Las Vegas NASCAR

We moved over to the track today where we will be through the NASCAR weekend. I made an appointment with the Saturn Dealer here in Las Vegas to get an estimate on the Saturn Monday. If it is reasonable I might leave it hear and come back to pick it up when their done. I’m getting kind of tired answering questions every time someone sees it.

I guess I didn’t mention it but the night Susan ran into the gate, she was going over to spend the evening with her favorite NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson.

Even though she was pretty upset she still had a good time.

The race weekend was fun and it sure was good to see some old friends again. Some of which we only see at the track. While we were there we got photographed for a promo and might be selected to have the photo appear on TV and in some magazines. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

Sam’s Town Las Vegas

We have arrived at Sam’s Town RV Park in Las Vegas today. After dropping off the rental car this morning we got on the road by 8:30a. Not bad. We had a good drive and made it to Las Vegas in about 4 hours. We will hang out here at Sam’s Town until Wednesday when we head on over to the Race Track where we will spend the rest of the week. Tomorrow I am going to call the Saturn dealer here to see if they do collision repairs. If so we will swing by on our way back to Havasu since it is on the way to see if it can be repaired and get an estimate. We have sure been getting a lot of attention with a busted up car parked by the motorhome. It is amazing what stress can do to you. I never stress over anything until this car incident. The stress must have lowered my resistance because I have come down with a cold. It has been so long since I had a cold (probably 10 years) that I forgot what one felt like and didn’t understand why I was feeling so funky. Hopefully it will be short lived.

Oh CRAP

Well sometimes your luck just runs out. Susan and I have been driving for MANY years with out an incident. But last night that all changed. Susan was blinded by the sun for a split second and had a collision with a gate. No one was hurt physically but Susan was pretty upset and I lost a night sleep trying to decide what to do next. Turns out since we had such a good driving record that I figured we didn’t need collision coverage on our insurance. WRONG! This one is on my dime.
Otherwise we are having a good time here at the NASCAR race in Fontana. I ended up renting a car to get us from the Elks Lodge in Ontario where we like to stay to the track and back everyday.

Upsetting service experience

It came time for an oil change on our Saturn and since there is no Saturn dealer in Havasu and we are traveling I scoped one out in route. I found one in Ontario where we are right now and since we had a day to kill before NASCAR I zipped it over to Saturn of Ontario. Now I usually spend about $50 for a synthetic oil change at the Saturn dealers. This is not really a bad price since the price of Synthetic oil has reached $5 a quart. It would cost me around $35 to do it myself so for an extra $15 I will let them do it. They also give everything a good check over and top off fluids, which I probably wouldn’t do. Anyway, the upsetting part is they handed me a quote before the job for $82. I questioned the amount and they said that is what they charge for Synthetic. I was ready to decline but it needed doing. However after the job was done the bill came to $53. What was the $82 estimate for anyway? You would think they should know what it cost to do an oil change on their own brand. There should be no estimate and just a set price. In fact the other dealers I have gone to have a set price posted and that is what you pay. They almost lost my business over this.

PITA

What a pain in the…Well you know what. We made our way to the Ontario Elks Lodge where we will be for the rest of the week. From here we driver over to Fontana for the NASCAR race. I hate driving through LA. The traffic was a mess and the roads are the worst. The motorhome got a good shakedown driving these roads. We are settled in for the week so it’s all good now. Even the refrigerator and Water Heater are working.

