Not much to do today, it has been cool and quite windy, so we stayed inside and mostly watched football games all day. Three of the four were good games , but the Colts vs Chargers game was a joke. However, when you have a lot of injuries and do not have a running game, what can one expect.

It is supposed to warm up a bit in the next day or two and hopefully the wind will settle down and driving will be better by Wednesday, when we hope to get away.

Our photos are from our visit to the Bass Pro Shop the other day. You have to look at them a bit to get a prospective on the fact that the first photo appears to be from underwater but the fish are actually suspended from the ceiling, surface of the water, but you see the shoppers and product displays below.

This store is very interesting with everything in hunting, fishing, you can imagine, as well as boats and all kinds of 4 wheelers. They even have cooking utensils and food items to cook as well as pre-packaged foods. Lots of dehydrated items ready to fix, just add water and heat over your open fire or camp stove.

There are actually so many animals around you find yourself just staring at them as many of their background is so realistic. You could spend hours just looking at the animals, birds and fish.

A cool but sunny day today. There were a few clouds in the sky until after noon when it cleared off. This evening the wind came up and it is supposed to be windy the next couple of days but not as cold at night. That will be a welcome change.

We did not do much today, just try to recover from two days of eating turkey, dressing and gravy as well as all of the other goodies that people bring in.

We will be here a few more days waiting on our mail and some other items that should be here in the mail. However, if the wind keeps up we would not be leaving anyway as I do not like to drive when it is windy and gusty.

We may do another local casino before we leave and maybe win some big money, now that is not likely, maybe enough to pay for our lunch but not much more.

The photos are of LasVegas and the first one appears to be of the older section of town with all of the little shops and you can see the cross walks above the street. The other two photos are of casinos that are in the same area and are quite ornate in their design.

You can walk miles, it seems seeing all there is to see in a town this size. I understand that the inside of the casinos is even more beautiful than the outside, but we will probably never see the inside of them as parking is some distance away, at least for our big van. There is a lot of underground parking but it is for those little, at least not tall, vehicles like ours.

When we came home yesterday evening, after a huge Thanksgiving dinner, I just crashed, taking a short nap and watching some TV before retiring for the night. It never crossed my mind to write a blog. So, I am writing tonight to catch up.

Today, we were up and at it a little earlier than usual, but not to go shopping early, but to get ready to play bridge at 1pm and then to get ready to eat leftovers at 5pm.

Another great meal with a chance to eat your choice of the leftovers from yesterday. Yesterday everyone at the same table fixed their speciality and shared it with others at their table. The turkey, dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy was furnished by the park. Today, all went on two tables and we all had an opportunity to sample it all. My, what good food, from cooks from all over the country. As usual, the turkey and gravy was just as good as it was yesterday.

We had an opportunity to meet and talk with others that were seated nearby. Today, it was a couple from Pennsylvania. They are leaving on Sunday and heading for Quartzsite, AZ and then on to CasaGrande to the Escapees park for the winter. We will be leaving on Monday heading for Mesa, AZ for a while and then on to Quartzsite in January.


Evelyn took a trip to town to get some groceries and then on to the Post Office to see if we had any mail, but nothing has arrived as of yet. We are expecting a care package as well as some things we ordered on the web. So, we will check again tomorrow and then again on Monday to see if anything has come.

Nothing really planned for tomorrow or Sunday, at this time, will just have to wait and see if it warms up. It has been below freezing the last couple of nights and again tonight before it warms up the first of the week.

The photos are from LasVegas showing one of the big hotels as well as some wooded areas but confined to a small area.

Another cool night, in the 30's this morning, but it did not warm up much, maybe in the upper 40's with a brisk wind that made it feel even cooler.

We stayed in most of the day until I went to play bridge and Evelyn did some laundry. We attended the Happy Hour at 4pm with good conversations with many people. It is interesting the places some have been and how they saw the same area that we had traveled and saw something a lot differently. People look for different things and therefore see things differently. One of the ladies I talked with had driven to Alaska on two different occasions and at different times of the year, one early, in May with many of the facilities closed with snow piled all around and the second one later in the year with the changing of the colors.

We are beginning to notice people that we have met before at different parks or on the road and have a chance to compare notes on travels since we had seen one another.

The photos were taken at the Bass Pro Shop in LasVagas that has a casino attached, so you can shop and look at all of the animals as well as a fresh water aquarium and a huge salt water aquarium. You can go directly into the Silverton Casino and eat or play the slots and then come back into the Bass Pro shop at will. A very interesting place to visit.

