You Can't Get Lost

 Quick update and I'll go back and fill in the other days. But, I'm home, safe and sound, no mechanical or mental problems.  It's been a great trip.  I've had a wonderful time, I've seen relatives, friends, places, new people, I've had a great time.   Some summary stuff. I drove 2674 miles. My average cost per day was $146.60, which included all the gas, the basketball tickets, the train tickets, the hotels and RV parks, meals, groceries, books, gifts and donations, everything.  This was a little higher than our average cost on long trips of about $136/day.  And, of course, There was only one person , not two.   Gas cost 27% of the total cost.  Over the past years, that was closer to 21%.  I averaged 7.76 miles per gallon.  I drove at 60 mph the whole way, which helped with mileage of course.   I missed my co-pilot.  Sally has always been a presence in the motorhome, but she wasn't there this time, for reasons fa...

Other than having a tight squeeze getting out of an older Love's service station, the trip from Las Vegas to Pueblo West was an easy drive.  In fact, I rather enjoyed it.  The geography is really varied, from the flat desert country between Las Vegas and Raton, to the famed pass in southern Colorado to Trinidad to watching the Spanish Peaks glide by to the old I-25 section through Pueblo.  When I'm screaming past all of this trying to get from Albuquerque to Laramie in a day, it gets really boring through this section, but not today.   And I had a mission. I was trying to get to my next stop as quickly as possible, before 4:00.  I was going to my first Harvest Host.   Harvest Host started in 2015.  From their website. What is Harvest Hosts? Harvest Hosts is a membership program that provides access to a network of wineries, farms, breweries, museums and other unique attractions that invite self-contained RVers to visit and stay overnight. For...

 Heading North. This is the last leg of the journey.  Thank goodness I'm not on my last leg.   It was tough leaving Jaye and Lyndon and Tyler, and as always, I was late leaving to go to my next stop.  But I did get away in time.  My last stop of the day was Las Vegas.  Yeah, I know, back tracking to Sin City was out of the way, but Las Vegas, New Mexico was not.   But I had a special stop on the way.  I was going to visit another college friend, Bill Russell.  Bill was a music major and received performance degrees in piano and voice.  He would often practice on the piano in the lounge at our dorm and was the type of friend that Sally and I would walk through and ask if he had anything going on that night.  We'd be going out to eat and a movie and "do you want to come along."  And it would be the three of us; Bill was never a third-wheel.  He was always entertaining and could talk on a huge range of topics. ...

  As you can tell if you have followed this blog, I like trains, travel, museums, Harvey Houses and the southwest.  That would include the Santa Fe railroad.  Twenty years ago, a group of Very dedicated volunteers started the Wheels Museum which is currently located in the Santa Fe Boiler Repair building in the Albuquerque rail yard.  It is a diamond in the rough, they are in their seventh location since starting and are involved with all forms of transportation from railroads to classic and old cars to model trains to model car kits.  The second room you enter is the Fred Harvey room.   The biggest second generation (high end hotels like the El Tovar and La Posada) Harvey House was built in Albuquerque in 1899 and named the Alvarado.  It closed in the 1960's and was eventually torn down.    It has been replaced by the Transportation Center, a combination depot and bus terminal, which was designed in the style of the old Alvarado. T...

 Greetings from balmy, warm Albuquerque.   I got to beautiful Albuquerque last night, and woke up to 2" of snow on the ground.  Go figure.  Of course, the morning temperature is probably the warmest I've been in except Phoenix, so it melted off quickly.  It certainly didn't affect anything of significance....except my electrical system.  When I woke up at 4:30 that morning, the electricity from the house was off.  It started up again, and then was off again when I woke up.  Lyndon had awaken during the night and noticed that the tv was off, so reset the breaker.  Then it tripped again between 5:30 and 8:30.  Now, my mattress pad is running off my Lithium batteries, so my bed stayed warm, but the rest of the motorhome was in the low 50s, not uncommon with the camping we do, but a little unexpected here.  Lyndon had a line voltage/wattage gauge so we checked all the configurations of my heaters and dead loads.  Bottom line, ...

