Wednesday, 13 through Thursday, 14 and
Saturday, 16 through Sunday, 17 and
Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
While I was staying here, I made 2 trips to sightsee, one into Las Vegas and the other over to Lake Mead. I'd intended to stay only a few nights, but my campsite was convenient and fairly comfortable and I needed to try to catch up, so I extended for a week here.
The campground intended my site to be a pull-in, meaning I'd pull straight in, leaving my back end to face the campground, and then I'd have to back up into the road to leave. I'm not comfortable with either of those ideas, so I backed into the site (much safer because no traffic is coming at me from a blind spot) and I was close enough to the utilities that I could plug in the power and water just by extending the hoses to their full length. Much more comfortable for me.
The dogs (Lily's just fine)
The campground had hundreds of campsites and 2 separate dog parks; we spent time in both of them. The first day, I took my kids to one where there was already a dog playing, and the other dog and its owner could both see they'd all be fine together (all tails wagging), and they were just fine. But for some reason, the other owner got nervous and took her dog off early. Too bad for them all.
On other days we were joined by other dogs, and I was really pleased to see that mine behaved well. Dexter has really grown up on this trip. I've learned that if everybody's tail is wagging when they're on opposite sides of the fence, they'll be all right on the same side, and so far, that's worked.
Mostly, the dogs spent a little time sniffing at all the smells since their last visit, and then they spent their time lying in the sun (Dexter) and shade (Gracie). I think they just like being out in the fresh air - and who could blame them. The RV must get really small to them after a while.
Gracie's starting to have balance problems again. She managed to go for - what was it? - most or all of our time in California without any of the falling over that she'd been doing so much of in Arizona. I was starting to hope maybe she really did just have inner ear problems that lasted longer than vets said they should last. But when she started falling over again while we were out for walks - just stopping on the walk and suddenly keeling over on her side with no warning - I figured we'd just had a lucky break for a while, and now that brain tumor was acting up again. Now she's having several incidents per day. Worrying.
Internet
The campground's wifi was very very slow, and my own hotspot wasn't much faster. It took me 3½ hours (all one morning) to figure out reservations for 3 different towns, when it should have taken just a fraction of that. It took me half an hour just to download 2 photos onto my blog. Very discouraging and meant I couldn't get done anywhere near as much as I'd hoped. I only managed to finish 8 blog posts while I was here, and it should have been a lot more.
Those 8 posts included California, which I finally finished - on the 16th. That's just nuts - to spend half of my time in Nevada trying to deal with California. It was odd, but it had taken so long that I was almost too tired of it to be relieved.
I finally managed to get enough internet connection to work out where I'd be going for the rest of this month, and to make reservations along the way, and to plan driving routes to get there. I decided to do the whole next 2 weeks because I'd had so much trouble with wifi that I figured I'd better do it all now, while I could, albeit extremely slowly.
Weather
I'm back in a desert climate again, so my skin is very dry and the static electricity is fierce. I can make sparks easily, I'm afraid to pat the cat because I've hurt her with the electricity, and I can't comb my hair because it takes weird positions like that Wooly Willy children's toy, you know with the iron filings that move with a magnet.
On the other hand, I noticed one day that I haven't used my inhaler since I left Arizona. I don't think I used it once in California, and I haven't needed it here. I'd thought it was the dry climate that made me need it, but it sure is dry here and I haven't needed it. Though that may change after a month here, but my next state is Oregon, which has a climate more like California's than like Nevada's.
I just realized we haven't had any thunder since South Dakota, which was August of last year. It's been a long time. Don't they have thunder in the American West? Or has this just not been the right time of year?
A couple of evenings here, there were high wind warnings, and I watched people put away their chairs and food tents. The wind came up enough to rock the RV around. At least this time it wasn't accompanied by a sandstorm. Wind doesn't scare me as much as it used to. It makes me more careful when I drive, but except for mountain passes, I'm not afraid it'll tump us over.
Campground life
Campground life can be a little strange. One morning I saw a woman outside her RV doing jumping jacks. Real jumping jacks. I haven't seen anyone do those since 9th grade PE.
One night we had a rented RV pull in next to us with a family from Brazil. I think only 1 of them spoke English - she said she'd been in the US before but none of her family had. I think that was their 1st night with the rental and they seemed to be having trouble getting used to it. They left the next morning, though, and I hope they had a good trip.
This campground had more rental RVs than I've ever seen in one campground before. KOA nationwide offers a temporary membership to people who rent RVs from Cruise America. I know, because that's the company I rented from in 2008 when I moved from Washington to Texas with 2 dogs and 2 cats (not the same ones I have now). So I often see one or two in any given KOA I'm staying in. But here there've been as many as a dozen or maybe more each night, plus rentals from other companies. I finally decided there must be a dealer here in town, and folks are flying in here, renting an RV, staying a night at this closest KOA, and then heading out for their trip.
I saw a long-term stay that had a sign on their cabin door that said "Please Use Doorbell." And sure enough, below the sign was a small button installed in the door that I guess made a sound inside. Maybe they have dogs that bark when someone knocks but not when the bell rings? Or maybe it's an IQ test for visitors.
One RV had a sign on the back that said Mobile Bat Cave; the jeep that was traveling with it had a license plate that said Bat Jeep. They were from Idaho.
Having managed to find slow cooker liners, I cooked a chicken one afternoon, so I'll have easy meals for a week or more.
On my last night, I opened the champagne I'd bought, and enjoyed it with some French bread and parmesan-reggiano and an avocado and some small tomatoes.
I'd tried several grocery stores to find smoked salmon, but all I could find was smoked farmed Atlantic salmon, which is nuts. There're plenty of delicious products that use wild-caught Pacific salmon, and Nevada is a lot closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic. And I found several products that were from Scotland (also farmed). Farmed salmon is a far inferior product than wild-caught salmon. I know. I spent a couple of years helping prevent Alaska state legislators from legalizing a farmed salmon industry there, and I had to learn all about what I was taking on in order to defeat it. There's simply no comparison between the 2 for taste and wholesomeness. And it turns out there's not much difference in the price, which makes the choice of farmed salmon galling. Anyway, I bought sardines instead, which are also light years away from what I wanted, but they were wild-caught sardines - not that that turned them into salmon.
I was doing all this to celebrate finally being done with California (it was a long slog in some ways) and finally starting to post about the state I was actually in. I figured Love Actually was the most champagne-type movie I had, so I watched that. Sure it's about Christmas, but it's really happy.
One day I had a company come by and give my poor little RV its first bath in ages. I've been wanting to get it washed for a long time. But I've been moving around a lot for the past month or more, plus a lot of campgrounds say absolutely no RV washing, plus there don't seem to be that many mobile RV washes. But one advertised in this campground's handout, and they charged me a lot of money - $111, weird amount - but I finally managed to get it done. And I hoped to get off some of that sand that got blasted into my poor little thing at Tonopah. It was amazing to see that parts of my RV were actually white, instead of the vaguely beige color they'd become.
A woman I met in the dog park told me her kids live near Lake Tahoe and said it had snowed there 2 days ago. Here the grackles and doves were courting and the oleanders were in full bloom - Spring was here. We had several days in the upper 80s and one or 2 days above 90°, so most of our stay was very pleasant. I could see that when I started back north on the 20th, I'd be finding much colder weather, so I enjoyed it while I had it.
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