Yesterday we woke up to a very cool morning, about 30 degrees and when we looked out we could see fresh snow on the mountains all around us. The big mountain is Mt. Charleston and the snow was still there this afternoon.

We have been in a cold snap and will be until the week end, however, as soon as the sun is up you can turn off the heat as it warms up quite quickly and stays that way as long as the sun stays out. It will be 85 degrees in the motor home in short order. When it goes over the mountain, the temperature drops 15 or 20 degrees in less than half an hour.

Today, we got a late start, but took a trip to downtown Pahrump to the post office to mail some work and then to Walmart for a couple of things and then to the Terrible's Casino. We got our Players cards and went to work. We finally cashed out with $15.40 in winnings. Then we went to the restaurant down the street for some BBQ which cost us some $20.00, so it was a money losing day, all in all a fun day. On the way home we stopped at the grocery and picked up some things we needed as well as the items we needed to fix for our Thanksgiving dinner here at the park.

Back home, the sun was just going down and it was ready to turn on the heat and enjoy the evening.

Today, we took a trip to the big town of Las Vagas. It surely has changed since I was last here in the late 70's. We drove from the south end of town to the north end of the strip, turned around and drove back to the south end. There is a lot of traffic and more pedestrians than you can shake a stick at. There are escalators at most intersections moving the foot traffic to upper walkways. Each also has an elevator to make the walkway accessible.

Parking is difficult to find, some underground parking garages, but very little surface parking along the strip.

As you can see in the photos there is very little real estate that is not in use. In the second photo of the Statue of Liberty, you can see the rail of the roller coaster that actually covers the complete block. Also you can see other replica buildings from the New York area.

I was driving and watching traffic and pedestrians and Evelyn was taking photos. The complete strip is just beautiful, one beautiful building after another. It seems that everyone is trying to outdo the other as far as design and size is concerned. Just one magnificent building after another.

We finally went farther south on the strip and visited the Bass Pro Shop and the attached Silverton Casino. After touring the Bass Pro Shop we went to the casino, got our Players card with $5.00 free money to play the slots as well as the opportunity to visit their buffet for $5.00 each.

We visited the buffet and what a beautiful facility with excellent food including all kinds of fish, roast beef, all kinds of Italian dishes, as well as Oriental dishes and American food, a very nice salad bar and a complete desert bar. A real treat indeed.

Later we went to the slots and turned our two $5.00 free cards into $11.98, so we basically ate for free and a little left over. A really fun outing.

The morning started dark and gloomy with lots of clouds and wind. We could not see the top of the mountains for some time. It rained on several occasions as the day progressed and the clouds broke a little and let the sun through for a short time around noon and then it was gloomy the rest of the day. It did warm up a bit and then cooled back down in the afternoon. Not really expecting much different until the first of the week.

The photos are of items in the Death Valley museum. The old stage coach is still in good condition and with some upholstery, maybe be back on the trail. The huge diesel engine was used in the processing of the borax before it was shipped to the rail head some 165 miles away.

There is a lot of mining equipment, ore cars, etc. that are well preserved, due to the hot and dry conditions. There is some rain in the valley, an average of 1.9 inches a year, so things are quite dry.

Our indoor/outdoor thermometer is also has a humidity indicator and it does not register below 20%, it just says LO. I never did see anything but LO while we were in the valley.

Hopefully by Monday it will clear up and we will be able to do some thing in the area.

Not a lot going on here at the park. I played bridge this afternoon and the cards were not good. I made a couple of bids but no good hands like on Wednesday. I played just good enough to not have the lowest score.

Things are coming together for the big Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday. Looks like a lot of good things to eat. The park will furnish the turkey, gravy and potatoes with everyone bringing their favorite dish for their individual table. On Friday we will take all of the leftovers and share them with everyone along with the turkey, etc. I am sure all will get enough to eat.

Among the many features to see at Death Valley is the sand dunes. These are quite large and move up and down the valley with the winds. They are ever changing as the wind is always blowing to some degree. The wind goes up and down the mountains as the air heats up as well as up and down the valley, so the dunes are ever changing.

You can see the size of the dunes in the photo with the people walking out on the sand.

Today, we went to the Nugget Casino, got our Players Cards and free $3.00 each to play with. Evelyn won $36.60 with her free $3.00 and I lost all of mine in short order. What we really went there for was their 2 for 1 buffet with Prime Rib and all of the fixings. What a great meal. So, we left about $20.00 to the good and so we can go back and still be money ahead. Maybe next time we will try another casino and spend some of their money. There are 3 or 4 casinos in town, so we will be busy checking them all out.


