Texas!

We are anchored in an oxbow of the Sabine River, just on the Texas side of the Texas/Louisiana line (map). We had a mostly pleasant five nights in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Actually, the last four nights were entirely pleasant; it was the first night that was... interesting.


Vector docked at L'Auberge du Lac resort and casino in Lake Charles.

Saturday we had a lovely cruise from our nice anchorage on the Mermantau to the Calcasieu River. The ICW arrives at the river by way of Black Bayou, and shortly before reaching the port of Lake Charles we passed through the Black Bayou pontoon bridge and the Calcasieu Lock.


Calcasieu Lock, another "float in the middle" exercise.

The former looks a lot like a barge with a roadway on it. To allow vessels to pass, small ramps at either end lift out of the way and the "barge" is swung out of the channel and parallel to it by cables. Sometimes the cables go right across the channel, and you need to hold short of the bridge until the tender has dropped the cables all the way to the bottom.

We had no wait at either the bridge or the lock, and in short order we were steaming thorough the port. Lake Charles is a big industrial port with a deepwater channel directly to the gulf. We plotted the big ships on our AIS display before turning into the river itself and heading upriver to the city.


When the cattle are strolling in the ICW you know the water is too shallow in that part.

Our chart showed two anchorages en route to the casino dock that was our ultimate destination. One in an oxbow of the river, cut off when the ship channel was cut through, and another up the old river channel that leads to Prien Lake, also now cut off by the ship channel. This latter anchorage is just past a deepwater turning basin and showed 12' depths, perfect for us. Also, we had a favorable tide and wanted to get as far upriver as possible.

We turned in at the turning basin and continued up the old channel. Our charts showed 12'-15', but the sounder kept dropping, and when it registered 8', we backed out to the 10' contour and dropped anchor (map). It was fine, well off the ship channel, and we had cocktails and dinner and later in the evening Louise went to bed.


We did have a few large wakes at the dock. Catered party at left was casino employee appreciation; Vector is in a lot of photos.

Sometime around 1:30am I was annoyed to find a spotlight shining in the salon window as I worked at my computer. Now, we get spotlights like this from time to time, particularly when  a towboat is trying to navigate past us, so I though nothing of it except it was not going away. I went to the pilothouse to see what was going on, and I turned the radio back on that we keep tuned to channel 13, the bridge-to-bridge communication channel. We always keep a radio on channel 16, the hailing and distress channel, even when anchored.


Sunset over the Calcasieu. Vector and Louise in silhouette.

As soon as I turned on 13 I could hear someone talking about us, and I hailed the towboat who had us lit up. He informed me that a ship was trying to reach us (but not, clearly, on 16... pilot training is not what it used to be). After a quick exchange I ended up speaking with Pilot 8, aboard the Cape Bonny, a 900'-long motor tanker. We had passed them in their berth earlier in the day.


The rabbits (lots of them) heard the casino had an all-you-can-eat buffet. They were working their way through the decorative plantings here at a prodigious rate.

She informed me that her intention was to bring the ship around the point and into the natural channel of the river, with it's bow just a few dozen yards from where we were anchored. I had to confirm this with her several times, because the Cape Bonny's forward draft was a full 18' and our sounder had registered just 12' where she intended to put the bow.

Reluctantly, I agreed to move upriver a short distance, and Louise got dressed and came up from belowdecks. We weighed anchor and moved to a spot some 500' further in to the river, clenching the whole time with the depth alarm sounding. We dropped the hook and waited for the Cape Bonny to arrive.


The 900' Cape Bonny (with bunker tug alongside) in the natural river,showing our three anchored spots.

After she rounded the point, assisted by a pair of tractor tugs, the pilot again called to say we were going to disappear from her sight line below her bow and we still looked too close. So we again weighed anchor -- by this time it is 2am -- and moved another 400' upriver (map). Our chart plot from the next morning tells the tale -- you can see the Cape Bonny, a tug pushing the bunkering barge next to her, our anchored position, and the two previous spots we had anchored.



The view we woke to. Cape Bonny just downriver with a bunker barge alongside.

In truth, and as I suspected, we never had to move at all. Although, honestly, our first spot would have been a nerve-wracking distance from the big tanker's bow. Our second spot was perfectly fine and we certainly did not need to move a second time. However we did not run aground and we did end up having a very comfortable night, once all the drama was over.

Steaming head-on towards an anchored Cape Bonny. We need to thread the narrow gap between the ship and the little point of land off her starboard bow.

In the morning we determined that the bow of the Cape Bonny was, indeed, resting in a place where our sounder had registered just 10'-12'. So in fact the bottom there is either mud so soft that a ship can simply push it aside, or else it's a "false bottom" reading, where a layer of silt-laded water of different density reads as solid to the sounder.


Passing the Cape Bonny close aboard -- she fills the pilothouse window.

We had been told the ship would like there for eight hours to bunker. But when we called them at 10am the watchstander told us their plan was to weigh anchor at 2200. We were not going to wait around that long to get under way, so that presented the problem of how to get around this behemoth without running aground.


Close, but we made it without trading paint or running aground.

We ended up squeaking by just 30' off her starboard bow (her starboard anchor was down) with the depth alarm squawking the whole time. It registered just under two feet under our keel. Once we were past the skinny bit we had an easy cruise all the way to L'Auberge du Lac casino (map), where we had reservations to dock for two nights.


Approaching our destination. L'Auberge on the left and Golden Nugget on the right.

I might mention here that we anchored Saturday night instead of proceeding the last half hour to the casino for two reasons. First among them is that the rate for Saturday night was $100 whereas Sunday through Thursday nights the rate is just $50. The second being that arriving in the morning rather than the evening means another half day's access to all the resort amenities.


I got to see Vector again every time I went into the building.

After we were tied up, in the only spot our draft would permit, I walked to the front desk to get registered. We also went to the casino promotions desk and signed up for club cards, which got us 5% at all the restaurants and two $20 coupons for massages in the spa, which we had already planned on booking.


The carrot cake at Saltgrass Steakhouse at the Nugget was enormous. We each ate a quarter of it, and had the other half a different night.

We very much enjoyed our stay at the resort. In addition to spa visits we enjoyed several of the on-property restaurants as well as one at the adjoining Golden Nugget resort, which is something of a carbon-copy of the one we've patronized in Atlantic City, complete with a plethora of Landrys-branded restaurants. We spent time at the pool, which also features a lazy river; sadly it was not nearly warm enough weather to really enjoy it.

The adult pool, complete with cocktail service.

We were having a good enough time that we extended our stay by one night, to yesterday morning. When I checked out the desk said we could spend more time during the day so long as we unplugged, and we could use the pool facilities if we got our wristbands before 11am. We ended up staying to mid-afternoon and I enjoyed some more time at the pools.


