I'm baaacck! Again, from sunny Las Vegas, and this time with the continuing story of our travels of last week. So, without further ado, let's pick up where we ended ..                       

As I mentioned in the previous post, we left a little late but we still  made it safe and sound to our planned destination in Mountain Home that evening.                                                     The weather had been fine, the roads were dry and it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way down from the mountains towards, and just past, Boise.                                                

We enjoyed the fall colors on the higher slopes

And we thought this truck full of famous Idaho spuds we passed was rather funny .. good-bey Idaho!

I forgot to take a picture of our campground, Wagon Wheel RV Park, but I stole the following one from the Internet and it is pretty much what it looked like.

I actually think that was our site right there!

The campground's inner roads were a little on the 'tight' side for our big rig, which would acquire a lot of back and forth maneuvering (besides avoiding a large tree) also, we were tired and the side was plenty long, soooo .. we pretty much pulled straight ahead into a large back-in site! Ha! Why not? Easy-peasy.                                                                                We already ate something on the road at a truck-stop while gassing up, so we quickly connected to the electricity, brought out the slides and had a well-deserved glass of wine/beer. We did it! Out of the mountains before the storm would hit, and no problems what-so-ever. So far so good. We slept pretty good that night!

The next morning we headed out after a relaxed breakfast and some leisurely coffee. The weather still looked good and we were very happy that that second day turned out just as uneventful as the first!

 

 We did change States!

      

 

 

We spend the night in Ogden, just 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, at the Century RV Park. We had a nice, long pull-through site in the front of the park, where we could pull straight in and didn't have to disconnect. Nice!

The next morning looked fine, albeit rather nippy again at only 26F! But once we got on the road this all changed quickly!

 

Is that? Yup! Snow! 

Soon, tiny snowflakes started to appear, and before we reached Salt Lake, snow appeared on the roofs and at the side of the roads ..

Fortunately, the roads stayed dry, helped by a strong wind and passing cars blowing anything that wanted to accumulate to the sides. The clouds were hanging so low that at times we seemed to drive straight through them, and because of that it got quite dark too.                                                                                                                                         We gassed up at a Pilot somewhere and hoped to score a hot dog or at least something warm, but of course all warm food was taken from the displays because of Covid-19, and the Dairy Queen there only served through the drive-through, which is a little hard to do with an RV in tow .. oh well, we made do with a sandwich and guess what .. we survived!

We arrived at Beaver, our destination for the day, around 3 pm and were happy to call it a day. Driving in this weather was just no fun. The campground was right of the freeway, and we picked ourselves (we were told to just park and drop off money in an envelop at the office) a nice pull-through site on the edge.

 

We quickly fired up the heaters and before long we were snug and warm. James watched some golf, I worked on my jig-saw puzzle and Merl' settled for a nice warm lap and slept it all off ..

In case anybody's wondering how he fares during our days of driving, he has the best seat in the house as you can see ..

As soon as we start bringing the slides in before we leave, he runs to the bedroom and jumps on the bed, and very often when we arrive somewhere he's still asleep on it. Since the RV has better suspension than the truck he really has a very smooth drive!

The next morning dawned beautifully sunny and bright although a 'tad' nippy! Our bedroom-slide, which has hydraulic problems when it's that cold, needed to be brought in manually (with a crank) but other than that we had no problems.

Holy cow! Twelve degrees! (-11C!)

We made ourselves a nice hot breakfast (grand slam), and went back on the road for what would be our last stretch to Las Vegas.

On the way to the Nevada border the I-15 takes you through the Virgin River Gorge, which is very windy and has some steep hills going up as well as down ..

 

The scenery is very pretty though ..

After all that you enter Nevada:

And from than on you're in for a long stretch of pretty much endless, boring, nothing-ness!

But finally, there it is, that beckoning oasis in the desert .. Sin City!

Our campground, the Las Vegas RV Resort, is on the east side of the city and fortunately it was a very easy drive around town, with little traffic, to get there.

We'd opted for a little larger (deluxe) site since we're going to be here for a week and liked the idea of not being too crowded.                                                                                              It has a nice level (asphalted) pad, surrounded by gravel, and for landscaping they went with various different palm trees. Very nice!

The day we arrived it was still a little on the cool side (that same storm reached all the way down to here!) and rather windy, so we didn't take the awning out.                                         I think we won't either for the rest of our stay, since in the desert wind can come up very quickly and very strongly!

We have shade from the neighbor's RV anyway, so that will work out just fine.

                                  

We took our time setting up, this time connecting the water and sewer as well, after which it once again was time for  .. you guessed it .. Happy Hour!  