Not the best day

Today was a challenge for us. It all started sometime early this morning while we were sleeping. The wind started to blow, REAL HARD. Then the rain started to fall REAL HARD. Then the power went out. No big deal I thought. I got up and shut off the main breaker inside the motorhome just in case there is a glitch with the power coming back on. Don’t want to blow anything like the refrigerator circuit board. I woke this morning and the wind had subsided but it was still raining pretty good. I switched the breaker back on and the motorhome came to life…except the refrigerator. When the rain died down enough I went outside to investigate. The gas valve would kick in but the igniter was silent. I could smell plenty of LP so I stuck a match to the burner and it lit. OK I thought, as long as it is running we can travel and not worry about our food getting warm. We packed up and hit the road. Susan went back a couple of times and the refrigerator was still on. After driving through some pretty nasty weather, we arrived at the Santa Barbara Elk’s lodge where we had made reservations. First thing I noticed was there was a motorhome in the spot we had reserved. I headed for the office to see what the deal was and found they are closed for President’s day. OK I guess I will just take another site, hope it’s not reserved. Susan switched on the water heater and it lit but the igniter kept sparking and it shut right off. Now what, I thought. Our water heater is gas only, a power glitch should not effect it. I pulled the board thinking water must have gotten in from the drive in the rain. Nope, Dry. I reset all the connectors with no change. Finally I did the last step in troubleshooting. Beat on it. I thumped on it several times and the igniter shut off and it stayed lit. I will deal with that later. Now it’s time to move on to the refrigerator. I took the cover off the board and checked the fuses. Darn, they are good. I traced wires and found the igniter and checked the connectors. AH HA, a loose connector. I reset the connector and switched on the refrigerator and it lit immediately. Wow, I had thought last nights power glitch took out the board. Well it seems everything is working again. The rain has stoped and the sun is shining. Now as long as someone doesn’t come by and try to kick us out of this site, we are good.

Wish us luck

Our time is up here at San Antonio Lake. We are heading out tomorrow. Tomorrow the weather is not favorable at all. Normally we would stay and let the weather pass by. I have checked the weather reports and there is not going to be a good time to travel for a few days and I need to get Susan down to Fontana for the next NASCAR race. Actually we are not driving to Fontana tomorrow. We will make a stop over in Santa Barbara for the night and do the second half on Tuesday. Since I have been breaking my rules lately (2X2X2) I figured I could break my travel in bad weather rule. We have a 3 hour drive tomorrow and if it takes us 5 hours, that’s OK. I will just take my time and drive very careful and defensive.

Mixed weather

We have had some mixed weather up here at San Antonio Lakes near Paso Robles. When we got here on Wednesday it was sunny with 60° temps. It quickly turned to rain then hale. Through the night it rained pretty hard. Since then it has been alternating between rain, fog, and sun. It gets into the 30s at night (good thing I fill the propane tank) and 60 during the day. We have use of the group room, which is heated though so all is well. Last night we had a crock-pot dinner since yesterday was the official arrival date and some didn’t arrive until later. This morning was omelet in a bag. This is where you dump all your omelet goodies in a baggie and boil it for about 10 to 15 minutes. They come out pretty well. We got a video feed going this morning with a former rally attendant who is now in Tennessee. Pretty Cool. We have enjoyed the company of Wild turkey, deer, and there was even a mountain lion spotting.

RV Rally

We are now at San Antonio Lake up in the hills just west of Paso Robles, CA for an RV Rally. We left Bakersfield this morning in good weather and it went down hill from their.

We traveled a couple of hours in rain. Most of the time it was just a drizzle but came down hard at times. As we were approaching Paso Robles the skies cleared up again and it was a good drive up to the lake. The motorhome and car were a real mess but as you can see by this photo,

I had a chance to clean everything up. We will be here until Monday morning. Hopefully we will have some good weather.

Truck jam

We thought we were getting an early start this morning until we got to the AZ-95 and I-40 junction. There must have been 500 trucks parked everywhere, and I am not exaggerating. We pulled in for gas and people were even parked in the gas isles. I had to ask one to move so I could get in to fuel up. What was going on was they had eastbound I-40 closed off because of snow. Fortunately we were heading Westbound so we got through OK with little delay. The weather today was so much better than yesterday but we did run into a good bit of wind between Needles and Ludlow. Enough that I thought I might have to pull off if it got any worse. Once we got closer to Barstow the wind let up and the rest of the trip was OK. I probably got pretty lousy mileage though because I was bucking a head wind the whole trip.