I-10 bridge over the Calcasieu in Lake Charles.

We knew that would mean not enough day to make it to the next reasonable anchorage along the ICW, so instead we just went a little downriver to anchor at the old oxbow (map). With an easy schedule we first took a little cruise upriver to the eponymous lake and the city of Lake Charles itself. A shallow bar between the ship channel and the rest of the lake precludes Vector from getting into the lake or close to downtown, but I snapped photos of the I-10 bridge we've traversed so many times, and the civic center where we spent so much time with the Red Cross after hurricane Rita.

City of Lake Charles. Civic Center is center frame. This is as close as Vector can get.

The oxbow proved a much better choice than our selection Saturday night, and we had a pleasant and undisturbed night. This in spite of having to anchor in winds of 20 knots gusting to 30 or so. That same wind made it a challenge to get off the dock and made for a bit of an interesting river cruise. Sometime overnight it died down considerably and clocked around to the other direction, and we woke up much closer to shore in only 8' of water.


Sunset at the oxbow. What a view!

Today's cruise brought us down the Calcasieu River and back to the ICW, where the first few miles west of the river are just an unending conga line of towboats and barges. In short order, though, it again became just "the ditch" and I was able to engage the autopilot and type some of this post.


Sunset over Shell Island in the Sabine River. Howdy from Texas.

We pulled off here in one of the easiest and most comfortable anchorages on this entire section of coastline. Deep, wide, and out of the barge traffic. Tomorrow we will continue a short distance to Port Arthur, where we will find the last decent anchorage until Galveston Bay. That will leave us with a rather long 60-mile day on Saturday to reach a safe stopping place.

Escape from the boatyard

We are tied to the seawall along the Harvey Canal at the Boomtown Casino in Harvey, Louisiana (map). It's our very first time out of the boatyard since arriving there on January 25th, some eleven and a half weeks ago. Of course, we picked a day with 20-knot winds to road-test our new paint job in two locks and against the rustiest, most distressed bulkhead we've seen in a long time.


Vector at the seawall near the Boomtown Casino.

After my last post here we did manage to get down to the quarter on Sunday for the French Quarter Festival. We mostly wandered around among a half dozen of the stages and venues, got drafts from one of the canonical beer trucks, and enjoyed the people-watching.


Jazz stage near the French Market.

I did not realize it but the festival lays claim to being the largest free music festival in the US. It's spread across some 23 stages extending somewhat beyond the boundaries of the quarter itself. We only saw a small fraction.


Lots of activity at Jackson Square.

We ended with dinner at El Gato Negro, a supposedly highly rated Mexican restaurant near the French Market, but we were disappointed. It was quite overpriced -- we expected the usual vig for the quarter but this was beyond the pale -- and the food was inauthentic. Live and learn; I supposed I should have had low expectations of Yelp reviewers who've been knocking back walkaway Hurricanes all day.


One of the other stages. The event is so spread out that it did not feel crowded.

Also not long after my last post here I started getting splice hate mail. Well, OK, it was just name-calling. But still. I did seriously think about removing the photo, but I think it's important to show the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yes, it was ugly. As I wrote when I posted it, the line is old and stiff and thus difficult to work, and I make perhaps one splice a year so my marlin-spike skills are not sharply honed. (A tip of the hat here to all the readers of Louise's blog who came to my defense.)

I hunted around for a photo of the last splice I did, a very nice thimble eye splice for the painter for our dinghy. Sadly, that painter wore through (not at my splice) some time ago and I no longer have it. But it was quite elegant. And honestly, the first time I did this bitter-end-of-the-chain nonsense I did a much more elegant job. It took me more than twice as long and it was all nicely tapered and it looked great even though the line was stiff and miserable to work.

That great-looking splice, which was tapered back in four places, then sat underneath a 1,200-lb pile of anchor chain for three solid years. It still looked good when it came out but, of course, had to be destroyed to galvanize the chain. I decided I needed to know a lot more about who'd be impressed for me to do that again. This one was strictly functional, tapered once, and trimmed just enough to fit the gypsy. It's again below 1,200 lbs of chain and it will not be seen again until we flip the chain end-for-end in perhaps five years or so.


Vector freshly washed and all loaded save for scooters. Paint job looks great.

The yard took a little longer to address the punch list than we expected. In particular, they saved the additional touch-up we asked for until after the contract items were punched, to keep the billing separate, which meant they did not start those until Tuesday. Masking was removed Wednesday and they washed down the boat Thursday. We did not realize it earlier in the week but the yard was closed Friday for the Good Friday holiday, and so everything had to be done by Thursday to get us out.

The extra couple of days gave us more dining-out opportunities and we tried a couple of new-to-us places as well as some old standbys. It occurs to me that after three full months at Seabrook I still have not really posted about any restaurants, so perhaps I will write up a list of our favorites and put it up as a separate post.


Our streetcar, SRO coming out of downtown. We were able to get seats a few stops later.

Even though we were done on Thursday, we opted to take an extra day to get ourselves squared away and postpone shoving off until this morning. So yesterday we had a day to ourselves and we again went down to the quarter for bunch at the historic Court of Two Sisters. It was very good if a bit touristy with lackluster service, but it's a very pleasant space. I remember being there as a young boy and it looks just the same. That ended up being our big meal of the day. Then we rode the streetcar out through the garden district and back.


End of the line, on Carrollton.

At 4pm, after the yard closed for the day, we started up the big Lugger and moved around to the fuel dock, hoping to pump out our waste tanks and be ready to load the scooters. However a large group was having a Good Friday fish boil on the lawn right by the pumpout, and we opted to hold off until they were gone. We ended up pumping out after 9pm.

Winds were blowing 20kt when we moved the boat, so getting out of the slip without dinging the new paint was a bit of a challenge, as was coming alongside the fuel dock. Many thanks to our friend Dave who helped cast us off and take our lines in these conditions.

We had figured to maybe go out for one final dinner as well, but brunch carried us so long that we just ended up having a salad at home. And so it was that we loaded the scooters shortly after dinner without having taken them out again. I have to say, having those scooters made a huge difference in New Orleans, where parking a car can be a challenge. We got right up to parade routes, restaurants, and even the quarter without breaking a sweat.


A mural in one of our favorite spots, Pasta Arabella. Two great religions connect.

This morning winds were a bit lighter when we dropped lines at the fuel dock, but they quickly built to near the same 20kt. We ended up waiting quite a while at the Almonaster bridge for a train to clear, and by the time we arrived at the Industrial Lock, station keeping was quite a chore. And station keep, we did, as we had about a twenty minute wait for the lock, along with a shrimper and a go-fast motor yacht. This latter boat had already snagged the dolphins available to tie up waiting vessels.


