Our Next Adventure

One thing you may have noticed if you check our blog very often is that I’m not very good about keeping it updated! It tends to go in spurts! Make sure you check the “titles” because sometimes I like to sneak something in there…it’s a great feature that I can change the date/time!

So we’re on to a new adventure! Don and I left Southern California a week ago. Originally we had planned to head east via I-40, going through Arizona, New Mexico, etc. heading towards Hutchinson, Kansas…our destination this trip! One of the great benefits of this lifestyle is changing plans in the spur of the moment, or heading down a different road than the one that you had originally planned! Anyhow, Don happened to read me a post on his MCOA (Monaco Coach Owners Association) online forum. A MCOA friend of ours was taking a beading class in Las Vegas. Don asked me if I would like to go to it! What a crazy question! With a few phone calls, we were set and headed north instead of east! Once we got into our park in Las Vegas, Don noticed a fluid all over the back of the motorhome. A quick call to Monaco and we were somewhat set for service (at least on their dime)! So that meant instead of taking off from Vegas on Sunday as planned…it would be another day or two! Once another of our MCOA friends (Maribel & Bob Clerc) found out that there were two MCOA couples (ourselves and Glenda & Ray Roe) at Arizona Charlie’s in Vegas…they changed their plans and moved just a block from us! ( It made for some good times and we all had fun! Glenda & I went to our class on Saturday and ended up making a beautiful Victorian necklace. Glenda finished hers that night and next morning…me, well I finally finished mine today while we were driving down the road! Ray & Don worked on making a modification on the motorhome while we were playing. It was a great bargain…Ray loves chocolate chip cookies. Guess what they had on Sunday morning? ( We had a great steak dinner at Sam’s Town with everyone on Saturday night. Since we hadn’t eaten nearly enough, we decided to go to the Sunday brunch at Arizona Charlie’s, then Glenda, Maribel and I spent a few hours in the casino. Can’t say that we made a lot of $$, but we did have fun playing on a Rapid Roulette game! Rapid Roulette is an actual roulette wheel but you place your bets on a computerized screen. It was a little hectic because you have to place your bet(s) quickly. We learned just before we quit how to correct mistakes, that would have made it so much easier! Oh well…we had a lot of fun. I can be easily entertained!

Monday morning Don took the motorhome down to Freightliner where it was determined that an air conditioner hose had come off. Ended up being a little more complicated and they couldn’t get the fan to turn once they were done. It was the end of the day so they asked Don to come back on Tuesday morning. I spent the day running errands and such and when I was done, the Roe’s, Clerc’s and myself went to the new Wynn Casino and then onto Caesar’s Palace. We thought we were going to get an ice cream at Planet Hollywood, but with the “immigration walkout” on May 1…we were out of luck! Since I don’t want to “get started” on my views of THAT subject, I’ll just go on from there! Decided that it was probably our last night together, so we opted to go to the buffet at Sam’s. First we all stopped at the Clerc’s for an “attitude adjustment”! The guys headed home after dinner and the girls…well; we decided to repeat the night before!

Tuesday, Don headed back to Freightliner and I went searching for a couple of stores! Finally found the last one (Trader Joe’s) just as Don was finished (turned out to be a broken electrical connection). At last…we were once again on our way! We made it to an Elk’s lodge in Richfield, UT. No hook-ups, but a place to park for the night. There was a fifth-wheel parked there when we pulled in, but it was only the two of us for the rest of the night. Wednesday morning we pulled out fairly early. We made one of those “last minute” decisions and decided to get off the major highway (I70) and turned onto Hwy. 50. Actually, one of our deciding factors was a bridge we saw on the map that was over 1,000 feet above the river! Well….we’re going to have to go back to see the bridge. It was the Royal Gorge in Colorado and you can no longer take vehicles (especially big RV’s) over it! Since there was really no place to park alongside the highway and unhook the car, we decided that would have to be our “next” trip! We made it to a RV park in Gunnison, CO. *I* decided that *we* needed to take Tess for a walk since she had been cooped up in the motorhome for the last few days. There was this nice big field next to us (can you see where this is going to?) so we let her loose! She runs like a gazelle at times, or a rabbit or something…not sure you would call it dog! Anyhow, she’s running and running and have a great time until…she found something! Not sure if it was a bag of fish guts, bait or what but man, she rolled, and rolled and then rolled some more in it! We kept calling her to come back, but it was as if she didn’t even hear us. I don’t remember how we finally got her back (I think she was chasing something after her romp with the fish guts and then lost whatever it was). Once we got her back on her leash…she ended up getting a bath! Let me tell you, that water out of the hose was COLD! In Vegas we had been experiencing temps in the high 80’s to low 90’s! Not so in Gunnison! The night before the guy told us it had gotten to around 32 degrees! It was about 58 degrees as Tess was getting her bath!

Thursday a.m. we headed out once again. Today was “bridge” day! Well, once we got to the Royal Gorge and discovered it wasn’t actually a bridge we would be driving on we kept heading east! We thought we had gotten up in altitude in Gunnison at 7,500’, but on our drive we went over Monarch Pass…at 11,000’! Saw lots of snow in the distance and as we got higher it was on all sides of us. It was weird seeing so much snow in May, but guess its pretty common at the higher elevations! We finally stopped in Lamar, CO at the Elks Lodge there. They were so friendly. The bartender invited me in to play BINGO that night and invited Don back in for a drink. Had dinner and went back to “visit”. While I didn’t have any “luck” with BINGO I found myself sitting across from an older woman who lives in Kansas. In talking to her, I found out she lived in Syracuse, KS. Earlier in the day Don’s dad had told me that his dad was born in Syracuse and there was some other family from there. Small world…this woman knew of the Eyre family! I could have chosen any other table to sit at, but I picked this one! I think we both had a good time.

This morning we once again got up and headed out. Our travel plans for this trip were to drive slowly and enjoy some sights, but since we had the delay in Las Vegas, it wasn’t to be! Finally arrived in St. John, KS where we will stay until Sunday when we move to the Kansas State Fair Grounds in Hutchinson. We will be attending a Monaco rally where we are meeting up with a few of our Monaco friends. It should be a lot of fun! The park here in St. John’s is nice enough…not many frills, but we have full-hook-ups with 50 amp electric so we are able to run everything and anything I want (and even some I don’t want)! There are only the camp hosts and us, so it’s certainly not crowded! ( I think we are going to drive back into Dodge City in the morning and see some of the sights. The weather today has been cold and drizzly with some light showers this evening. We’re toasty warm inside and aren’t planning on going anywhere for another day so let it rain!