Star of Bethlehem

We hope you are all enjoying a merry Christmas. Given the Covid, we know how difficult it is to pretend this is an actual holiday – no loved ones – no family gatherings – at least we were able to schedule a Google Meet and everyone was in attendance – Nick and Val, Karen and Albert, Jerry and Brenda, Mike and Bonnie, Devin, Liz, Maia and Mani, Jon, Julie and Stella, and Brent. It was awesome. We even stepped outside to get a peak at the confluence of Jupiter and Saturn, which hasn’t happened in some 800 years.

On this holiday, there is scientific speculation that perhaps the wise men and those around the town of Bethlehem back in the time had actually seen this phenomenon and thought it’s unusually bright light was the star guiding them to the birth of Jesus. There are scientists that say that this confluence did not occur on 0 AD, or 0 BC, depending on how you look at it. Maybe it was just like they say it was.

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Nipton California

Still trying to kill some time during the Pandemic, the Woman found us somewhere to go that was not too far away. Very near the border of Nevada and California is the historic town of Nipton, California.

Nipton was founded on February 9, 1905 along the newly constructed San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad. Gold strikes nearby spurred growth in the town as a supply depot to the mines. The population of Nipton also grew as it became a cattle loading station on the railroad.

We found there a post office, a hotel, a trading post, and a school, as well as a number of personal residences, most being trailers. We couldn’t find any information on what its peak population had been. We did learn that the town had a relatively vibrant business district into the 1940’s.

In 1985, the town was purchased by the Freeman family. Their intention was to develop it into a tourist destination as well as a home for local miners. The town’s population currently is estimated to be 15-20, although there appear to be twice that many trailer homes here – many must be abandoned. In 2017 the town was purchased by Arizona based American Green Inc., with the idea that it would be developed as a cannabis tourism destination. Sadly, the financing fell through and the ownership returned to the Freeman family.

The town remains for sale even as we speak. All businesses in the town have closed, mostly as a result of the Covid outbreak – the restaurant, hotel and trading post are all boarded up, so other than roam around and looking for any signage that might pop up, there was nothing to do here. Our one bonus was when we actually bumped into one of the local residents. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and didn’t really have much to say.

We hope to be talking to you soon.

New super high-end mattress - allegedly!

Moving into a new house after living in our motorhome for over 5 years meant buying furniture – a lot of furniture. When we hit the road, we didn’t store much furniture as we knew it would be a long time before we settled down again – didn’t see the pandemic coming. So, RC Wiley delivered pretty much a houseful of furniture, including a new bed. We then learned that mattresses have changed – most have a considerable layer of memory foam on top, allegedly to conform to each person’s body. What we didn’t know was that our $1,000 Sealy Posturepedic would develop a mountain range between us. This is not a 30 year old mattress – it is actually only 30 days old – sheesh!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Fun with road signs

A bunch of road work popped up in our neighborhood, and of course the various road signs popped up warning of construction vehicles, flagmen, restricted lanes – all the normal kind of stuff. It’s funny how it takes about a dozen guys to run the construction site, even though only about 2 of them are actually working – the rest are standing around smoking and chatting. Reminds me of the construction sites shown on the Soprano’s.

Anyway, we spotted the normal 3 letter mark on the back of the signs that we routinely see when there is any road work in town, and I was dying to know what it stood for. I imagined any kind of highway department unit or division, county department, city, but couldn’t come up with it. Google to the rescue! I know some marketing guys did high 5’s when they came up with this company name in Vegas. It turns out that the largest private company supplying road signs in southern Nevada is Masters of Barricades - genius!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Unexpected view from the patio

We were pleasantly surprised by a view from our new patio that we hadn’t anticipated. We had been sitting around the campfire pretty much every night taking in the awesome sun set scenes over the Spring Mountain Range. While not quite as impressive as a sunset on the Pacific, the colors of the glow make you feel the same feelings you would feel if you were on the ocean.

This morning, however, we learned that not only do we get to see the sun set every night over the Spring Mountains, but each morning, if we want to, we can see the moon do the same thing. It may not be as awesome as the sunset, but it’s close.

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Thanksgiving bonus

We decided to go on a little road trip to celebrate the holiday, and at the same time forget, for a little while, the pandemic. Starting at the South end of Las Vegas Boulevard, we set out to see firsthand what might be new in Vegas. While not new, the crowd at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was a bit unsettling.

Our next stop was outside the New York New York Casino. We had heard that the Statue of Liberty had been clothed in a gigantic Las Vegas Golden Knights jersey, but we had never actually seen it for ourselves. Well, now our Vegas experience is complete. It was interesting to see that Lady Liberty was in compliance with Governor Sisolak’s statewide mask mandate!