Approaching the Chef Menteur, I-10, and Almonaster bridges. If you zoom in you can see a train on the bascule bridge.

We have never had to raft in a lock. But as luck would have it, Industrial asked us to come in first and for the other pleasure craft to raft to us. So not only do I have to worry about dinging the paint on the lock wall, I now have to worry about a skipper of unknown skill dinging the paint on the other side as well. Moreover, our cleats are not accessible from off the boat, so Louise has to run around from the wall side to the channel side to take their lines and get them secured, then run back to tend the locking line. Not optimal by any means.

We got into the chamber and very quickly got secured alongside. I think we always surprise the lock operators with how quickly we do it. And we turned our attention to the smaller boat as it approached to raft. Unknown skill level was quickly revealed to be low skill level, and so we were very glad when the lock operator waved off at the last minute and asked them to pull up to the wall behind us. We surmised that the two lock attendants were only comfortable tending two lines, but after they realized we could tend our own they were able to accommodate a third boat.


Angel being completely blasé about having spent the day moving the boat.

Coming out of the lock, things get very busy in the pilothouse. We quickly change the radios from channels 16, 13, and 14 (yes, we need to have three radios on through this stretch) to channels 67, 12, and 14. Then clear in to Vessel Traffic Control on 12 with our river route. And then start working 67 to arrange passing with various river traffic. As soon as we left the canal we had to dodge an upbound barge, quickly passing in front of him before making our downriver turn.

We are at the beginning of spring floods and the current is swift; Vector rolled ten degrees or so when we hit it. And with winds at 20kt against current and a long fetch, we found ourselves in short-period three foot seas. We porpoised our way downriver, taking a bit of water over the bow. The shrimper who had been in the lock with us passed us; we never heard him on the radio either in the lock or on the river.

We passed our old digs at the New Orleans General Anchorage and proceeded a short ways downriver to the Algiers Lock, where we found the shrimper waiting in the forebay. The lock, as well as a large red-flag tow on the other side, were both trying to reach him, and there was some brief confusion when our own call to the lock had them thinking we were the shrimper. We very quickly straightened them out.


View astern towards the Mississippi in the Algiers lock. Shrimper behind us never answered the radio.

We had only a short wait to enter the Algiers lock and  then we were officially west of the Mississippi River, something of a milestone for us. We were locked through straight away, did a little do-si-do with another red flag waiting to enter (also annoyed he could not reach the shrimper), and were on our way down the Algiers Canal.

Boomtown is actually a short distance back toward the Mississippi on the Harvey canal and so we made the right turn at the junction. Our AIS showed a towboat at the bulkhead and I called him to ask if there was room for us; he was just leaving and said we had plenty. It gave me some confidence to be able to ask about conditions and depths.


Vector secured at the seawall. Yes, that's a fridge in front of us, and a towboat astern.

I had budgeted a couple of hours for each lock, not expecting to lock-through on the first pass each time. So it was only about 1pm when we reached the bulkhead. Of course, that same wind we had been fighting all day that made the locks so challenging was blowing directly off the bulkhead, and I had a might fight to get Vector alongside.


How we had to tie up. Section of old firehose provides chafe protection. Louise initially looped this from on deck.

Worrying about banging up the new paint job on a rusty seawall was not helping matters any, but the biggest issue of all was the utter lack of cleats, bollards, bitts, pins, or any other means to land a line from on deck. We picked a spot on the wall that had one rusty old bollard cleat with one horn missing, figuring it was at least a starting  point.


I think these holes are from broken-off bollards. Here I am using bits of vinyl hose for protection.

Louise was able to loop an eye on the one remaining horn and then take a wrap on the bollard, which got me something to pull against, and in another few minutes she was able to drop a line through a hole in the bulkhead and snag the bitter end with a boat pole to bring it aboard. With two lines on I was able to disembark and get the rest of the lines through various other holes. Everything was rusty and sharp, so we put chafing gear on the lines taking the heaviest loads and called it good enough for the night. At least the wind was holding us away from the rusty wall and not the other way around.


Our stern line. I had to thread this one from ashore.

Mid-afternoon a large go-fast motor yacht came by on full plane, and I ran out on deck to tend fenders. Fortunately none popped out, but I was hopping mad. I was so focused on the fenders that I could not get the glasses out to catch his name. It was a good reminder that we are coming back into boating season and the inconsiderate and/or unskilled skipper will be out in full force on the weekends.


All tied up. You can see the lone one-horned bollard around midships.

While his wake did no damage to Vector, an abandoned refrigerator that was sitting on the bulkhead just ahead of us was floated briefly by it, moved around, and then set back down in a slightly different spot. I decided it would be bad news if another wake somehow floated that into the canal, where a pointy metal corner would easily do serious damage to our paint, and so I went ashore with an old line and secured the fridge to the bulkhead so it couldn't reach us if it floated. I'll take the line off in the morning.


Fridge safety line.

This evening we wandered over to the casino and had a nice celebratory dinner in their restaurant. They tried to sell us on the idea of the Easter buffet tomorrow morning, but we're still recovering from our last buffet experience Friday. Besides, we'll likely run all the way to Houma tomorrow and we'll need to get an early start. On our way out of dinner we walked past the lounge as it was gearing up for the night's live entertainment, and we ran into Rocky, the lift operator from the boatyard. He was so out of context we did not recognize him until he said hello. It took us five hours to get here, but the boatyard is only 25 minutes away by car.


The casino itself is on this functioning paddlewheeler that never leaves the dock. Restaurant was ashore.

It feels really, really good to finally be under way and out of the yard. Of course I've already found a couple of issues we'd have the yard correct if we were still there, but we did not want to wait even another single day. As we come back across the gulf toward Florida we had already figured on a possible stop at the mouth of the Mississippi (the closest protected water on the route) and it would not be that much of a stretch, a full day each way, to come up to New Orleans and make a quick visit to address any issues. That would maybe be the end of June or so, which gives us a couple of months worth of shakedown.

Tomorrow we will be under way westbound, headed for Houma. If we can find a place to stop in or near LaRose we'll do so, but I am not counting on it. Houma is 47 nautical miles or just under eight hours for us.

We have several stops to make in Louisiana before we reach the Texas line, including Houma, Morgan City, and Lake Charles. We're in no hurry, so I expect to be in the state for at least another week or so. I'm not certain what Internet access we'll have here along the sparsely populated coastal region, so blog posts may be sporadic.

Time bandits

It seems I am perpetually apologizing for late posts on the blog, and today I missed posting this morning because I got wrapped up in some drama in the Phoenix environs, which I will share in a moment.  That said, this morning found us at the Lone Butte Casino in Chandler, Arizona (map), a familiar stop.  It was a bit off our route, involving about a ten mile detour to the south, but we wanted to connect with friends in Chandler.