Winslow, AZ  in the 1970s was a dying town.  It had the La Posada which the railroad was using as offices and was falling into ruin.  Other than the depot, there wasn't much else to do in Winslow and the town was going down.  Until the Eagles had their first hit song, "Take It Easy" which had the line: Well, I'm standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, Such a fine sight to see, It's a girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford Slowing down to look at me. (Jackson Brown) The city found that people stopped at a number of corners in town and took pictures.  The city then got a local to dedicate a corner property to erect a statue "standing on a corner..."   There is a Flatbed Ford in the wall painting and a real one parked at the curb.  The window above the W has an Eagle perched there and a couple in the window above the star.  There were people standing in line to take pictures.  I happened to catch a hole in the line.   The drive to Alb...

 I'm catching up on my days again!!! I planned to leave Phoenix about noon today, but Loraine tempted me with pancakes and the leftover Chinese food for lunch.  It ended up being about 2:30 or 3:00 when I left.  I wanted to get gas, but there wasn't a convenient gas station (like Love's or Pilot or Flying J) within miles of their house.  I drove up McClintock to Broadway where I found an expensive ARCO that was easy-in, high cover and easy-out.  That is worth 20 cents a gallon in my book.  And at these prices, you can hardly tell the difference.  The only problem is that I had to prepay, and I only put in $130 worth.  I normally like to fill it because I keep tabs of the mileage and I really wanted to see a high mpg after dropping 4000 feet from Flagstaff to,  Phoenix.  Of course, today it was the other direction, so I'll see what it looks like on the next tank.  It won't be near as much fun.   Overall the drive was easy....

 When I visit people on a motorhome trip, I usually still stay in the motorhome.  I’m used to my bed, I can have my stuff out, I don’t subject my hosts to my hours, etc., but I do like taking showers inside.  To simplify things, I get dressed in what I’m going wear for the day and put my toiletries in a plastic grocery bag.  Being Sunday, I put on my “go to meeting” clothes and run out of the motorhome to use the guest shower in Bob and Loraine’s.  I was running a little late, (what, me late???) but was quick in the shower, at least for me, and went into the den to greet Bob.  I then realized I had not put in my hearing aids, so went back out to the motorhome where I realized I had not put my keys in my pocket when getting dressed.  And I lock the motorhome when I leave it.  I had a brief moment when I tried to remember the last time I checked my Hide-A-Key and some of the adventures I’ve had since then (where I won’t mention the motorhome off-roa...

The quest for the breakfast cereal continues.  Loraine looked for my Kashi Go Original at her grocery store and the shelves with Kashi Go cereals had boxes of all the types, of which there are 10 or 12, except an empty slot where the Original goes.  I think its a plot, probably involving Area 51 and nutritional needs inside that unknown territory.  (Insert your own personal favorite conspiracy theory here.) I visited my cousin Carole today.  The poor lady, she is physically weak but mentally strong.  She is in her 15th year of Parkinson's.  She has a pancreatic problem that does not make enough enzymes (though not cancer, thank goodness).  She is gluten intolerant.  Because of these, she is as skinny as a rail.  And then, last week, she fell out of her chair at home and split her scalp and required 10 staples at her scalp line.   She sprained her wrist and has a brace which keeps her hand at almost a 90 degree angle, so she cannot u...

 Yesterday, Loraine sent me a text with an attachment for an exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum here in Phoenix.  We went there five years ago and saw a special exhibit on inlay work on guitars and banjos.  It was fascinating.  People have spent years doing inlays on some instruments.  And then the rest of the museum is wonderful, with exhibits of instruments from cultures and countries around the world.   The attachment Loraine sent of the current exhibit was "Treasures: Legendary Musical Instruments".  It was about  usually old, rare and one-of-a-kind instruments and more modern instruments by unique builders.  I said yes within 30 seconds of receiving the text.   Today, we went.  We got there at 1:00 sharp and walked into the exhibit.  My guess there were 50 or so instruments in three rooms.  The first instrument you walked into when you entered the exhibit space was a baroque guitar, the second oldest o...