Sat. April 10th

Seeing as how I had very limited connectivity on my trip, and unable to give you all a day by day posting of my activities, I thought I'd do a little recollecting and photo story-telling. This first story is long. It was a long day. Not all will have as many photos, some will have more. Some days I didn't take photos at all! Enjoy!

2am

My vacation started off in the wee hours of Saturday morning of April 10th. I woke at 2am-ish (after maybe 2-3 hours of sleep), showered and then confirmed that my 2:45am Uber ride was coming. I then scrambled to make sure I grabbed all the luggage that I had packed the night before. So glad I packed everything last night rather than trying to remember stuff while half asleep after waking up. That never turns out well.

2:45am

Uber to Miami International - arrived at the airport at 3:15am. Plenty early. Matter of fact, so early that the airport employees weren't even on duty yet. Had to wait around until 4am to print my luggage tag at the kiosk and then deposit said checked and tagged bag with the airlines before moving on to security. No issues with security. They didn't bat an eye at my oversized tripod nor hiking poles attached to my camera bag. Shocking!

5:30am

We have lift off! Me and 300 of my newest best new friends were off to Dallas. Flight was uneventful. Dallas airport was nice. I like the ease of switching terminals (well planned tram). Not like Atlanta or Chicago. Ugh... hate those airports. Highly recommend Dallas if you have to change planes. Then around 9am we lifted off for Las Vegas. Again, uneventful flight. Just how I like 'em.

10am

Landed in Las Vegas - baby. Holy moly, another long-ass airport. Felt like I walked forever to get to baggage claim. While walking through the terminal, some lady at a skin care kiosk stopped me and put some firming cream on my under-eyes. Said it would help with the dark circles and bagginess. lol I said "lady, if you got up at 2am after 2 hours sleep, and spent the last 5 hours on a plane, your eyes would look like this too!" LOL (Didn't help by the way). I also stopped off for a Starbucks before collecting my suitcase. Even rented one of those grocery cart thingy's for my luggage. Stuff was so heavy. Since I couldn't get my RV rental until 1:30pm (or so they said), I was in no hurry. I sat down outside and relished the "dry" air and enjoyed my coffee.

11:30am

By now I was getting bored so I decided to go find some transportation. I stopped and talked to the taxi porter or whatever they're called and she suggested I go up a floor to get an Uber rather than a taxi. Problem was, everyone else was doing the same thing. There didn't seem to be one Uber driver available in all of Las Vegas! So back downstairs I went and hopped in a cab. "Take me to Henderson!" I said.

12:30pm

$50 later... Taxi drops me off at Cruise America. Holy moly, maybe I should have waited for the Uber. Oh well. I was there. I went inside and the rental agent was very nice and said my RV was ready and didn't have to wait. YAY! Another guy came out to show me the RV and how to do things. I was in la-la land and didn't ask all the right questions, apparently. I watched the videos and memorized that the black water lever was on the left, and gray water lever on the right (you'd think they'd actually make the levers the colors of black and gray, right?? Wouldn't that make sense?) And to turn off the propane when refueling. Gotcha!

Here’s Ms. Jezebel - the Rolling Billboard

My starting dashboard - 356,000 miles! And only a 2019

1-1:30pm

On the road! Holy cow! What did I get myself into!!? Haahaa RV had a wee bit of play in the steering wheel, at least compared to my Equinox. Took a little getting used to, but I made it to the nearest Walmart without hitting anything. Got honked at a couple of times, but I flipped 'em off. Not like anyone could see me lol. They should have put a big sign on the back "STUDENT DRIVER"

This will be an ever occurring issue in my vacation story. CELL PHONE This time it was battery. You see, I had pre-ordered all of the necessities I'd needed online on the Walmart website to be shopped and brought out to me at this specific store. Well, not knowing when I'd actually get to the store, I never hit that order button. So now I had like 14% battery left and decided to "wing it" and go inside and shop for all the stuff I needed, from memory! SMH... what a bad bad idea.

I do admit, I did better than I thought, I had been looking at my items online and obsessing over them for the past 2 weeks. Yep. So it was just a matter of finding them.