We wanted to see how the progress was going on Resorts World. Finally, the old Stardust Casino site is destined to see the newest and bestest that Vegas has to offer. After being mothballed when the real estate market crashed in 2008. Now scheduled to open next summer, this place really looks to be top notch. The 100,000 square foot LED screen that covers an entire side of one of the resort towers is one of the biggest in the world!

Coming into view now is the new gateway to downtown Las Vegas. This $6.5 million arch over Las Vegas Boulevard at the foot of the Stratosphere Tower seems a fitting feature in this town. Since the traffic in town is mostly nonexistent due to the Virus, the city has taken this opportunity to do massive street construction and refurbishing that in normal traffic times would have been a disaster. We liked the new look!

It was also comforting to know that the President of the United States of America was maintaining his constant watch of our community. It is pretty obvious that he is working hard to make sure that Vegas is safe, sound, and economically healthy!

Since it was, after all, a major holiday, we decided to take advantage of our free time and booked a reservation to do the scenic drive through Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The BLM has decided that limiting the number of people in Red Rock Canyon was needed, so they have instituted a policy of requiring online reservations to drive the loop – limited to the number per day they feel appropriate. Who would argue with the BLM – except maybe another Nevadan, Cliven Bundy.

We enjoyed our drive, and even got to discover a place we had not explored before. Calico Basin We don’t know exactly how this community exists within the borders of the Conservation Area, but maybe it is because they were already there when it was established in 1967. Anyway, we explored this small community at the base of these majestic rock formations.

Talking to you soon!

Historic Goodsprings Nevada

We drove the road we’ve been on about a billion times as we made our treks to California. We have been along the I-15 heading to LA, or San Diego, or Wrightwood, or Palm Springs – we couldn’t believe that there was an unexpected treasure here to be discovered that we had somehow overlooked over the decades we had been here. Not only that, we had ignored having access to the largest Cheveron fuel station in the entire world!

It’s amazing what has been in your backyard all this time, but you don’t figure it out until a pandemic takes hold. Established in 1900 was the historic town of Good Springs, named for Joseph Good, whose cattle frequently found water at a nearby spring, When the railroad came through town in 1910, construction boomed, and most of the town’s buildings were built in the next few years.

In 1901, J. F. Kent founded the Yellow Pine Mining Company outside Goodsprings. Kent decided to construct a railroad line linking the mine to the Southern Pacific rail line running though Goodsprings. The mine, along with the 8-mile spur, operated through 1031 when it was abandoned. We found the foundations of the old mine, as well as some historic ties from the bed of the abandoned spur.

The former site of the mine and spur are now a Clark County Park. We hiked the route from where the spur connected with the SP main line to the location of the original mine site. Historic ties still are buried in the soil marking the route of the spur in 1910. The pooch and the Woman enjoyed this nice hiking area, particularly because there was pretty much nobody else there.

We saw several rail trestles, although the original trestle structures have long ago crumbled. Clark County erected a few examples of what the original narrow-gauge trestle structures likely resembled, and we enjoyed crossing them. I was lucky enough to actually find one of the railroad spikes originally set here in 1910.

In Goodsprings we found the historic Pioneer Saloon. Built in 1913 by prominent businessman George Fayle, it is one of the earliest saloons to open in Nevada. Current lore suggests the saloon is haunted, perhaps by Clark Gable. The movie star allegedly drank for three days straight at the Pioneer Saloon while waiting for news on his wife of two years, Carol Lombard, whose flight from Las Vegas had mysteriously disappeared on January 16, 1942. A few years ago I hiked to the sight where Lombard’s plane crashed on Mount Potosi that fabled day.

Nest we visited the town of Sandy Valley. An unincorporated community, I have not been able to determine when the area was first established, although it appears it might have been in the 1950’s. We spotted this bighorn sheep as we made our way into town – I guess he understands the plight of Coronavirus, hence the mask.

As we left Sandy Valley, the Woman said that Lori Loughlin was nearby. The Woman was sure she had been sentenced to the federal correction facility in Sandy Valley for her college admissions scandal. While I took a pic of the facility, I wasn’t quite sure that was actually where Lori was. Turns out that Lori is actually in a female federal corrections facility in Dublin California.

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Sticking with Thanksgiving traditions

Like all of you, even though we have caved into the CDC and are not traveling, we are sticking to the lifelong Thanksgiving traditions. We figured it might give a little sense of comfort, and maybe even help drown out all the COVID noise. Nick gave us the scoop on how to go about accessing this tradition – our Thanksgiving turkey is being supplied by, none other than, Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen!

Talking to you soon!