I remembered this casino had a nice restaurant on site, but, unfortunately, they are closed Mondays.  So we ended up piling into their car and driving a few miles to Va Bene, a Chandler restaurant and wine bar that was actually quite nice.  We had a great dinner and a great time catching up.  The casino is very welcoming to RVers, perhaps to a fault, so we knew we would be comfortable there.

Speaking of "to a fault," we noticed quite a few rigs in the lot that look like they've settled in for the long haul, possibly the whole season.  Rigs were surrounded by mats, chairs, BBQs, generators, and what-not, tow vehicles detached, as if they were in a campground.  Long-time readers will remember I ranted about this at the tribe's other casino, the original Wild Horse Pass, in a post here in 2008.  Eventually, the tribe moved that casino to newer, fancier digs, and when they did, they clamped down hard on RV parking, as I wrote here in 2010.





Before the move of Wild Horse Pass, this casino at Lone Butte got little RV traffic, but with the current restrictions over there, apparently many of the offenders have discovered this place and are back to their old ways.  I predict that it is not long before RV parking here becomes just as restrictive as at the tribe's other properties.  Clearly they are tolerating it for now, as the lot is patrolled regularly by security officers, a pair of whom (on motorcycles, no less) circled Odyssey last night a few times, no doubt discussing how odd it is.



On our way into town we stopped at a gas station a few blocks (which, in Phoenix, means a few miles) south of the freeway for $3.589 diesel.  By the time we were done fueling, we decided we did not have enough time to swing north to see if the motorcycle shop where we consigned the scooter was even still there, a circumstance that proved fortuitous later as it would have been a 30-mile detour for naught.  Instead we proceeded directly to the casino, which gave us about an hour before our dinner date.

In the bit of time I had before dinner, and another two hours or so after we came home, I ruminated about the scooter and spent a good deal of effort on line tracking down the owner of the shop.  This morning, instead of blogging or getting anything else done, I spent another couple of hours on that project, including calling the shop's next door neighbor, a motorcycle training center, who confirmed that the shop had closed its doors sometime in 2011.

A call to the Washington Department of Licensing this morning determined that the scooter had been registered out of state in July of that year, so it was apparently sold.  I am giving the shop owner the benefit of the doubt, on the assumption that he tried to mail us a check at our now-defunct mail service in Washington, but I really need to speak to him.  He's now a salesman at a Phoenix-area car dealership, but he called in sick today.  I also left a message on his wife's cell phone.  I hope to reach him sometime this week to find out what happened to the scooter or our money.

In any case, that kept us in Chandler until well after noon.  If the scooter was still unsold and sitting someplace in the greater Phoenix area, we wanted to deal with it, up to and including possibly renting a trailer to haul it away, before we left town.  Now that it seems most likely that it was sold in 2011 and we simply did not receive the money, we got back on the road as we need to keep moving along.  I covered my bases with a voice message to the Phoenix PD auto theft task force, in case we have trouble getting our compensation.

Between all the scooter drama, dinner with friends, and dealing with insurance and documentation for the boat, I did not even have time to answer all my emails, let alone blog.  Tonight and tomorrow I will try to catch up on the backlog.

I am surprised no one has yet commented here on the Neoplan Spaceliner, similar to ours, that appeared on the Travel Channel Sunday night on a program called Mega RV Countdown.  That bus belongs to our long-time friend Steve in Fort Lauderdale, and I posted a photo of our two coaches together at a bus rally a little over a year ago.  Steve and the Travel Channel folks had called us back in July to see if we could bring Odyssey down to Fort Lauderdale too, to do a kind of two-for-one deal with them on Neoplan Spaceliners for the show, which I wrote about in this post.  Ironically, one of the key reasons we did not pursue that was a jaunt to Savannah that same day for our very first look at the boat we ultimately bought.

Nevertheless, it was great to see Steve and his coach on the program, and, in hindsight, I am glad he did it solo.  If the program comes around again, you should try to catch it. Steve also has a boat, and I'm sure we'll be seeing a good bit of him whenever we pass through Fort Lauderdale.

Tonight we are at a small turnoff just off US-70 in New Mexico, about a dozen miles northwest of Lordsburg (map).  Despite the late start, we made our full four hours today. We are actually parked on what looks to be a very, very old right-of-way for the highway, mostly reclaimed by nature except for short bursts at irregular intervals.  Wherever a ranch gate or DOT stockpile is located, they have added a small connector to the modern highway.  This stretch of 70 is pretty deserted at night, so we should have a quiet night. Today's drive over the Superstition Mountains along US-60 and through the mining communities of Miami and Globe was, as always, spectacular.  Tomorrow night, we should be in Texas.

Rail city stopover

We are in the RV parking lot at John Ascuaga's Nugget casino resort, in Sparks, Nevada (map).  We've stayed here before; back then I discussed why we chose this spot over the alternatives in Reno.  It did mean a slight backtrack, since we stopped in Reno for fuel -- $4.159 at an independent station in town.  While that's higher than we've been paying lately, it's a lot lower than we will see in California, so we topped off the tank to the tune of 155 gallons.

Stopping here made for a short day yesterday, but we did not want to fly through town without stopping to see our dear friend Julie.  Just by fortunate timing, yesterday also happened to be her birthday, and so we had a celebratory dinner in the steakhouse here at the Nugget, with her husband Jim and son Monty.  The food was excellent and we sat in our cozy booth for nearly three hours celebrating and catching up.  It was a great visit, and we were grateful that they were able to see us on such short notice, even on a special occasion.

In a few minutes we will roll back out onto I-80 and begin our ascent of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas.  My map says we have four and a half hours to Redwood City, but that really depends on how long it takes to climb the grade, which can add another half hour or more.  Depending on how it goes, we might finish the trip today, or we might stop an hour short, in Vallejo, and wrap up the drive in the morning.

Eastward bound

We are at the Snoqualmie Casino near North Bend, Washington (map). We've stayed here before, and we remembered it as a pleasant and convenient stop. Since then, however, the regular menu in the "nice" restaurant has instituted stratospheric prices not commensurate, according to reviews, with the quality of the food. Fortunately, on Monday nights they serve only a tapas menu in the bar, along with happy hour wine pricing, and that made for an inexpensive and pleasant meal.

This morning Sure Marine called to tell me they found nothing wrong with my pump. Of course, now that we're on our way out of town, going back for it is prohibitive, so we're having them send it to South Dakota. I'm now very puzzled about what went wrong back when we replaced it; perhaps my feeble efforts to disassemble it actually tightened up the seals, or else maybe the power wiring was marginal. In any case, it would appear I bought a very expensive replacement pump back then needlessly. At least we'll have a good working spare now, and we can probably port it over to the boat when we move, as we will want to have a similar hydronic system aboard.

