Over 100

Temperatures and boats speeds were over 100 this weekend as the annual poker run came to town. These guys just blew everyone away on Lake Havasu. If you are not familiar with a Poker Run, this is where you go from location to location picking up a poker card and a clue where the next card is. After 5 stops and 5 cards, the one with the best poker hand wins. It is actually an excuse to get out on the lake and haul… well, you know what. Some of these boats can run over 160 mph.

I doubt the winnings even come close to what it costs these guys for the weekend with all the fuel these engines go through.

As mentioned above, we are experiencing temps over 100 now. It is getting about time to head on out of here for cooler weather. We are now running 1 air 24 hours and both during the day. It is staying real nice and cool inside the coach but who wants to sit inside all day. The coach that was next to me, which gave me my afternoon shade, has left. The good side is, I got my wide-open view back.

Laughlin River Run

This weekend is the 25th annual River Run in Laughlin Nevada. The River Run is similar to the Sturgis Motorcycle Run, on a smaller scale.

Well, if you want to call 70,000 bikes small. This is the same run where the Hells Angles got into a gun battle with another bike gang at the Harrahs Casino a couple of years ago. The entertainment includes bands such as Warrant, LA Guns, and ZZ Top, as well as other entertainment like The Bikini Bull Ride. We spent the whole day there Thursday looking through all the venders’ booths. Sure is a lot of nice merchandise.

It sure was hard to avoid bringing home a new toy.

I think Susan’s expression says, “I guess this means I don’t get a new motorhome?”

Actually the bike belongs to a friend of ours here in Havasu. He just took delivery of it a day before we headed over to the River Run.

He says he was glad he bought the bike before the rally because he sure wanted this Boss Hoss with it’s Viper V-10.

We can sit here at the resort and see (and hear) the bikes go by heading for Laughlin.

What fuel type poll results

Here are the results from the poll “What fuel Type is your RV?”. It’s no surprise that front engine gas and rear engine diesel came in 1st and 2nd. What surprised me is the amount of front engine diesels. I didn’t realize they were that popular. I would suspect if I ran this poll again in a couple of years, we will see a good number of rear engine gas. Also the difference between the trucks is what I expected.

I started a new poll. This one has to do with the price of fuel. This should be an interesting one since this directly affects all of us.

Survived another race weekend

All the food, fun and racing! What a great weekend. The weather held up for us. We only had rain late Friday night and it was gone by morning. We are now back in Lake Havasu after the weekend in Goodyear for the NASCAR race at Phoenix International Raeway. There were 3 races over the weekend and lots of excitement. Although we were camped about 12 miles away, we spent the days at the track in the infield. We would get up in the morning and head right on over to the track and not leave ‘till around midnight. I got lots of pictures and posted them to our Photo site. You can see them by clicking on the photo thumbnail link in the left hand column. Or click here.

This is a fan friendly track.

You can get close to the action and see many drivers wandering around.

There are places you can stand and see all the action in the garages.

Some of the RV sites in the infield are directly in front of the pits so you can watch all the action of your favorite driver as he comes in for fuel and tires. Susan’s favorite driver came in 4th after struggling with a dead alternator all night and having to run on batteries only. Holding in the top 5 all evening, there is no doubt he would have won if his car was up to it. Ends up his teammate came in first and my daughter’s favorite came in second.

Goodyear

No, not the tire. We are in Goodyear Arizona. We are at a resort about 12 miles from Phoenix International Raceway, or as it’s called around here, PIR. This is about the closest resort other than camping at the track. Cotton Lane RV and Golf Resort is OK but not as nice as Havasu RV Resort. We are parked in dirt and I had to ad an extension to the water hose to make it reach. My front tires are off the ground in order to level and I am at the end of the jacks and still not level. Their WiFi is not free as it is in Havasu. They are pretty specific as to how to park, 8 feet away from the utility box and the back of the coach is to be no further back than the sewer hookup. The sites are rather wide, plenty of room. But the park is nice, and many times better than it could be.

