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Nick & Terry Russell, who publish the Gypsy Journal, some RV how-to books, and several blogs, http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/ sponsor two rallies each year. We are currently attending one in Yuma, Arizona.

Arrival day in the staging area where RVs lined up waiting to be escorted to camping sites looked like this.

Yuck. I had to walk through that muck from the motorhome to the car. Dave had it worse; he had to unhook the car from the motorhome in that muck.

Here’s the good news.  Look how close to an entrance gate they had us park. That’s Dave coming through the gate with our dash and windshield wiper in the foreground.

But, here’s more bad news–our electrical hookup. It’s only 20 amp. When it works at all. Dave has had to go our several times to reset the circuit breaker.

Then more good news. The seminars have been fun and informative and the vendors have lots of good stuff we need.

Of course, that means we are spending lots of money. Here’s the company that got most of the money doing upgrades to our RV.

At least now our car has it’s own braking system for when we are towing it so it won’t try to push the coach if we should have an emergency. And the coach itself should be much easier to handle while driving down the road. We’ll find out how true that is when we take our driving lessons starting tomorrow afternoon.

In the sunshine.

Which we’ve had all week once that first day’s rain was over.

Life is good.

TTYL,

Linda

We’ve been talking about getting a car to tow ever since we started talking about buying a bigger motorhome. After much discussion we decided we’d buy a Honda CR-V because Dave wants all-wheel drive so he can explore roads like this one–look for the backwards number 3.

And go places like this.

After looking at some of the roads he’d like to drive he decided we should look at Jeeps. So we did.

The Jeep Wrangler is too tall for me to get into. The Jeep Liberty doesn’t have enough foot room on the passenger side to accommodate my cranky knees. The two Dodges we looked at also had the lack of foot space problem. We didn’t even bother looking at the Ford he thought might work.

So now the view in our backup camera looks like this.

And the side view of our motorhome looks like this.

And the car that’s following us looks like this.

Yup. It’s a Honda CR-V. Amazing how that worked out, isn’t it?

TTYL,

Linda

In the midst of all the work it takes to move into and furnish a new RV we decided we needed to take a play day. So we made a day trip to Hoover Dam.

After a long drive over we turned in to the parking garage where we saw this statue.

Here’s the view from level three of the parking garage towards the new visitor center down the hill and across the street which made me wish we had my Segway with us. I made the walk down OK but had to take a break coming back up. I’m sure glad my cane has a seat on it so I could take that break. And I’m glad I didn’t have my Segway because the slopes coming out of the parking garage were intimidating to say the least.

Turning the other way you see the new bridge they are building that will route traffic away from the dam visitor traffic. When the new route is done, the old route will be closed on the Arizona side. You will still be able to drive across the dam from the Nevada side with a turn around on the Arizona side sending you right back across again. If you make it past the security checkpoint, that is. We saw a utility trailer turned back and were glad we were driving a rental car since RVs had much more detailed checks than we did.

And here’s the dam itself.

We both went down to the visitor center where we saw a film about the building of the dam. Then  I sat people watching and reading my book while Dave went on a tour. Here’s bunch of pictures he took on the tour.

And here’s a few of Lake Mead behind the dam.

As you can see, it was a good day to go play.

TTYL,

Linda

We spent all day today shopping at Camping World. OK, we didn’t leave here until after noon. And it’s about an hour’s drive over and another back. And we were home before five o’clock. And we ate lunch while we were out. But, it felt like all day at Camping World.

I can’t believe how much stuff we need to buy just because we traded motorhomes. The new one has a 50 amp power system and the old one had a 30 amp power system so none of our electrical cords and adapters work. The new one has different sized fuses so even that part of the electrical system had no backups in our collection.

The steps are bigger in the new one so we needed to buy new step carpets to help keep the outside where it belongs.

The dump hoses can be reused but we needed some new fittings.

We need to buy a new ladder for this taller rig but it wouldn’t fit in the tiny rental car so that one is still on the list.

We bought a new water pressure regulator which then needed a short section of new water hose in case we can’t screw it right to a campground’s water bib.

We bought a new folding step because the jacks on this thing can lift it so high off the ground that I need help getting up onto the first step of the RV.

And that’s just stuff we bought today.

We’ve already bought a new lap rug to keep me warm when sitting in the Euro Chair. And new glasses and dishes because we have room for them now. And a couple pocket litter trays because we don’t want to scratch the buffet by dumping our keys on it. And a new coffee mug that  I can microwave my morning eggs in. And a bar stool I can sit on while I cook.

And we still need a new paper towel holder because keeping the one from the View would have left screw holes in the wall and we weren’t willing to do that.

The good news is we didn’t have to buy a new couch for the old RV. The dealer we traded it to called today to see if we, by any chance, still had the old couch. It seems it will cost them $1700 parts, shipping, and labor to replace it. So we’re good with the money we are spending.

TTYL,

Linda

Buying an RV in California without paying their 8.5% sales takes requires jumping through some hoops. One of those hoops is that the RV must be actually delivered out of state. Stier’s RV has a process for that.

A driver hired by Steir’s drives the RV, with you in it and his pickup truck towed behind it, across the state line to Primm, Nevada. There you are met by a notary who fills out forms and witnesses your signature that you did indeed take delivery out of state.

The route from Bakersfield, California, to Primm, Nevada, goes through the Tehachapi mountains passing right alongside the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Tehachapi Loop. It’s hard to take pictures at highway speeds through a window with a screen on it but here’s one of the loop right beside the highway and another of it running perpendicular to the highway as the railroad curves and climbs.

There are three casinos in Primm, built right along the Nevada state line so you go from empty California to busy Nevada all at once.

The transactions all took place inside our new home. While the notary had Dave sign one set of papers the driver finished his filling out another.

Then they left and we were on our own. We taped to the windshield the temporary permit Karen of Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, jumped through hoops on our behalf to get us then drove another couple of hours to Pahrump, Nevada, to a SKP co-op where we will stay until we feel more settled. If we are lucky, we will buy our new toad in nearby Las Vegas and get the hitch and supplemental brake installed there. After all the challenges of buying the RV here we would probably head back to South Dakota to buy the toad if it wasn’t so definitely winter there.

Now we have 15 days to get new tabs for our license plates. Once again Karen is jumping through those hoops for us. Putting the plates on now is not an option because any cop who decided to run them may then identify this as a stolen vehicle since the registration of the plates was for the View not the Journey. The new tabs will change that status letting us keep our easily remembered license plate number.

The only thing that actually went smoothly about this whole purchase was the transfer of our insurance from the View to the Journey. Hopefully, we will eventually get all the other pieces to match our new reality–which actually doesn’t feel very real yet.

TTYL,

Linda