I also received this morning an email from a friend urging us to reconsider the Hatteras 58 LRC. It occurs to me that we have not really shared much of our decision tree for the boat here on the blog, and I probably need to write up a post describing what we are looking for and how we have come to this point in the process. That's probably a fair bit of time to compose, and we need to be getting on the road shortly, so it will have to wait for another time. Suffice it to say that there is a method to our madness, even though I think we might be driving our broker to drink.

In a few minutes we will head over the Snoqualmie pass and into eastern Washington, also known as "the dry side." We'll make a stop at our current legal residence of Desert Aire, probably for the last time, and get our property there listed for sale, before continuing on to the Tri Cities to pick up the last of our mail from our old mail forwarding service.

All-casino coastal tour

We are at The Mill Casino on Coos Bay, Oregon (map), just north of the town of Coos Bay in North Bend, which is nowhere near Bend. We've been here before, and they remembered us. Or more precisely, their computers remembered us. We had to update a few details at the RV park check-in when we arrived, as they had an old address and vehicle license in their database.

We're not actually staying at the RV park, which offers full hookups for, I think, $39, with discounts for play. We are instead in the oversize vehicle lot, where one can stay up to three nights free after signing in at the registration desk. It's actually a nice spot, offering views over the bay.

The casino no longer offers a "fun book" with coupons for the restaurants. But Louise spotted a promotion wherein we each got a few dollars in free play by sending a text message to the casino, which was then loaded on our players' cards. We had to update those, too, although we were again still in the database. We parlayed the free play into $5.75 in cash (woo hoo), making it another bargain stay.

They have several eateries in the casino, and we had dinner in The Plank House, the nicest of the lot, at a nice window table overlooking the bay. So we gave back the $5.75 and then some, but the food was good along with the local Oregon wines.

Shortly after we returned to the bus it started raining -- this is, after all, the Pacific Northwet -- and it's still raining now. The good news is that the upper windshield has not leaked a drop, so the repairs effected in Alameda seem to have done the trick. But this weather will make for a less pleasant drive along the coast, in contrast to the lovely weather we've had the last two days, and so we will probably turn inland at Reedsport rather than proceed all the way to Florence.

Tonight we will be in Eugene visiting with friends, after a quick stop at Northwest RV Supply for some replacement switches, and another fuel stop.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

We are at the Cher-Ae Heights Casino, near Trinidad, California (map). We've stayed here before, and our notes from that time said that it was a hidden gem, so we were looking forward to it. It was just as beautiful as we remembered when we arrived, and once again we had the RV lot to ourselves. A short while later, one other rig, a small class-C, parked a few spaces away.

Even though they have a decent restaurant here, we'd been cooking pasta e fagioli in the crock pot, and you can't really smell something like that cooking all day and then not eat it. We decided instead to wander to the bar inside that same restaurant (as opposed to the much nosier and smoky bar next door) and have our first pre-dinner glass of wine overlooking Trinidad Bay and the fishing fleet. Since we don't gamble, this would be our tribute to the tribe for their parking generosity.

On the short walk from the RV lot to the casino, we were asked by no fewer than five different shuttle bus drivers if we wanted a ride. Now, one or two I expected, but this was beyond the pale, especially since the parking lot was empty. I knew it was Saturday night, and things tend to get busy, but this many shuttles was beyond even that. As we approached the front door, we saw a short line of people in front of a table marked "Event Tickets." We asked a nearby employee who said the event was "fights."

I assumed this was a telecast of a major boxing match or some such, not thinking much more about it, and we went in for our cocktails. When we came back out the lot was filling fast, and a small army of security and parking personnel in reflective vests and waving lighted batons was directing cars. We asked one of the security officers, who was clearly bracing himself for a long night, and he explained that people were arriving to see live fights in some sort of "tough guy" competition. He told us they had sold 1,000 tickets, and that did not include contestants, promoters, and what-not. I later found out this is a regular event promoted by a California fight club called "So You Wanna Fight."

Before we made it back to the bus, a couple more security folks suggested we should move. Not because we were taking up three spaces (and I was glad, in hindsight, that I chose to park this way, which occupied the minimum number of usable spaces), but because we would be parked-in for the night. I explained that we weren't going anywhere till morning anyway, and they agreed when I expressed reservations about moving a 24-ton bus after a couple glasses of wine. We put our cones out, though, with their agreement, to define a buffer zone.

Our position here on the hill gave us front-row seats for the parking-lot mayhem that was to come, and after dinner we settled in with some more wine to enjoy the show. Not only did they fill every striped space in every lot, by show time (7pm, we guessed), they were putting cars on the grass, in the traffic lanes, and wherever they could squeeze one in. Considering that these folks were here basically to watch people beat the snot out of one another, I was surprised by the number of young women in club-wear -- really, date-night at the fights?

The event must have let out at midnight, and the next two hours was a spectacle of rowdy drunkenness. I saw one fistfight in the parking lot resulting in an arrest, with the three accompanying scantily-attired women forced to wait in the chilly parking lot while the sheriff's department finished their investigation. In unrelated incidents, two ambulances came to cart attendees (not contestants) away. And a pair of drunk young women circled the bus and even knocked on the door at 1:30am (I did not answer).

In the end, no harm was done, at least from our perspective, and we got free entertainment out of the deal. I suspect the elderly couple in the class-C was less amused. I have to confess, though, that it is disturbing to see how obsessed some folks are with violence. This event is billed as boxing and "MMA" (mixed martial arts), but that's really a euphemism for few-holds-barred all-out fisticuffs. That this can be a thousand people's idea of a hot date on a Saturday night says something about the human condition. I guess Elton John and Bernie Taupin were right.

We had a lovely drive yesterday up US-101, arriving at the Pacific coast just south of here, in Eureka. It's always a workout, both mentally and physically, driving the twisty stretch through the redwoods from Leggett to Garberville, but the scenery is well worth it. High season has not yet started here, and even some of the cheesy tourist attractions in the redwoods were still closed on a Saturday, so the traffic was fairy light. And one particularly slide-prone section just north of Confusion Hill has now been bypassed by a long bridge across that bend of the river since the last time we came this way, three years ago.

Today we will continue along the coast through California and Oregon. We need to be in Eugene tomorrow afternoon, so tonight we will stay somewhere along the Oregon coast, south of Reedsport. Tomorrow we will turn inland at either Reedsport or Florence and cross over to the Willamette Valley.

