Another change of plan

Okay, I'm not gonna bother telling you what our plans are anymore - we don't follow them anyway. After checking the weather reports, which called for crap starting this afternoon and lasting for the next 3 days, we decided to stay put in Bullhead City. We've moved out of the nasty (and rather expensive) motel that we stayed in last night and into an RV Resort. Yes, really! An honest-to-goodness RV resort!

With actual streets of monster-sized motor homes.

Does Vincent look just a little out of place amongst these massive units?! And a tent? These people have only ever seen pictures of tents...

So, why are we here? Well the free internet was the main draw. We figured if we were gonna be stuck inside for 3 days, we might as well have full power for reading and access to Bubble Words. (It's a Facebook game that I'm hopelessly addicted to.)

Of course the weather has been great all day and there is no sign of the impending storm that they were threatening. We sat outside without jackets and had beers and nachos this afternoon. Oh well, we are resigned to life at Shady Acres Retirement Home for the next 3 days.

Valley of Fire

We almost didn't go. We almost chucked out the plan because we didn't think we were warm enough yet. We were going to go further south instead. Then just before we checked out of our hotel in Mesquite, we read Melody's comment on the blog and figured that if she wanted to go back, it must be worth going to. So, thank you Melody. I am SO glad we went! We just spent 3 amazing days touring the Valley of Fire in Nevada. The colours and the bizarre rock formations just blew us away. Neither of us had ever heard of this state park before, but we're not likely to forget it now. We stayed at the Atlatl Rock campground (my new all-time favourite campground!) and because we didn't require a powered site, we had our pick of the coolest campsites ever.

Here are a few pictures around the park just to give you an idea:

And this is our campsite:

This rock was behind the tent The colours changed with the light. At sunrise the view from our window was this rock precariously perched right above us in unbelievable shades of gold and orange:
And of course you've already seen the new blog picture. Much more indicative of travels with Vincent II.

Oh yeah, Dan had a birthday while we were there. We celebrated with an apple fritter. It was as close as I could come to birthday cake.

We're in Bullhead Arizona now, just across the river from Laughlin. I think we're heading for Death Valley tomorrow, so we'll be internet-less for a few days or maybe a week. Bye for now and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

P.S. Sorry we missed you in Yuma, Cornell.

Change of plan

First of all, in retrospect, the beers with dinner and the wine afterwards were maybe not such a good idea. I'm not feeling really bright and shiny today.
Secondly, our hotel name is Virgin River Casino, not Silver-something. See above for explanation/excuse.
After consulting with Rand McNally, it looks like Death Valley is do-able, but another long drive away. We've decided go to Valley of Fire state park instead, which is practically walking distance from here. I don't expect they'll have Wi-Fi, so if we're out of touch for a few days, you know why.

Snow, rain, sunshine and finally - palm trees!

We got a really late start today, mainly because we didn't really think we were going anywhere. We dilly-dallied around the hotel and then went out for a nice leisurely breakfast and before we actually decided to give the highways a try, it was after noon.

Here are some pictures around Provo this morning:

The highway was pretty crappy, but only for about an hour. The storm wasn't as bad as predicted. They were originally talking about a foot of snow, but it petered out to a few inches. We were on bare, dry pavement most of the day.

This is just a house along the way that I liked the look of.

I know the picture is blurry, but the important thing is that there is still snow on the ground only a hundred miles from Las Vegas. I know, there is snow actually IN Vegas, but this still seems wrong somehow.

Another blurry picture, but this time the important factor is the lack of snow! It disappeared as soon as we dropped down from the high plains.

And look! Palm trees! This is in Mesquite where we are staying tonight. Not exactly balmy yet, but not freakin' cold like it has been so far.

This is our hotel. The Silver something or other. It's a huge Casino complex, but it's clean, cheap and of course, dog-friendly.

This is the bottom of our bathroom door. It would appear that some people leave their dogs locked in the bathroom while they gamble in the casino.

Dan is working on the world's s-l-o-w-e-s-t internet connection. They charge $9.00/24 hrs. You can't buy less than 24 hours because they know that's how long it takes to check your e-mails... And downloading photos for a blog entry? Lots of time to finish a bottle of wine!
We've been living on fast food for a few days now, so to have a real meal in a real restaurant was a treat. Pretty good Chinese food too.
We asked the waiter to box the leftover rice for Taz and he not only put in our rice, but added some more AND some ribs from the kitchen! Lucky dog!


Not sure what our plans are for tomorrow. We're thinking Death Valley, but we haven't actually looked at a map to know if that's do-able or not. We're looking forward to being able to camp. We want to park ourselves in one spot for a least a week and veg!

Greetings from Provo, Utah

We got a late start on Tuesday. Didn't leave the city until after 1pm because we were waiting for the new tires to be installed on the van. Of course while the van was in the shop having tires put on it, we couldn't do any last minute packing. We got as far as Great Falls, Montana on Tuesday. The drive was uneventful with mostly bare & dry roads.

The high level bridge around Lethbridge.

Taz stood between us and panted non-stop all the way to the border.

We finally got sick of it and harnessed her in to the back seat where she continued to pant.

She did eventually settle down but only for a few minutes. Every time a truck passed or we hit a bump or a railway crossing she was back up and panting. She almost hung herself a couple of times when she tried to jump down. Arrived in Great Falls around 7:30 absolutely ravenous. Discovered Taco John's and practically inhaled a couple of burritos.

Checked in to the less-than-deluxe, but perfectly adequate Super 8. Somewhat sparse, but cheap and dog-friendly.
Taz approves the mattress.
Slept in until 7:30 on Wednesday and headed back to Taco John's for breakfast. Yes really!
Why you ask?
Check this out - a $20.00 fill!!!

Not too far out of Great Falls we ran into some icy patches with blowing snow so we pulled into a view point to change drivers (I'm a huge chicken on ice - at the speed I was going, it would've taken all day to get to Helena)

Nice view:

But we got stuck there for ages. For some reason, Vincent refused to shift out of park. After some bad language and stomping of brakes and ramming of the gear shift, we were finally on our way again.
Almost immediately after crossing into Idaho, the weather deteriorated. The roads got worse and the visibility was really limited in places.
It did clear up eventually though. By the time we got to Utah, it was clear sailing again. Blue skies and nice scenery.

We arrived in Provo around 8pm and checked into another Super 8. (Do they all look the same?) At least the internet works in this one. And it's even cheaper than the last one - $47.00 and no extra charge for the dog because the front desk clerk likes dogs and thinks that a $20.00 surcharge is ridiculous. She warned us that if Taz chews the furniture she'll have to charge the extra fee though. The weather forecast is dismal for the next few days. We'll see what it looks like in the morning, but we might just hunker down in Provo for a couple of days until the storm warnings subside.
We have lots of reading material, we stocked up on wine and Taz has her favourite toy so if we do end up staying here, it won't be awful.