Socially distanced meeting with BFFs

Our friends who were so instrumental in our 550-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela across Northern Spain happened to be visiting family in Las Vegas. Back in 2016, the Woman had been connected with Alicia Darius Zara who graciously helped her plan the venture and mitigated the fears that may have prevented it. She and her husband, Marino Zara, also hosted us at their family home outside Pamplona – Marino cooked us a wonderful pasta dinner! They came over to see our new home, and enjoy a campfire on our patio – socially distanced and masked. We got to reminisce about the Camino de Santiago, which we have only done once, but Alicia and Marino have done many times.

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Long before the CDC no-travel recommendation

Nick and Valerie had a weekend planned in Laughlin Nevada, just to blow off some Covid steam. We volunteered to Moose sit their pup, as long as they were willing to come for an early Thanksgiving dinner, masked and outside on our patio. Karen decided to try her hand at flying in this strange time – the plane she was on had nobody sitting in the middle seats, and the terminals were virtual ghost towns. Our traditional turkey dinner was a success, and as far as we can tell, no Covid transmission occurred. This was a week before all hell broke loose on the virus front, and the CDC recommended no travel or gathering for family Thanksgiving dinner. We would have sadly complied had that recommendation had it come out before our gathering. Check out who is the only one actually masked!

We had hoped for a bit more interaction, however, one of the roommates of a friend Nick and Val visited had a nasty cough. So, that ended our interactions with Nick and Val for this visit – luckily that didn’t happen before dinner. We still did some hiking with Karen as she had not interacted with Nick after his sketchy exposure. It’s sad that our ability to interact with loved ones is dictated by the uncertainty caused by Coronavirus – dang!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Dealing with Covid

Like all of you, we are trying to find anything to keep us entertained during the pandemic, while still sheltering at home. We have subscribed to HBO and are in Season 3 of Game of Thrones. We don’t know what the next thing we will watch during lunch and dinner on days when there is not a football game or some other sporting event. The Woman spends pretty much all day on her phone exploring anything of interest. She keeps finding new sites to explore and new aps to play with. This new ap caught her attention – I believe the aps caption tells it all!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Some progress

So, there is an awful lot to do to get moved into the new house. We have given notice on the house we are currently renting, and luckily, we have until the end of November to get out. We still have to clean it and get it inspected before we are free of the lease, but we have arranged to have it professionally cleaned by the same folk that the property manager uses – should be a cake walk. We gave notice at the storage unit we were leaving, and as of Wednesday, we had emptied it. Huge!

The Woman has been spending a lot more time on her phone – just like the rest of the world, I guess. She has discovered new features she never knew existed before. The caption tells it all!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Change in plans Corona style

In March, we had our whole year basically planned out. We had tickets to attend the End of the Road Tour of KISS. We also had tickets for an intimate evening with Graham Nash. Then we would be moseying our way to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. In the late fall we were booked on an exclusive cruise to Antarctica. Instead of doing any of that, we slunk our way back to Las Vegas and bought a house in the hopes of outlasting the pandemic.

We decided if we were going to be hunkered down for a year we might as well get ourselves somewhere comfortable. Since renting a house in Sun City Anthem, we have been comfortable in the neighborhood and the nearby services. So, we focused primarily on finding a house that would have a nice view of the valley. We think we got that part done pretty well. Our evening campfires with a glass of chardonnay should be just about right.

By focusing our search here, we really only had a pick of 15 to 20-year-old homes. But we found one that had been reasonably updated so that it didn’t feel as old as it was. We did look at some new developments that had some view of the valley, but none of them could hold a candle to the view from our new digs. And, we ended up with a value – our neighbor told us he was pissed at what we bought it for because he said it greatly undervalued his home, which essentially had the same view. Bummer!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Return to the Silver Strand

We set out again to Coronado California, just off the coast of San Diego. Covid fatigu coupled with birthdays for both the Woman and Nick on October 12 made the trip worth the effort. Despite the usual beach crowds here, since it was fall, they weren’t nearly as dense. Besides, where else can you get a free sunset nearly every night!

Another bonus is the daily beach patrol walks. When at the Strand, we always did a morning walk on the beach to pick up trash and debris that washed in the night before. Of course, with the pandemic, there is no touching of anything, particularly trash. So while not enjoying the satisfaction of aiding the environment here, we still got in our daily beach strolls – sometimes more than just one.

We spent time with our BFF’s Ron Ezra and Teresa Bell. We used to meet them at campgrounds and share our mutual motorhoming experiences as often as we could. However, last year they decided to sell their motorhome so we thought we might not get to enjoy that again. However, despite the challenges of the Corona Virus, they decided to rent a motorhome and spend about a week with us at Silver Strand State Beach. We rode bikes, hiked a bunch, even did some geocaching. We did notice that apparently bike helmets aren’t geeky enough – just add masks!