Northbound

We are at the Coyote Valley Casino, just north of Ukiah, California (map). We've stopped here once before, but on that trip elected not to stay. I think we must have been needing a restaurant on that pass, and this place has little more than a burger stand. This time, we had dinner with us, and it was a fine place to spend the night. On top of that, we each got $10 in free play for signing up at their players' club, which we parlayed into $23 in actual cash between us, so it was a negative-cost stopover. The price we paid was the thumping of banda and rancheras music from 9-12:30 last night, emanating from the Friday night headliners, Los Ritmicos.

We spent our final three nights in the bay area in a familiar spot on the street in Redwood City (map). As with our previous pair of on-street spots in Sunnyvale and Mountain View, this one was now adjacent to an enormous construction project, tenant improvements on the office building which had been vacant on our last visit. At least there was no heavy equipment involved. Across the street from us at the county yard I noticed that the sheriff's department has stockpiled new police cruisers -- 2011 was the last model year for the legendary rear-wheel drive Fords, and many agencies ordered as many as they could afford before production ended.

Our plan a week or so ago was to leave there Thursday, to give ourselves a bit of extra breathing room on the trip north. We decided to extend to Friday morning to try to squeeze in another visit or two with some of the folks we had not yet been able to see. As it turned out, however, we just needed a day off. Louise was rather drained after an emotional breakfast meeting Wednesday, and I had a long day myself having taken the train both ways to San Francisco for my own lunch meeting, and we ended up having dinner just the two of us Wednesday evening, for the first time since leaving Alameda. Thursday morning we basically just crashed, and instead of scheduling a lunch meeting, I ended up working on routes and stops, and prepping the bus for travel. Thursday evening was our last dinner with our nieces and their family and also the all-important return of the car they had lent us for the duration of our stay.

We had a really nice visit in the bay area, albeit a bit shorter than ideal. But it also feels good to be back on the road, and also to be riding together in the bus for the first time in two weeks. As this may well be our final trip in Odyssey on the west coast, we opted for the more scenic coastal route, US-101, over the more expeditious Interstate 5. We had picture-perfect weather crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, and even stopped at the scenic overlook on the north side (for the rather prosaic reasons of cleaning the litter box and using the rest room).

Choosing the more scenic option made finding inexpensive fuel a bit more challenging. It turned out that the cheapest diesel in California on this route was here in Ukiah, $4.25 a gallon at a Shell station designed only for cars. Even small stations get their fuel from tanker trucks, and we found a way to maneuver in and out to put a hundred gallons in, which will get us all the way to Eugene, Oregon and even less expensive diesel.

Between the slog through San Francisco and the fuel stop, it was 4pm by the time we arrived here, and while we would have been better off getting a bit further, the overnight options get more limited north of here. So we decided to hunker down for the night. From here we will continue up the coast to Reedsport, Oregon, west of Eugene, before heading inland to join I-5. We have two stops to make in the Eugene area, otherwise we would continue on the coast route all the way to Washington. Tonight I expect to be on the coast somewhere near the Oregon border.

Death Valley 2012

We are at the Sunset Campground in Death Valley National Park (map), at Furnace Creek. We've been in this campground before, just a few spaces away, and while it's better than not having a spot in Death Valley at all, it definitely leaves much to be desired. We are here, rather than at our preferred venue of Furnace Creek Campground, because this latter campground is actually closed right now for repairs.

The closure of Furnace Creek means that Sunset is actually pretty busy right now. Most of the tenters are up at Texas Springs, which has been restricted to tents only for the duration of the closure, but all the RVs are here at Sunset, and they even have one of the four large overflow areas open.

Sunset is, for all intents and purposes, a giant gravel parking lot. The spaces are separated by chalk lines and small concrete parking bumpers, and are about 20' wide. We were fortunate to snag one at the end of a row, so we'll have a little bit more breathing room when 16 or so of our biker friends show up later for a barbeque. Also, we'll have no neighbor on that side for the duration of our stay. The 45' class-A that was just a couple feet from us on the other side when we arrived pulled out this morning, so we have a nice view of the mountains out both sides at the moment.

Star Equipment had Ben and Karen's generator back together by 4ish Wednesday, and we got Odyssey ready to roll just before the first start-up. We all had a brief moment of panic when the set shut down soon after startup; it turned out that even the shop tech had trouble bleeding all the air out of this system. Once bled, it ran fine for quite a while, although the generator head was making a grinding noise under heavy load.

They had it all buttoned back up a little bit after closing time, and I gave Ben some parting advice, in particular that the grinding noise was probably the generator end-bearing going, and it should get replaced ASAP. I suggested he test-run the unit the next morning, as the symptom prior to the head replacement had been that we could get it to run fine after bleeding, but it would overheat on startup after sitting overnight. Ben texted me yesterday morning to say that the morning test run went fine.

It was nearly 5pm by the time we got underway, and we made a stop at the Bass Pro Shop in the Silverton Casino on our way out of town (we needed new binoculars, and I wanted to have them for Death Valley). So it was well past sunset and nearly dark when we rolled into Pahrump. We needed salad to go with our crock pot dinner, and had planned to spend the night at Walmart, but when we saw there was a Smith's grocery next door to the Nugget Casino we ended up there instead (map).

Yesterday was stock-up day. After breakfast we walked right back to the Smith's, where I had spotted some nice bakery items and good wine bargain when I picked up the salad. Our next stop was the Rebel Oil station near the Walmart, for $800 worth of $3.699 diesel, the cheapest in the state. Walmart was next, for the remainder of the grocery list, one of our largest on account of the barbeque. And finally we rolled over to Pro-Flame Propane to fill up our empty cylinders on our way out of town. It was late afternoon by the time we rolled in to Furnace Creek, stopping at the water spigot before making our way to the campground (we carried only minimal water over the hill).

Our plan here for Death Valley was to join our friends for dinner tonight at the Wrangler Steakhouse, over where they are staying at Furnace Creek Ranch. Tomorrow was scheduled to be the annual cookout that we host at our camp site, and then Sunday evening we have a reservation for 18 (really) at the Furnace Creek Inn dining room. The weather, however, had other plans.

After realizing that there is a strong chance we will get rained on most of tomorrow and into the dinner hour, with a much lower chance of getting wet this evening, we suggested moving the cookout up to tonight. We emailed the whole gang this morning while most of them were still in Bakersfield, the traditional overnight stop on the way here from the bay area. Most of them have iPhones and we got lots of support for the idea right away, so we've been making preparations for dinner all day. It will also be ten degrees warmer tonight than tomorrow, so it's really the right move all the way around.

Before we had made that decision, I had started on some bus projects in what I thought would be a day of downtime. While wrapping up Ben's generator project Wednesday, we realized that the air cleaner on it had not been changed in a long time, and certainly before Burning Man. I can't tell you how much playa dust came out of the battery bay while I was working in there, so I could only imagine what that air cleaner looked like inside. Since I was at the Napa with Ben anyway to pick up new air and oil filters for his generator, I also picked up a fuel filter for my own genny, plus an air cleaner for our main engine -- an enormous affair that has to ride in the living room until it can be installed.