About an hour or so later, I had a full shopping cart. I checked out and unloaded everything into the RV. I sat down and tried to cool off (it was really hot that day!). It was then I realized I forgot to buy water and ice. Geez... yeah, kind of important stuff IN THE DESERT! So, back into the store I went. Got what I needed and back to the RV. Put as much ice into zip lock baggies and into the mini freezer as would fit. Tested out my new "throne" and pulled my destination up on my Waze app. Nelson, Nevada please.

4pm

On my way to Nelson! Most people have never heard of this place, and that's exactly why I was going. It's actually quite popular in a secretive kind of way. Remember the movie "3000 Miles to Graceland"? Kurt Russell & Kevin Costner? Bits of the movie were filmed here. Other movies too. Here's a clip from the scene they filmed at this old mine from YouTube https://youtu.be/jYVhuXHVAOQ.

Anyway, that's where I was headed. A small 'ghost town', actually an old gold mine called Techatticup Mine in Eldorado Canyon http://eldoradocanyonminetours.com/index.html. The road goes past this old gold mine, and 5 miles further east runs into the Colorado River, the border with Arizona. The views from the ride down this paved (but in need of some upgrades) road was spectacular! Then on down to the Colorado River, wow... I was a bit hesitant to pull over on the road, still feeling the RV out and all, steep grades, and very little shoulder; I kept on driving till I got to the end. There was a short circle viewing area with lots of room to park, so I stopped and took some photos. What a cool place this would be to camp! But... no camping allowed.

Colorado River & Black Mountain Range of Arizona

Creosote Bush with Black Mountains as a backdrop.

5:30pm

Headed back toward the old mine, I noticed at the mine they were having some sort of celebration, wedding maybe? It certainly was a neat place for it. I pulled into this open lot next to the mine and had the whole place to myself. I drove around, remembering I needed to be level for the fridge to work properly. What a fiasco that was! Finally found a fairly level spot. (Glad I “borrowed” that level from work. Came in real handy!) Put her into park, rolled up the windows, locked the vehicle doors, and proceeded to set up camp. I got out my new lawn chair and put it outside. Done! haahaa I was quite hungry by now so I made myself my first gourmet meal in the RV, tuna salad! LOL (Remember, this was now 18 hours since I woke up after only 2 hours sleep, there was no way I was cooking anything!)

As I was making my fabulous tuna salad, I heard a vehicle pull up. "Oh no" I thought. "They're going to tell me I can't stay here". The property was supposedly BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, the owner of the mine even told me so a few days earlier when I booked my tour. I stopped my tuna mashing to peek out the window. It wasn't the po-po, it was another RVer, in a schoolie! How cool was that! I had company. I finished my salad and took it outside to eat in my new yard and look at the beautiful sights in front of me. This place was pretty awesome for a free campsite.

A few minutes later the guy from the schoolie rode by on one of those one-wheel electric skateboards. What a cool way to get around! He waved as he kept on going. When I finished my dinner, I went inside and grabbed my camera gear and proceeded to try and capture the sunset. By this time my neighbor was coming back and he waved and stopped to ask about my camera. Went back to his bus and brought out his drone. He was having fun, and I was having fun. He came back over and we chatted about photography and his schoolie. Quite impressive for a 20-something to have built it.

View to the east from my campsite. This is looking down at the Techatticup Mine camp and it's buildings. Pretty neat historic area. Reminded me of the old movie, Paint Your Wagon.

Zoomed in view of one of the buildings. Look at that light on the Arizona mountains! It was pretty spectacular.

Looking south into one of the mine shafts. The tour guide the next day said they go down at least 600 feet!

Facing north here. My neighbor in a self-converted schoolie. His IG handle is @bumming.with.bigbetty Check them out if you're on IG.

The sign in the old watertower caught my eye. Hamms. lol

7:30pm

The light was pretty much gone by now. I decided to go back into the RV for the night. Not quite sure what kind of critters might be roaming about. Besides, I was beat and I wanted to start my journal of my trip. Other years and other trips I rushed through writing them and never quite got all the details on paper, and then only abandoning it after a few days. Trying to remember things days later was futile at best. I wanted to be sure I didn't do that this time.

9:30pm

Couldn't keep my eyes open much longer so off to bed I went. Good thing there were no cameras in that RV watching me get my old ass up into that cab-over bed. lol (I can hear my Dad in my head "I'll bet that was a sight! lol). But I made it up there. I had a few audio books downloaded on my phone, so I started up Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey again. Perfect time to listen to that book. Unfortunately, I didn't listen long. I was out like a light!