The wind must be plowing about 30 mph with 50 mph gusts. It is a side wind so the coach is shaking side to side quite a bit. I hope it mellows out this evening. The weather is calling for less wind tomorrow.

We took a ride over to the track today to check out the situation. Looks like we will be parking in dirt and either walking a distance or take the trams, if they are running when we arrive and leave.

We’re packed

We’ve packed up the motorhome and tomorrow are heading over to Phoenix Arizona. We are going to the NASCAR race this weekend. This will just be a weekend trip and we will be back in Lake Havasu on Sunday. Susan is looking forward to the race of course. Hopefully she can bring some luck to her driver because he had a bad weekend last weekend.

Frustration

I just spent the last 5 days battling with Direct TV. It all started when I lost my Local channels. They have always worked out here at the resort even though we are right on the edge of their spot beam, but the other day they went away and would only occasionally pop in and out. Being that this weekends NASCAR race was on FOX, one of our locals, I knew I needed to do something or Susan would not be happy. So I decided to switch from the locals to the West Feed out of Los Angeles. Now I have done this several times since we have been fulltiming and every time I have to explain that we LIVE in our RV and DO NOT have a permanent house and was told that because of this we don’t need a waver. After explaining this they have always switched us over. This time however was quite different. I spent over an hour on the phone yesterday and went through 5 different people. None of them could figure out how to do the switch. They all said “The Computer” said I was denied. After over an hour, 7 people and 3 different phone calls I finally got a hold of Danielle. Right away she said, “OK, no problem.” And it was done. Now later that evening I noticed we were missing some channels so I called again and got someone that was able to restore them. I also noticed that we were also receiving channels that we could not get before. Something is amiss I thought. This morning I logged on to my account on the Internet and noticed that during all the fiasco yesterday, somewhere along the line, I got changed over to a different programming package and to add the missing channels they just upgraded to the next higher package. This amounted to much more money of course. So today, it was back on the phone again. This time however, I was able to get it all straightened out with only 3 phone calls. All is well again.

A lot of washing going on

Just the other day I spent a couple of hours washing everything from the top of the motorhome right down to the cement pad it sits on.

The wind was so bad that it blew a lot of dirt from the construction in phase 3 through the rest of the resort. Well, yesterday was another one of those windy days so this morning I did the same thing. It’s almost futile but I just can’t stand it when everything has a layer of grit and looks brown from the dirt.

They are still pulling out of here by the loads. Maybe there is something going on that I don’t know about. I do know that the weather still isn’t the greatest around the country. There was one couple that left and within a few days they were back. I think they were heading for Wisconsin. We will be moving on down the road this coming Wednesday. We are just heading over to Phoenix Arizona to, what else, a NASCAR race. It is just a 4 day trip and we will be coming back to the resort. I might take a detour through Wickenburg though just to check it out.

Good news, the bed is fixed. It has been a few days now and it is holding air. No more waking up in a hole because most of the air has leaked out. Wahoo!

We have run into so many people that just love Susan’s cooking and are amazed that she can prepare such dishes in a motorhome using just the convection/microwave oven. The resort has asked her if she would run a cooking class in the clubhouse when we come back next year. Many people have suggested that she write a cookbook geared toward cooking in the motorhome. She has been wanting to but is not familiar enough with Microsoft Word to want to attempt it. Well, the other day I sat down and created a fill-in form for here in Word so maybe there will be a cookbook in the near future.

It’s getting younger

The days are getting hotter around here and most of the “Snowbirds” are on their was home. The resort is getting real empty lately. I have noticed the population of Lake Havasu is getting younger since the “snowbirds” are heading out and the younger generation is coming in with their boats. Man there sure is a lot of nice boats coming in. Where do these young people get their money?