We took the pooch down to stroll the wharf near downtown San Diego. While there were quite a few folks around, it’s so vast as to make it easy to socially distance. Besides, it seemed most everyone was wearing masks so it felt really safe. We always enjoy seeing all the retired naval vessels parked here, and we actually found several monuments we had never visited before, including the National Salute to Bob Hope and the Military, and the 25-foot-tall Unconditional Surrender statue, mimicking the famed V-J day in Times Square photo from 1945, standing in the shadow of the USS Midway aircraft carrier.

You also can’t help but people watch when you are in San Diego, or pretty much anywhere in California for that matter. While the dude was dressed impeccably and was quite a site to see himself, can you imagine how long this little dude has to sit in the stylist’s chair each morning before heading out for a walk? Sheesh!

Walking around the Silver Strand State Beach RV lot, we saw a ton of political banners hanging from flag poles mounted on campers. Being in left wing California, we assumed we would see mostly Biden banners. Wrong! Nearly all the banners flying around the park were Trump banners. In fact, we only saw one Biden/Harris banner the entire 10 days we were here. I have to say, however, that my favorite banner overall was this one.

Our birthday celebration was outstanding – out standing in the RV park or on the beach that is. Nick and Valerie came over, and of course Ron and Teresa joined in. We managed to play a number of games of corn hole, with couples anchored at either end of the court, instead of changing sides. That meant that the birthday Mom and Son were on the same team. While the rest of us gave it our best, the birthday team managed to win the most games, although Val and I did win at least one.

We explored as much outside as we could handle. The weather was awesome and there was so much to see. We enjoyed how folk were dealing with the pandemic by decorating their rigs, themselves, and pretty much anything around them. The tailgate of this pickup truck had more stickers on it than we have ever seen before. I am not sure, however, of the significance of the one right below the tailgate opening latch.

On our way home we decided to break it up into two drives of 3 hours each, and booked a night at the KOA in Yermo. It was good that we did, because construction on I-15 resulted in it taking over 6 hours to get there from San Diego. That is under 200 miles! While we had been here many times, we somehow never spotted the mountainside painted signage for the town of Calico – another bonus!

With all these bonuses we racked up, we didn’t see this one coming. The Woman has been wanting a new bike ever since ours completely rusted to the point of being non-functional in Flagler Beach, Florida. That is since January. With Covid, there is a bike frame shortage, and she has not been able to find a bike, either on line, or in stores in any of the cities we have tried. We even checked the website for the manufacturer of the bike she wanted, but their site says they have no bikes in stock and you will have to check with your local store to see if they have any. So, the Woman called Holland Bikeshop in Coronado. They had only one of the bikes she wanted – and Electra Beach Cruiser - it had just come in on a truck and was still in the box. They assembled it for her and we picked it up the next day. I asked if they happened to have it in a men’s model – again, one had come in just that day, and was still in the box. Since we were leaving in the morning, we asked if they could assemble it still today. They said no, but if we wanted, they would assemble it after hours and we could pick it up in the morning as we headed out. So, we did that, and now we are golden!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Hualapai Mountain

We decided to head to Hualapai Mountain outside Kingman Arizona. We camped here in the past, and remembered it having hiking trails, and also being a bit cooler than it would be on the desert floor. Besides, it was only about a 2-hour drive from Vegas. The Woman really didn’t want to do an overnight, either in Colectiva II or by staying in a nearby AirBnB. So, the short drive would allow us to go, hike a bunch, and have a nice picnic lunch – our favorite!

At its peak, Hualapai is about 8,500 feet tall. While we didn’t actually climb the peak, most of the park is over 6,000 feet high – enough to give us about a 20-degree break on the temperature. While there were a few folks around, it wasn’t at all busy. We hiked around on the mountain, and pretty much stuck to the areas where great views of the valley were displayed. We managed to get all our steps in while there, and had a pleasant lunch. All in all, an excellent outing!

We hope to be talking to you soon.

Sun City wildlife

Each day under Corona is the same. Get up, have coffee, take the pooch on a walk, have breakfast, go on second walk, have lunch and watch True Detectives, read on the patio, the Woman has a nap, cribbage, Monopoly Deal, Scrabble, Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News, then dinner and some more True Detectives, then bed. Day after day!

But the last few mornings we have had some bonus arrivals during our walks. We have seen a couple of Great Blue Herons soaring over the neighborhood. There really isn’t a nearby wetlands, so they must be moving among the water hazards on the golf courses. This morning we saw a flock of Canadian Geese flying in a perfect V formation, flying low over the rooftops. And we actually spotted a new species to us. We saw a Grey Hawk – not just once but several times – soaring, landing on walls and lamp posts – with its black and white striped tail, which it displays proudly during flight, it was quite special. He even landed on a rock across the street from our house, and waited while I went inside and grabbed the camera. Thanks dude!

We hope to be talking to you soon.