Today is APRIL FOOL’S DAY!   Today’s temperature was 95 degrees!  Since today was John’s birthday, he was granted his wish to visit a brothel! Yep, you read that right.  They are open for lunch, ladies are welcome and they even offer a free tour of the facilities.  Tillie cooked baby back ribs for John’s birthday dinner.

            We went out to dinner at the casino tonight. (Can’t beat $10.70) for eating out.  Tonight was prime rib, baked chicken, roast pork,  and some kind of fish.  They also have stuffed cabbage on this buffet, pretty good.  And for dessert we had bananas foster.  Lost the rest of our gambling money after dinner.

 On the way to Ashford Mill ruins we saw a coyote standing in the road.  A car coming in the other direction stopped and gave it a piece of turkey; when he drove off the coyote started following.  Got some good pictures. Then it was on to Ashford Mill ruins (not much to see) and from there out of the park to Shoshone, where we stopped at the Crowbar for an ice cold beer!  I was the first to finish!  It really tasted soooo….good!  Poor Bob was driving, the rest of us took a nap!

It was sooooo…hot last night.  Only got down to 76 degrees! Since we are dry camping we had no air conditioning.  After a long day in the heat, needless to say we did not sleep very well.  I was worn out.  Bob and John were able to secure another night so we are here until Friday.  Don’t know what will happen then.  We heard that congress has not approved the budget.  If they don’t and the government shuts down, so will the campgrounds!  And they will have to kick everyone out. So we just moved around the Furnace Creek Area.  There is a resort called Furnace Creek Ranch Resort that used to be used by the borax miners and workers and now is a classy resort, with swimming pool, golf course and expensive dining.  There is also a general store and a post office. There is a place to rent Jeeps, bicycles and go horseback riding.  There is also a Saloon & Café where hamburgers are $14.00.   Everything is expensive because it all has to be trucked in from so far away.  There is also a date palm grove located here.  They do not harvest the dates and let the dates fall and leave them for the wildlife to eat.  As we were driving through…voila!  We saw another coyote coming to get some dates!  Another photo op for us.  We also drove over to the Furnace Creek Inn, a hotel that was opened up in the 1930’s for visitors coming to the park.  It is small, understated elegance with another expensive dining room.  Then we went though the Borax Museum at the resort.  It was very interesting.  They only used the mules for five years but have become an everlasting symbol of the era and Death Valley.  Then we drove several miles up the road  to the Harmony Borax Work Interpretive Site.  Borax was only mined in Death Valley for five years.  By the time we got home, I was worn out, Bob ran the generator so I could have air conditioning to cool down.  Did I mention it was hot??

Last night cooled off so much! Yes! I was able to get a good night’s sleep!  I’m sitting here in the coach typing this up.  Tillie and I didn’t feel like another hike up another canyon so just Bob and John went to go hike Golden Canyon.  We are also in the midst of a terrific windstorm (aka duststorm).  The coach has been rocking since I woke up.  There is dust all over everything inside.  Can’t close up the coach, it would get too hot!  When the men got back, we went for a ride up 20 Mule Team Canyon.  It looked like there may have been several mines up there.  From there we drove through Texas Spring Campground (pretty nice).  I am so sick of dust.  It feels like grit in your teeth, your eyes, your hair.  To get our minds off dust we drove down to Salt Creek to see more Pupfish.  When we got there I was going to walk down to the creek, but the winds were so strong. The dust stung!  Just like sitting on the beach on a windy day and having the sand pelt you.  This was about two times worse!  Tillie and I waited in the car.  Waiting on the guys to come back, we saw people with hats blown off, foreign tourists were wearing home made face masks to keep it off their faces.  It was horrible.  Today was like an old western movie; where you see the cowboy walk into a cantina, and use his hat to remove dust from his clothes!

We are moving over to Stovepipe Wells campground and hopefully get set up before the Congress shuts down the government because they are fighting like little kids!  The park will close if that does happen.  Did I mention it was cold this morning ?  Got down in the 40’s during the night!  This is a land of contrasts for sure!  The ride over to Stovepipe Wells was only 23 miles, but it was like moving to another planet.  We are now up to sea level, but we drove around a mountain range and here we are camped at the base of Tucki Mountain, 6732 ft., looking up at it’s snow covered peak!  Once settled, we quickly packed a picnic lunch and took off for Scotty’s Castle.  We wanted to make sure we get to see it just in case the park has to shut down due to the Federal government shut down.  It really isn’t a castle, and it really doesn’t belong to Scotty.  It has a Moorish styling and while the house is complete, there are many unfinished projects around the house that were never completed.  Very, very interesting!  We had to drive up over 3000 feet to get to the castle and it was very chilly up there. It was raining on the drive up. Considering Death Valley usually gets less than 2 inches a year, we feel like we are  seeing a historic event!  When we got out of the car Bob and John said they saw a snow flake!  Thank goodness it was an inside guided tour.  The Castle was built in 1922 and had central heat and solar hot water! Off in the distance, across the valley floor you could see snow covered mountains!

Jo and Joe. (Anderson and Davis)  They are headed over to Malawai in a couple of weeks to teach some advanced classes to the people over there.  It was one of the poorest nations in all of Africa.  A wonderful evening of fellowship.