Today I spent half the day hunting for leaks…in our bed that is. Our airbed has been leaking down on us over night. We wake in the morning lying in a hole. I found the seals in the pumps were deformed and after 4 phone calls to the company I finally convinced them to send me some new seals. This slowed the leaking quite a bit but it was still leaking down over night. Today I went down to Wal Mart and bought a BIG bottle of bubbles, the kind kids use to make bubbles with. I removed the air chambers from the bed and using a paintbrush, went over the whole surface of the chambers. I found a small leak in both chambers. Hopefully this repair will be the last for a while and we can get a good night sleep without waking in a hole.

April Fools

Happy April everyone. No April Fools here. It was an absolute beautiful day here at the resort. I just love sitting every evening at the dinner table and watch the California mountains swallow the sun and spit out sunsets that rival everything I have seen at the beach. This evening we had a double whammy with the sunset over the California mountains and the moon rise over the Arizona mountains. It is in the high 70s with a gentle breeze tonight. Just perfect! I broke out the camera and snapped a few night shots of the moonrise over the clubhouse in front of the motorhome.
Susan was excited to watch her favorite NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson #48 win yet another race today. Yesterday I got my tickets and campground reservations for the Phoenix NASCAR race, can’t wait.

Rebuild time

Well since I upgraded my hard drive partition from FAT32 to NTFS, things slowed down significantly. To remedy this I had to backup everything on the computer, format the hard drive back to FAT32, and reload EVERYTHING back into the computer. This might not sound too difficult, however the tough part is getting all the programs configured back the way I like them. Also I had to remember a few passwords for some online programs. Well it looks like I am up and running again and everything is FAST. Actually this was a good time to do it since it rained one day and was cool and very windy today. But it’s done and working well.

We have been invited to a family reunion in Florida the first of June. This works out well because we were intending to head for the east coast this year anyway. The big problem is TORNADOS! I have been looking at the weather reports and yesterday there were 66 tornados across the USA. This is not good. We do have the option to fly but we would sure like to bring our home. Once we get there we can hangout until the weather gets better before we come back. I will have to see if we can time it right and make a run for it.

They have begun construction on the third phase of the resort and are pushing around a lot of dirt. With the winds, it’s impossible to keep anything clean around here. I gave the motorhome a sponge bath the other day and the next day it was dusted out again. We are constantly wiping down the tables and counters inside as well. Not only that but they are already working on their summer schedule. This means they have been starting at 5:00 am with dump trucks, tractors, and backup alarms. The plus side is, since they start early, they quit early and the rest of the day is quiet and peaceful.

It’s starting to thin out around here. When we arrived in January and again in February almost every site was filled, mostly with “Snowbirds”. Well it’s getting time for those “birds” to fly home and it is starting to empty out. It won’t be long before the temperatures start pushing into the 100s.

Problem found in poll code

OK I found a problem with the latest poll code. I had to re-do the poll. Also I added Mid engine diesel to the poll. What this means is, this is a new poll and all that voted in the last poll titled “What fuel type is your RV?” will have to re-vote. Thanks.

Poll results

Here are the results of the poll, How long do you spend in your RV per year. Looks like we have a lot of Fulltimers out there.

I have also started a new poll so check it out.

Back in Arizona

After a 1 night stop over in Indio, we are now in Lake Havasu City Arizona. I knew the gas prices would be better in Arizona so I let the tank get a little lower than usual to make it to Arizona and fill up. It is about $0.40 cheaper per gallon here in AZ. I will be spending some time here cleaning and catching up on more maintenance on the motorhome. There is a lot I have wanted to get to, but just keep putting it off. I really should do it now. All our friends here at the resort were glad to see us back. All my plants have survived the 100 degree temps here. Looks like the irrigation system is working well. My neighbors tell me that my lot was rented the whole time we were gone. I thought this was a good thing until I saw the oil stains on my slab. I was told a brand new Newell did it. You would thing that a Million Dollar + coach wouldn’t leak oil. Also by the tire marks on the slab, it looks like Jimmie Johnson has been doing burnouts. The new owners of this Newell had a bit of a hard time parking it on our lot and left tire marks all over it. I bet it was an all-electric coach and they had all their air conditioners running full blast too. I am starting to think renting our lot isn’t a good thing. If I can get the oil cleaned up, I will feel better about it though.