So this morning before we ran the generator for hot water, I went out and changed the fuel filter. The fuel line needed priming anyway, since the fuel level in the tank dropped below the pickup before we fueled in Pahrump, so it was the perfect time for a filter change. Already in my work clothes, I also changed the Detroit air filter, to get it out of the living room. While I had all the tools our and was still in my grubbies, I also fabricated some brackets for a new bed lift system, which I will share in a later post.

Louise got most of the dinner preparations done without me, and now we are mostly ready except for awaiting the guests. We've asked them to bring as many chairs and tables over from the hotel as they can -- Sunset does not even supply picnic tables at their sites. No wood or charcoal fires are permitted here, so we also asked some of the gang who are driving down in four-wheel vehicles to bring an extra LP cylinder, a portable LP grill, and whatever chairs they could scrounge. With any luck, most folks will have a place to sit. We put out the six chairs and two stools we carry with us, along with two folding end tables and a wobbly folding dining table.

Most of our motorcycling friends will be leaving Monday or Tuesday to head back to the bay area, where we will see them again in a few weeks. We, however, are staying right here in the park, because Louise's dad, stepmom, and brother are all heading here to celebrate her dad's 75th birthday. They'll be staying at the Inn Monday and Tuesday nights, and we'll celebrate with them before heading out ourselves on Wednesday.

Our plans upon departure are still a bit vague. I need to spend some time on line to see if there are any boats we should look at in southern California, which would send us in that direction. Our friend Alfred will also be in the area mid-week, and we've agreed to meet up with him, either en route to SoCal if that's the way we head, or else here in Death Valley, perhaps at a more primitive spot.

I'm still pretty sore from the great battery project, not to mention the ongoing issues I have been having with my right shoulder, and so I am going to try to book a massage at the Inn in the next few days. We'll also probably do a little sightseeing, perhaps with Martin and Stephanie, who are bringing their Range Rover. There are also two extra motorcycles coming with the group, courtesy of one very large pickup truck, so who knows, we might even get in a ride.

Three cheers for the Orleans

We are at the Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada (map), just a block from B&B Coach Works. I had resisted coming here earlier in our Las Vegas visit because I had read on Casino Camper that they no longer permitted parking, but that turned out to just be an inexperienced user who apparently didn't understand the "wink, wink" practice of welcoming RV patrons while complying with city and county codes. Gary at B&B said he still saw rigs here daily, and we saw them ourselves on the way in to the shop.

Most of the clearly-marked oversize vehicle lot is angle-striped with 70' spaces for trucks, and has all the feel of a truck stop. Many rigs use the lot nightly, and I am guessing the hotel offers a CDL discount. The south portion of the oversize lot, however, has more conventionally striped (but faded) 40' spaces, not long enough for semis, and this is where most of the RVs park. It was pretty empty when we arrived Friday afternoon, and we selected a spot well away from the bustle of the hotel, but not right up against the street. There were no autos in this section of the lot.



Today, however, is a different story, and we've gone from being in the RV ghetto to instead being in the dance mom ghetto. We are surrounded by cars, many sporting window-paint signs and slogans supporting the cheer or dance squad of the daughters within. There are several rigs here similarly decorated, including the classic Country Coach Concept across from us, and even one rig that's set up a table and chairs (thus breaking the aforementioned wink-wink contract) and which has had a passel of giggling cheerleaders milling around it since yesterday.





Our first indication that this was not going to be a normal casino stopover came Friday evening, when we went into the casino to eat at The Prime Rib Loft, a steakhouse just one notch down from the casino's high-end Canal Street restaurant. We had reservations and so had no trouble getting seated, but as soon as we walked on to the casino floor we were startled to see the whole place filled from one end to the other with preteen, tween, and teen girls, all wearing dance outfits that, frankly, would not have looked out of place in a production showroom on the strip, or possibly on the cocktail waitresses. While perhaps not entirely unbecoming on some of the older girls, it seemed strange in that only-in-Vegas sort of way to be seeing 10-year olds wandering a casino in skin-tight short-shorts, bare midriffs, and sequined halter tops with, umm, nothing to halt.

It was a good thing we had chosen the steak house and made reservations, because there were hundreds and hundreds of girls, along with parents, chaperones, coaches, judges, and an entire entourage. They filled every corner of the hotel, and long lines extended down the halls for all the more casual restaurants, including TGI Fridays, Fuddruckers, a Mexican place, the coffee shop, and the buffet. The Prime Rib Loft had a sign outside explaining they had added three low-priced ($10) entrees to the menu for the occasion.

That occasion would be, we later found out, the national finals for the dance and cheer organization Jamz, being held here in the arena attached to the hotel. The hotel is making a killing on this; in addition to whatever they are charging Jamz for the arena, they are selling rooms to the participants at $105 per night, and charging $30 a pop daily for anyone who wants to get in to the arena to watch, a sum which presumably only aunts, uncles, and close family friends might cough up. I fondly remember going to see my niece skate at events not unlike this one, and I suppose in hindsight I should be glad we didn't have to pay to get in to the skating rink.

Since we don't gamble or really take advantage of most casino amenities other than restaurants, it really did not bother us and we simply found the whole thing amusing (or maybe appalling, in the case of some of the outfits.) But this is a "locals" casino, and clearly some of the other patrons were annoyed. The poor security guards on the casino floor simply looked frazzled; we spoke to one, who allowed that he was glad he only had boys.

Seeing as we are staying in their parking lot for free, we again went back into the casino last night for dinner, this time selecting the Mexican restaurant, which does not take reservations. Mindful of Friday night's experience, we went at a time when we knew the lines would not be too long, and we only had maybe a ten minute wait to be seated. The food was actually quite good for an in-casino Mexican place. They seated a table of five women right next to us, whom I judged to be, well, judges. They ordered a lot of drinks -- I can only imagine what their day was like starting at oh-dark-early with a thousand screaming girls.



Friday was apparently the dance competition, and today is the last day of the cheerleading finals. I attempted to get a photo of what the hotel looks like with this sea of competitors, but it came out a bit blurry. I also snapped a shot of the practice area in a roped-off section of parking lot -- no way were we paying $30 apiece just to see what a live episode of Dance Moms looks like.



I am guessing it is much calmer here on "normal" days, but even with the cheerleading chaos, the parking lot has been comfortable and relatively quiet, and the casino has perhaps a dozen restaurants, including a moderate Asian place and a food court. There is also a cinema and a bowling alley, and, of course, gaming. It's a captive audience here -- there is nothing within walking distance unless you want to count the adult entertainment venue across the street, so they've tried to provide everything in-house. They do also run a shuttle to the strip and to the other Boyd Gaming properties in town.