Talking about an hour (see how smart I transitioned there!), we 'gained an hour here, since Las Vegas is in the Pacific Time zone. We still went to bed at our usual time though because we were pretty tired. I guess 'all' that traveling we did in the last 3 days caught up with us .. we're getting old!                                                                                  

 

The next day we really didn't do much, we both took a nice, long, hot shower, took a walk around the park, had a lazy coffee, I called my mom, than cleaned up the RV a little, while James worked on some paperwork and booked a couple of T-times on Golf Now (discounted prices!) at various golf courses around us.

Which of course is what we plan to do here! Golf! Since the Covid-19 virus has hit here too it is at the moment pretty much all there is to do anyway, at least .. what we're interested in doing.

The famous all-you can eat-buffets at the casinos are all closed and the shows are cancelled. It's a strange town at the moment ...

But, we're determined to make as much of of our stay here as possible, in a safe way, so the next day we went golfing together at the Eagle Crest course at Golf Summerlin.           

 

This nice, semi-executive, course is build on a mountain side and has beautiful views of the hills and of the city. You can see the Stratosphere there, right above/behind me ..

Through Golf-Now James had booked this course, 18 holes for both with a cart, for $12 each. Sweet!                                                                                                                                The weather was perfect, about 80F, and the course very nice. Since it was rather short it was a great course for me and we really enjoyed playing. We did pretty good too, which always helps of course .. Unfortunately halfway the round it got backed up severely, so we decided to call it quits after 13 holes. Still .. we had fun!

Afterwards we went for Sushi! Yes! We had not had any for about a year (not popular in rural Idaho) so we'd really looked forward to it! The service was a little confusing, they forgot us a couple of times, but the food was excellent!

                                             

So, that was probably about it for the week. James will be golfing for the next couple of days, and I will be reading and puzzling and just relaxing so .. life is good!                        On Saturday James' cousin Cheri will fly into Las Vegas, and we're going to meet her over dinner and maybe do a little sight-seeing together on Sunday. I don't know exactly how we're going to deal with 'keeping our distance' while eating and I'm a little worried about it, but we'll figure it out. I hope!

In the meantime, it's going to be Halloween this Saturday. With a full moon! Spooky! Here's a few pics of decorations at the campground.                                                                         We're probably going to 'the Strip' tomorrow night to see how crazy everybody will dress up. That is, despite everything, we hope they still do ...

There's not much going around here at the park but this one looks pretty good!

        

I'm writing this blog from sunny Las Vegas where we arrived a couple of days ago, so obviously I'm a little behind, but I'll try to remember what our last week in Idaho looked like and piece a little story together! 

It did bring us some more (light but continues) rain, about a whole day of it, and 2 days of very low hanging clouds. It was pretty much dark the whole day, very gloomy .. 

But afterward everything emerged refreshed and clean ..

     

The walnuts were especially striking, when the sun back-lit their bright yellow leaves ..

The house was all of a sudden quickly nearing it's completion, with everything happening and coming together at the same time. The ceiling of the carport went in .. painted sky-blue! Not our cup-of-tea but 'to each it's own' I guess ..

All the bathrooms got finished. this is the guest-one:

 

And this next one is the shower in the master (the rest was already finished). I like the pebbles on the floor ..

    

This is the Master bedroom:

And this is the laundry room, with the washer and dryer installed and working:  

               

The beautiful walnut stairs got a handrail ..

                                               

All the kitchen appliances went in and all the plumbing was taken care of.
The roof-fascia on the back over the deck was finished, as well as some miscellaneous metal strips that were on back-order, but had arrived last week.

 

There's still some stuff to do but Austin and Lee should be able to do those 'finishing touches'. They'll stay on our payroll for another week and after that it's Sam's responsibility. James will be available for questions for a while longer, until it's all done, but other than that this job will be finished!

We'd planned to leave on Saturday (the 24th) but the weather forecast showed a storm coming in with  frost and snow at higher elevations, so we decided to move our departure to Friday. (Sam, Ryan and Ronnie already left on Wednesday).

With the usual crunch to get everything packed and wrapped up we managed to get out of there at 12.30, about an hour later than we had hoped, but at least it had warmed up a little because that morning it was a chilly 27F!

                                  

                                 Brrr! Las Vegas here we come!

 

Well, that was pretty much what happened. I think. After James walked Austin and Lee through an extensive punch-list, we all said our goodbyes, which included a cuddle for Mahogany ..  (wow, hasn't she grown?!)

 

And on the road we went! Goodbye Wet Gulch, goodbye Salmon River! We will miss you!