We're not quite dead yet!

Wow, it's been an entire week since I last posted an update here, and I know you people have been eager for more. Another note about weeks: it's one week before I head back home, which means soon Grandpa's going to be doing these again. Anyway, back on to what's been going on.

Thursday, May 23

Today we left Page, Arizona, and headed to Pipe Springs National Monument. From there we disconnected and took the towed sixty miles down a dirt road to Toroweap, then to the Grand Canyon.

Really, all the Grand Canyon has going for it at this point is that it's big. I guess I'm just too tired of seeing big rocks and canyons in the desert. After that we headed to Zion National Park. It was crowded. For two thousand miles (or so) all the parks we've seen have been mostly empty. But there at Zion, they had been going strong for an entire month. We found somewhere to camp that night and spent the next day in the park.

Friday, May 24

After we got out of the RV park, we parked in the visitor's center parking lot and rode the bus around the canyon. Because of all the traffic, it's much more efficient to keep cars off the road and instead have people only ride the buses. That's fine with me; it made for a lot less traffic inside the park. We hiked a bit and saw everything to see there, then headed on.

We stayed that night in the FamCamp at Nellis Air Force Base. We asked the attendant what we could do in that town, then followed their suggestion and went to the Tournament of Kings dinner show in the Excalibur Casino. Oh, I guess I should of mentioned: Nellis is in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show had things like knights riding horses, swordfighting, joustion, stuff like that. We had a really good time there. (No pictures allowed during the show though. They hadn't been invented yet.) The only part I didn't like was having to walk through the casino floor itself to get to the theater. Too much cigarette smoke.

We spent the night there in Nellis, then went to go see the Hoover Dam the next day.

Saturday, May 25

We took a guided tour of the dam, which included seeing the generator room and the pipes that transport something like ninety-thousand cubic feet of water a second to turn the generators. The generator room was eight stories tall and six-hundred-and-fifty feet long, with eight generators, each of which was seven stories tall, although only the top thirty feet of them were above the floor.

After that, we went back to Nellis, washed our sheets and towels, and slept there that night.

Sunday, May 26

After waking up, dumping the sewage tank, hooking up the towed, disconnecting, and all that stuff, we headed out, going, yet again, west. We followed the road we were on right through Death Valley. We went to the lowest spot in the United States, and started going up a long, steep hill to get out of the valley. It was hot enough that coming up that hill, we had vapor lock, which Grandpa explained to me was basically the gas boiling in the tanks. So we turned off the motorhome, set up the awning, and waited an hour or so for it to cool down enough to keep going. After that, we went maybe a thousand feet before more vapor lock. We waited a while longer, and decided to disconnect our towed vehicle. I drove that behind Grandpa for sixty miles, stopping every once in a while to let the engine cool off or for the gas to cool down, until it was late enough in the day and at a high enough altitude that it was cool enough to not worry about that anymore. We found a campsite and camped there for the night.

Monday, May 27

We got up that morning and drove two hundred miles to Yosemite National Park, then seventy miles through the park, then another fifty miles (or more!) to a campsite that wasn't full. Memorial Day weekend is their busiest weekend, and Yosemite is one of the top most-visited national parks in the country. There were a lot of people there. We got out a few places and looked around, but there were just too many people, and we went ahead and moved on.

That night, at the restaurant we ate at, the lady cleaning tables asked me if I was looking for a summer job. I had to tell her that if I was looking for a job, it would be back home in Georgia. Kinda hard working somewhere when you live almost three thousand miles away.

Tuesday, May 28

We did mostly traveling yesterday, and all of it was to George and Ruth Beckman's house, where they let us hook up and stay. We socialized for a while, and they showed us their house and yard. It's really green here, which is welcome after weeks of desert. :) They fed us dinner, which was the best vegetables we've had since we left. They just don't know how to cook vegetables in the restaurants here. :)

Wednesday, May 29

Today we decided to stay at the Beckman's for another night, so we went to the car wash and washed the motorhome for the first time this trip. We'll stay here again tonight and tomorrow head out again -- destination, west!

-Dennis