We're not the only bus here today, as I spotted this nice older Prevost in the truck section of the lot, next to a pair of Jamz-related motorhomes. And there have been a couple of older rigs that have made multiple appearances, arriving nightly but spending the daytime elsewhere. It's been pleasant enough that we are adding it back to the list of potential overnight spots in Las Vegas proper, an ever-diminishing number. We've seen security several times but have not received one of their occasional "no camping" notes, but neither have we extended jacks or slideouts, telltale signs of "camping" that can get the hotel in trouble. Perhaps on some future visit we will try some of the other restaurants or even take in a film.

Tomorrow morning we will roll back over to B&B to see about having the water damage under the bathroom window repaired. I would figure that to take at least two days, so we'll be in this neighborhood a bit longer. We have some packages inbound to the post office and UPS customer center in town as well, as long as we're hanging around anyway.

Greetings from (the bottom of) Lake Mead

Wednesday evening found us in the parking lot of Arizona Charlie's Hotel and Casino (map), well off the strip in the northwest quadrant of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was refreshing to find another casino in town that welcomed us. We ended up there because it was really the closest legal place to park near where our good friends Ben and Karen were staying in their bus.

We had earlier spent part of the day parked on the street near them so I could have a look at their troublesome generator with easy access to all my tools and work clothes. But that street was clearly posted No Parking (the homeowner told us we'd be OK there for a few hours). The generator was not making power, and by the end of the day I had more or less isolated it to a problem with the voltage regulator.

Since we are not gamblers, whenever we stay at a casino we like to eat in their restaurant in consideration of our parking there. We asked Ben and Karen to join us, and they very generously treated us to a nice meal in Ron's Steakhouse, the quietest and most smoke-free spot in the casino. The steakhouse was surprisingly good and we all enjoyed our meals; I had the very reasonable prix fixe special which involved a salad, steak, and dessert. Signing up for a players' club card also netted us a 10% discount, which again applied when the two of us returned to the casino Thursday evening to eat at the Sourdough Cafe, also tasty.

Thursday morning Ben came and picked me up so we could resume the generator troubleshooting; I needed to talk to Power Tech, the manufacturer on the east coast, who were closed by the time we had isolated the voltage regulator Wednesday afternoon. They gave me a couple additional tips, which confirmed that we had a regulator problem and that the generator head was otherwise good and still had enough residual magnetism. On a hunch, I cleaned off and tightened all the spade terminals on the regulator and its attaching harness and reinstalled it, and, voilà, we had 240 volts.

Our jubilation was short-lived, as the generator soon overheated. It turned out there was a whole bunch of air trapped in the cooling system, and it needed to be bled. Once that was done the set seemed to run fine. With a working generator on board after many months, and thus free to venture away from a power outlet, Karen and Ben agreed to join us in the desert for some boondocking mostly away from civilization, and as a good test of the generator with me and my tool box close at hand, plus Odyssey's generator and "buddy plug" available in the event of a problem.

And so it was that Friday we fueled and dumped our tanks at Morton's truck stop, formerly the Flying-J, just north of town, before heading east on Lake Mead Boulevard. We stocked up on groceries at the Albertson's and climbed the hill back up to the lake, where my plan was to stop at a gravel turnout on Northshore Drive, and scout the various boondocking spots by scooter. Oddly, the ranger at the park entrance tried several times to persuade us to go to the $10-per-night no-hookups campground at Callville instead, while we were at the gate buying a new annual parks pass.

That was a great plan, except that it had been so long since we last had the scooters out that I did not realize I was nearly out of fuel. So after pulling the bike out of the bay, the first thing I had to do was ride the ten miles or so to Callville anyway, to fuel up at one of the few dispensers in the park. While I was there I also checked out the little restaurant and store, and got rid of some of our recycling. I also made a quick loop through the campground, which was rather unappealing.

I had a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling ride down five miles of gravel washboard to the end of Boxcar Road, where I found a nice spot right by the lake. But we'd have to do the five miles of washboard in the bus, with no place to stop or turn around until right at the water's edge. After one of my mirrors fell off from the rattling two separate times on the way back, I then made my way here to Government Wash, a familiar spot for us. The lake has come back up about 50' since a year ago, and I was a bit surprised to find we could get the bus right down to the water here, too, and with much less fanfare and rattling.

The downside to Government Wash is that it is much more crowded here, especially on a holiday weekend like this. But I found a good spot within a hundred feet of the water, and after returning to the bus and stowing the scooter we made our way back here to claim it. We are parked on what used to be the lake bottom, a few hundred feet from Government Point (map). The GPS told us we were driving in the lake.

This spot puts us a good distance from most of the two dozen or so other rigs out here at Government Wash, at the expense of having a number of fishermen trailer their boats past us on their way to and from the little beach a couple hundred feet away. The official paved boat ramp here was closed years ago as the lake receded, but light trailers with small fishing boats can still launch from the gravel beach.
Of course the great thing about being this close to the water is that we were able to fill the hot tub. We're probably 40' or so above the lake surface, so my little pump struggled mightily and it took nearly five hours to fill, but fill it did and we have enjoyed a nice soak under the stars for the last two nights. It is very dark and private here.

Ben and Karen joined us Friday evening just as the last light faded from the canyon. With the lateness of the hour, we ended up riding in their Mini over to the mediocre restaurant at Callville for dinner, while the tub finished filling and heating in our absence. We have the two buses tied together in an odd arrangement wherein each of our shore cords is connected to the buddy plug on the other coach; in this way, whenever either of us runs a generator, the other gets some battery charging and hot water making.

Mostly it has been Ben running the generator, as they have a power-hungry fridge with a marginal set of batteries. And mostly his generator has been working, although it seems to continually develop the same air entrainment we solved on Thursday. There are a couple of pinhole leaks visible in the radiator, and some of the rubber hoses are 15 years old, so I am guessing air is ingressing into the coolant loop when the set cools down after a long run. I've had to go out with Ben and bleed the system twice since we set up here. The good news is that it is making good power, and once the air is bled the unit runs fine.

Ben and Karen will remain here one more night, and we'll likely stay beyond that, since we're already well-positioned, and I expect some of the crowd to leave after Presidents' Day. I've suggested to them that they get the generator fully serviced, to include a cooling system backflush, re-core the radiator, and replace all the old hoses. That ought to cure the current symptoms and give them a reliable generator moving forward.

Today we are looking at piling into their Mini and heading out to what's left of St. Thomas, a town that was inundated by Lake Mead in 1938 but is again uncovered due to the extremely low lake level. In all the times we have been to Lake Mead we have never seen it, and we're looking forward to it.