There are so many interesting things about Death Valley that you do not know which to go see next.

The story of the 20 Mule team wagons is one that is very intriguing. The wagons were built to hold 10 ton of Borax and the two wagons and the water wagon that had to go along and the other equipment weighed a total of 36 tons. All pulled by 18 mules and 2 horses on the tongue. The photo of the wagons does not indicate the size, as the wheels are about 7 feet high and probably 10 inches wide at the rim. It was a 165 mile, one way, trip to the rail head from the mine in Death Valley. It took 10 days to make the trip. There were three men that went on the trip, a driver and two men to operate the brakes on the ore wagons. You can only imagine what strength it took to hold back 36 tons when going down a grade.

You can read more details on the plaque dedicated to the Old Harmony Borax Works.

We are currently in Pahrump, NV and will be here until after Thanksgiving. We will be enjoying the facilities at the Escapees Pair A Dice Co-Op. I played bridge with the group and won first prize, 3 quarters. I did have some good hands as well as some good partners which resulted in an enjoyable afternoon.

I played with Wally Zahnd, from California a couple of hands and we were talking and he was at the 49ers encampment last week and had been there for two weeks with a Christian bof group. He said he remembered seeing the van in Death Valley and wondered where our booth was. He needed a namebadge made, which I took care of this afternoon, after bridge and happy hour.

Our photos are of the Devils Golf Course. This is another interesting area where the water, when it rains, dissolves the salt and when it dries up it heaves up in very hard pieces and from a distance it appears to still be water due to the reflection of the sun on the salt crystals. Just another feature of this unusual National Park

Photos for the prior blog.

This was a most interesting place. It looked like a volcano to me but they call it a crater caused by an underground explosion that blew rocks and dirt a considerable distance.

The colors in the layers of the rock are beautiful, more so than the photos show. It is about 500 feet deep and we could see people that had hiked around the outer rim as well as some that were way down in the crater.

It is a very unusual place to find in a desert, especially one as bit as Death Valley which is huge in its self. But this is an unusual thing, in my opinion, to find in an area such as this.

The rocks change colors as the sun moves across the sky and the shadows make things look quite differently as the day goes on. It takes only a short time to get a completely different photograph of the same area.
It is interesting to watch the sun go down. The atmosphere is so clear that when you are in the direct rays of the sun it is quite warm. In the shade it is quite cool and when the sun goes over the mountain it is almost instantly cool. It only takes a few minutes until it is dark as there is not any clouds to reflect any sunlight, so there is very little twilight time at all. It is then time to put on a jacket as the temperature drops quickly.

The photos are of the Ubehebe Crater which is quite spectacular as well as colorful.

We took a trip north in the valley some 50+ miles to Scotties Castle. This is a beautiful place with many modern conveniences of the time. It was built by Scottie by money he conned out of a friend. When he ran out of money, he just contacted his friend and asked for more money.

This unit has steam heat with a boiler system. Solar heated hot water. It had its own spring for fresh water. It was cooled by spring water.

We wanted to tour the house but the wheelchair lift to the second floor was out of order and it was to be another hour before the next tour began. I understand it is furnished with its original furniture and decorations and is today as it was many years ago.

This is really a work of art especially considering where and when it was built and the materials available.

It is today, a part of the National Park system and will be preserved as such for years to come. This and the whole story of Death Valley is one that is so interesting that one could spend years just studying the geological changes that caused the valley as well as those that occur daily which makes it more a wonder to behold.

The valley is used year round by many people, mainly Indians that have lived in the valley for hundreds of years. One of the tribes has a village very close to our campground and they make and sell Indian Tacos as well as
Indian frybread. We tried the Tacos and they are quite tasty and filling. Many of the visitors to the park eat there and seem to enjoy the food.

We did not see much wildlife in the park. We did see one Coyote going up the mountain just off the road. There were several birds around due to the fact there was water available. They talked about the Big Horn Sheep in the mountains. Water is so scarce that only a few sheep will share a water source. Any more animals and there is not enough water for them all to survive, so they either have to more on or some will parish. Humans can also cause problems if they stay too close to a water source, as the animals will not come to drink and there is no where else to go for water.

There are several plants that grow in the area. It depends on how deep they have to go for good water. Some can get sufficient water a few inches from the surface and others have to go much deeper to get what they need, or parish.

At Bad Water, the water is quite saline however the pupfish have evolved to the point they can live in this water which nothing else will drink.