centro, CA.  While here we happened upon the Blue Angels doing a practice routine for about 45 minutes - it was awesome!  El Centro is there winter home - WHO knew?  we didn't.

San Onofre Beach at a State Park in CA - isn't it beautiful.  We had to walk down a steep dirt road to get to the beach but Arlo sure loved having this HUGE stretch of beach to himself.