Ah…a day of rest.  We did go hike up Mosaic Canyon to see the polished rock walls.  It was beautiful.  On the way back we stopped at the gift shop here at Stovepipe Wells.  They had a weather forecast that showed Titus Canyon was still closed because of snow.  That is the last thing we wanted to do here in Death Valley, not sure what we’ll do now.  Back at camp we just spent a relaxing afternoon.  They weather was not too hot and there was a slight breeze which felt so good.  We passed the time away playing Rummi-cube outside under the awning watching campers come in for the day; a group of Jeep riders, a van full of older Japanese tourists,  and a few others.  This is not a full campground by any means, and it will close for the season April 15^th.  There is no means of shade out here and by then temps are getting pretty high. People would bake in their tents.  (Seems kind of funny they would close the campground on Tax Day).  We saw a ranger coming around cleaning up the campground and spoke to him about Titus Canyon; said it had opened at 1 pm this afternoon, yeah! Guess we will spend one more day so we can explore the canyon.

Bob did the driving today.  It was a twenty mile ride just to get to the road that goes to the canyon.  Once on it, it was a ride through some of the most beautiful country.  These are not paved roads, but rough, uneven roads going up and down mountains just to get to the canyon.  Stopped at the ghost town of Leadfield; of course there were more mines.  We thought we were all alone out here until we stopped.  Within five minutes we had five or more vehicles pull up also.  Not quite a traffic jam, but more than I thought there would be.  Once in the canyon proper, the walls just go straight upU.  We thought for sure we would see some big horn sheep this time, but they are very timid I guess.  Maybe when we get to Alaska.  The canyon was worth the drive.  This is our last day here.  We have survived Death Valley!

There is not much in Beatty.  There is a casino, couple of RV parks, gas stations and post office.  There is no grocery store, only a small market where we can pick up milk and eggs, etc.  We ended up parking on the roadside next to the casino because there were trees where we could get into the shade, which is a precious commodity out here.  We stopped at a campground that had hot springs within the park; but we didn’t feel secure there so the roadside it is.

Hawthorne is a town located within the confines of Hawthorne Army Depot.  It is an ammunitions storage facility.  They may also make the bombs here, but everything looks so old, I not sure they do.  Hawthorne is also the location of the Naval Underseas Warfare Center; go figure.  Anyway, we are in the presence of a SAFEWAY STORE!  Fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meat; nirvana!  We are camped in a BLM campground on the west side of Walker Lake on the north side of town.  Only problem, no water, and we are not full.  We are on water rationing here. Haha!  It’s beautiful here, austere but beautiful.

There are White Pelicans living here on the lake.  They don’t dive for fish like the brown pelicans do.  We also have seen several herds of wild mustangs staying by the lake several miles down the road.  Hope to get pictures before they move on.

There was a full moon tonight.  Got some really pretty pictures with the moon rising over the lake.  Hope they come out okay.

Running low on water.  Drove into town with the 5 gallon bucket to get some water.  This place has no water or dump station.  Thank goodness we are leaving tomorrow.

We will only be spending one night here.  The bugs are so, so bad.  But we were able to dump our tanks and fill up with fresh water.  You never realize what a precious resource water is, until you don’t have any.  We really take it for granted.  We dumped and filled again before we left here.  We are able to live on 100 gallons for about a week or more.  Oh, how we enjoy our showers.

We moved about 15 miles up the road to Fernley, NV.  There’s a WALMART!  We are in high cotton now!  Haven’t seen one of those in over two weeks. (Walmart is a RV’ers best friend on the road.)   We parked here for a couple of nights.  One night we felt like we were going to get blown over. The first night we got ROCKED to sleep! The winds out here are fierce, they seem to blow all the time.  Tonight we were able to Skype our grandchildren staying at Granny and Papa’s house.  Kylie is just about walking and she’s into everything.  Rachel is growing like a weed, and she read us a story tonight.  She is so smart.  We are so  proud of her.

Road trip to Reno. Bob drove in early to take our car into the Honda dealer to get our heating and air fixed.  I came later with John and Tillie. They have a Sam’s Club.  It’s a stock up day for staples.  They also have a Trader Joe’s.  I came home with John and Tillie, while Bob stayed in Reno and found a place to have 4 new tires put on the car.  They pulled out a 2 inch piece of metal out of one the old tires.

We then drove over another mountain range and down into Carson City, capital of Nevada.  It is a surprisingly small city for a state capital .  We didn’t get any pictures taken here.  From there we drove south to check out another Nevada State Park campground.  It was fairly new and this campground has showers.  From there we drove back to Fernley, encountering a terrible accident that caused us to detour in order to get home.

Whoo-hoo!  Today we moved again.  Across the street!  We are now parked behind the Silverado Casino.  All these places have security cameras, including Walmart.

But we had a wonderful meal prepared for today.  We ate over at John and Tillie’s, complete with real tablecloth and napkins!  Our menu included ham, au gratin potatoes, green bean casserole, ambrosia, pickled and deviled eggs, and yeast rolls.  We called Mom and Dad today so we could wish everyone a Happy Easter.  The news is now out!  We are going to be grandparents again!  Stephanie is expecting a baby!  We are so happy and excited for them.

Our trip is currently being based on the weather right now.  We don’t want to move any further north until it warms up.  This evening Tillie and I walked over to the casino.  For the first time I have actually doubled my money.  Wonder how long I can hold on to it.  There is actually a non smoking casino in town.  It’s the first one we have seen, and it’s actually busy.  Wish other casino owners would take the hint.

What a wonderful day.

John and Tillie have gone over to Truckee, CA, to visit friends for lunch.

On the road again to Rye Patch Recreation Area where we will spend the night.

I had Bob Tivo (record) the Royal wedding, and I have been catching patches of it all day long.  What can I say, I still believe in fairy tales. J