We went on the road with the camper for almost two weeks making a loop trough the SW. We seemed to be the only ones heading south, as many snowbirds were starting the trek back north.
One of the first stop was in Las Vegas where we stayed at a pretty swanky (for us) RV park. One of our stops while in Vegas was the Red Square bar/restaurant in Mandalay Bay.
We have been there three or four times over the last ten years or so, but this was the first time since Puff the Magic Flashlight introduced me to the wonders of vodka, so I was really looking forward to it. RS as you would imagine with its Russian name and decor is big into vodka, especially with the ice bar where coats are needed.
Although I only had two drinks it pretty much put me in the bag for the evening.
We also had an appetizer called Siberian Nachos, which were wontons covered in smoked salmon, wasbi and topped with caviar. Those that know me, know that I am not big on fin food, but this was good stuff. I highly recommend.
From LV we headed to Lake Havasu AZ to see the London Bridge. LH was just getting into spring break mode, but we saw the bridge, had morning coffee with the locals at Starbucks, then loaded up and headed to a place we visited last year Picacho State Park.
This year we stayed there for a couple of nights and again attempted to summit the peak (put from a different direction), but turned around after a few hours as this is a true "via ferrata (iron way or road with irons)" route and we were not prepared.
From there we headed to Tombstone and spent an afternoon walking around and taking in the history (one of Marlys' favorite pastimes). Interesting place.
Las Cruces and visiting Derek was the next stop. We picked him up and went over to Carlsbad Caverns and spent a couple of days fighting some incredible winds. Which always seemed to be blowing 90 degrees to the direction we were traveling.
If you haven't been to Carlsbad Caverns, put it on your list. We walked the natural entrance to the bottom (of the space visitors are allowed), took in the Big Room and spent about three hours on our self guided tour (sound wands).
This place is really awe inspiring especially when you think about Jim White first exploring (not discovering) it at age 16. We were there too early for the evening bat flight, but it was still pretty neat.
From CC we headed back to Las Cruces to drop Derek off and head for home.
We did though make a stop at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory - Very Large Array out in the middle of no-where New Mexico. You probably saw a number of pictures of this if you saw the movie "Contact". The scale of this place is both gigantic and not so much. When you see the layout and understand that it covers close to 20 miles, but the scale of each individual dish is only ( only?) about the size of a baseball diamond it is kind of a paradox. They seemed so much bigger in the movies. My big ah-ha was that they move them around to change their resolution. How they do it is what I would call big engineering.
We made it home just in time for another Search and Rescue Training session, which was actually a training for next months training session where we will be traveling roped up in conditions where we can practice self-arresting, setting snow pickets and ice screws for protection. This is starting to get pretty serious. Marlys in fact just bought a pair of plastic mountaineering boots and a climbing helmet that fits her without slipping down over her eyes.
We also found a stash of skis...for chairs. We heard that there was someone in Canon with hundreds of used skis. The directions to find him were pretty sketchy, but on Wednesday we drove around and actually found him. He had 400 pairs of late 80s - early 90s skis (think florescent colors). He would have liked to sell us all of them, but we only picked up 9 pairs. Chair production will need to get started again.
It will be in the 60s here for the next few days, so outside work is in the offing. I am going to try and improve our 100 square foot lawn with manure and seed before the forecast snow coming in on Sunday.
Till next time.