As expected we found snow in the Tehachapi’s but the roads were clear and dry.

Once we got over the mountain it turned from white to green. That area is pretty cool with miles of rolling green pastures. We are at one of our favorite places, Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield. Unfortunately there are no more oranges left on the trees. We never seem to come through here anymore during the peak orange season. Tomorrow we will be heading for the hills west of Paso Robles where we will be until Monday, unless the weather says different.

Hold on a minute

Or more like a day… We were planning to take off tomorrow for an RV rally in California. After checking with a couple of weather websites we have decided to hold off until Tuesday. The weather for tomorrow isn’t going to be as bad as expected but they are still saying rain and winds. Tuesday will be a lull between the storms since another is coming later this week. We should be at the rally location before the next hits. We have access to a clubhouse at the rally so rain will not hamper our fun at all. Hopefully it will clear before we leave the rally.

No work today

I has been raining all day. Well, It actually started about 10:00a and has not stopped yet. I got such a good deal on some door casing the other day that I decided to use the same for baseboard so off to Home Depot today to pick up some more. Yes I did say Home Depot. Susan is a BIG NASCAR fan and a fan of Jimmy Johnson in the number 48 car, which is sponsored by Lowes. Normally she won’t let me shop at Home Depot but if they have what I need at a better deal Home Depot it is. The door casing I bought is priced at $0.72 a foot but they had 5 seven foot lengths packaged together for about $9.00. That’s about $0.27 a foot for the same stuff. I also had time to clean my leveling jack before the rain came. The jacks have been a little lazy retracting lately and a good wipe down usually fixes that. I need to get up to the Casita tomorrow and check for leaks. I doubt it leaks but you never know and the rain will be a good test.

I sure hope the rain lets up before we need to take off for California. The plan is to head out Monday but like I said before if the wind comes up or it is still raining a lot we will wait until Tuesday. The weather reports still say Tuesday is a good day.

Susan is a happy camper now since NASCAR has start up again. As I sit here writing this post we are watching the Budweiser Shootout.

Just about done

We were supposed to get a roof yesterday but no one showed up.

Well as you can see they did show up today. It didn’t take them too long to install the complete roof. Now Our Casita doesn’t look like the oddball in the neighborhood. It looks pretty much complete. It still needs the final plumbing and electrical done inside along with a few minor things but it is pretty much done. All in all, it went together pretty quick and I am happy with the results.

We had planned to take off Monday to head for an RV rally in California but the last weather report I saw said 65 MPH winds. I don’t think so. We might wait until Tuesday and break our 2X2X2 rule and drive 5 hours to the first stop.

We got brown

Yesterday they applied the final brown coat of stucco on our casita. It sure looks good. The roof was supposed to go on today but no one showed up. The contractor called and said they will be here tomorrow morning. The bathroom door was also installed today. The casita is really coming together.

Our Verizon cell phone coverage is terrible here in Lake Havasu. There is Verizon across the lake on the California side but here on the Arizona side we are on extended service. Usually the Extended service works well however here in Havasu we get dropped calls, calls that don’t go through, and just plain weird stuff happening. I was told that if enough people call Verizon they will eventually setup service here in Havasu. So I called. Ironically, right in the middle of my conversation with customer service, the call was dropped. What really bothers me is they didn’t have the decency to call back.

Paint and tile is in

I spent 3 days painting the inside of our Casita. Not that it is big, it’s just that I am not an experienced painter, I hate painting, and am too critical of my own work. But it came out great.

The first day I spent cleaning and prepping for the paint. The next I put 3 gallons of primer on the walls. The 3rd day I applied 2 gallons of paint. I got lucky on the paint since my neighbor came over to help. It made the job go a lot faster.

The tile went in today.

There are still a couple of pieces that need to be installed arount the tub but we are waiting for the bathroom door to be installed to get the measurements. Tomorrow they are supposed to apply the color coat on the outside. It’s getting close!