What a Fantastic weekend

We, as usual, had a fantastic weekend. We spent the weekend at our friend’s house with the motorhome setup right next to their pool. We were invited to stay at their house to attend a birthday party.

Everyday we sat by the pool, drank champagne, and ate good food. Every evening we gathered around the fire pit and enjoyed the warmth of the fire and swap some great stories. Saturday night we headed for the country club for the birthday party. What a fun evening. The theme was a Murder Mystery. I think our table should have won a prize for the least amount of right answers. Oh well, the food, friends and band were really great. Today we sat around the outdoor kitchen and watched NASCAR. Susan’s driver, Jimmie Johnson won again this weekend after a close battle with Tony Stewart in the final laps.

After the race we gathered around the fire pit for more drinks and conversation



while Susan stayed at the TV for the after race commentaries. We are so fortunate to have such good friends and enjoy the opportunity to meet more good friends.

Tomorrow we are back on the road. We will be heading back to Havasu for a few weeks before our trek east.

Riverside Resort

We are now in Riverside California at a friend’s house. As you can see in the photo we have a choice spot right by their pool. It is like resort living. Last night we had burgers by the pool and sat out by the fire pit for a couple of hours enjoying good conversation. We are here for a Birthday party this weekend. This was a surprise to Terri because she didn’t know we were going to be here. It was hard for Susan to bite her lip and not say anything since we were just with them last weekend in Las Vegas for the NASCAR race. This should be a real fun weekend.

NASCAR photos

I just uploaded some photos of last weekend’s NASCAR race in Las Vegas. See the thumbnail in the column at the left titled “Las Vegas NASCAR”.

What a great NASCAR weekend

We have wrapped up another NASCAR weekend. What a great time. The weather was perfect. Susan had more fun this weekend than in the past. The main reason is because I bought her a “Neon Garage Pass” which gets you into the garages as much as you want to go. We also had front row seats in the stands for the Bush race, thanks to our friends. We were so close you could feel the wind in your hair when the cars went by.

The Blue Man Group even came by one afternoon to tape off our campfire with Caution tape. On Sunday we viewed the race from the rooftop of our friends trailer in the infield. We had a great view of turns 1, 2 and the backstretch.

Susan was excited to see that her favorite driver Jimmie Johnson in the #48 car win at Las Vegas for the 3rd time in a row. After the race she headed back into the Neon Garage where the Winners Circle was to view the post race ceremonies.

Today we headed out of town. We are now in Pahrump Nevada. We wanted to stay here for a couple of nights but they only have 1 night available. I will go back up tomorrow morning to see if we can get another night. I forgot the southern deserts are filled up with “Snowbirds” this time of year. I didn’t realize we were in for a pretty good 15 to 20 mile climb to 5000 feet before dropping into Pahrump. The ol’ Workhorse did well though. I think we are looking at another climb when we head out of here also.

Another great day

It was another great day at the track. Today was practice and qualifying. The new track is so slick that there were a BUNCH of crashes in just the practice and qualifying. The races should be real exciting. Today Susan spent some time in the new “Neon Garage” here at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. This is where you can get up and close with the happenings in the garages. They don’t actually let you in the garage but you are only separated from the garage by a window. You get to see the whole process from car prep, through inspection, to the pits.

This is a good shot that Susan got of her favorite drivers garage, Jimmie Johnson. That's Jimmie standing in the middle.

Here is another, as Jimmie is getting ready to head out for practice.

And here is another of his hauler in line with the rest.

Race Prep

Today we went into the infield to meet up with some friends.

Above is a photo of the Bush cars lined up to go through inspection.

Here is all the NASCAR haulers coming through the tunnel into the infield.

It was amazing to watch as over 50 haulers came in and lined up side by side.

Tomorrow the activities on the track begin. There will be practicing and qualifying going on. There are no races until Saturday. The weather has been just great. Sunny skies with temps in the high 70s. Perfect!