Category: Vacation 5

Driving the 50-mile strip mall known as Salt Lake City is always a challenge. Utah drivers here drive hot and aggressive, I suppose they figure their Mormon god will protect them from each other. Today as I was driving north through the strip I saw a giant dark cloud directly in front of me. I had heard on my scanner that thunderstorms with hail were in the area, and here I was driving straight into one.

I briefly thought about exiting the freeway and finding an overpass to hunker down under and take a nap but talked myself out of that wimpy plan and kept on driving. Hey, I am a pro after all. Um-hmmm…

The storm hit with a vengeance: heavy rain, lightning, and large hail that I really thought stood a chance of cracking my window. I kept my cool, and my lane, with a big buffer between me and the vehicle in front of me. I spotted a speck of blue sky far off in the distance and knew I could ride it out.

Suddenly, a tractor pulling two gravel type containers merged onto the freeway from my right and proceeded to hit standing water right next to me. Like a slow-motion movie, I saw him start to lose control. The rear trailer began to drift into my lane so I backed off and watched as it did, right in front of me. I told myself that what I did in the next five seconds would determine wether I lived or died.

Visibility to my left and rear sucked so I couldn’t trust it. As soon as the rear trailer started drifting the other direction I gunned it forward and shot by the tractor just as a gut-wrenching noise happened as the gyrating trailers pushed the tractor into my lane and I’m sure it kissed my ass as I rolled on by. I thought this big boy was ready to roll but when I checked my rearview he was still upright and swerving all over the freeway. I really hope nobody got hurt.

As I continued down the road I took stock of my body. Not to my surprise, because I’ve noticed this reaction before, my heart rate was normal and I had no adrenaline rush. Nothing! I don’t know why this is but the bottom line is, my truck and I survived…

I’m hunkered down now in my motel in Logan, Utah and the TV weatherman is saying he has never seen hail as large as today in the decades he’s been doing the weather here in the Salt Lake area. Sheesh…

Ok, here it is Sunday night and I’m just about done here. It’s been a fun stay, my back feels better and my skin is brown. I drove down to Lake Havasu this morning and the weather was great, the boardwalk pristine, waiting for customers as usual, and the Sunday Market was nowhere to be found. I asked around and the story is they don’t even attempt a market in the hot weather. Hmmm, makes sense…

Back at the ranch I headed down to the pool for one last soak and ran into Millionare Gary one more time. He was full of sage advice again and talked about women who consider their special area as gold and use it to manipulate men into lavishing money on them just to get some of it. You know, I can’t disagree with his logic, he has been married three times and they all went after his money when it ended. But, when he started referring to them as flattened tacos I wished him well and headed to the hot tub.

I’ll be loading up my truck tonight for an early morning getaway and I should land in Logan, Utah tomorrow afternoon. I’m meeting up with a canopy guy I’ve been in contact with and maybe I’ll have a new used topper come Tuesday morning…

My daddy used to say: Don’t Drive, Drink! I never took the first part of that advice, I’m well over two million miles now and as my older and wiser days evolve, I don’t combine the two. My dad, who is long time gone (died of substance abuse), was the first person to put me on his lap and let me take over the steering wheel.

At the time, I didn’t know he was my dad, I thought he was my mom’s cousin because that was the story presented to my brother and I when he showed up at our door in the rural Siera Nevada mountains demanding to see us. My first contact with this stranger is when we went for a drive. A few years later my brother spilled the beans to me that mom’s cousin was really our dad, the stepdad found out we knew, and it went downhill from there. Oh well, all of those parents are dead now, and I’m alive and well and traveling. Rock on…

Update: I’ve been hanging out at the pool/hot-tub for the last couple of hours with a retired millionaire named Gary who knows all of the owners on the Laughlin strip. Great stories and great camaraderie, us old guys do think alike, and he’s living here at the Pioneer for a while because he can. Kind of like Howard Hughes, but on the ground floor, with a few less zeros.

On Gary’s advice, I went across the street to the Tropicana for dinner. I had the southern style blackened catfish with a baked potato, hush puppies, and coleslaw. Hmmm, best meal I’ve eaten in a restaurant in a long time!

I mosied over next door to the Golden Nugget tonight, down the escalator, hung a right and entered the weird world of Buba Gumps. Gee, what do you think this place is all about? I sat at the bar and ordered the Cajun Shrimp appetizer, with a happy hour cocktail, for $9.50 and I have to say, it hit the spot. There were little pieces of sausage mixed with the shrimp and some garlic bread to sop it up.

As I sat there and took pictures I remembered I’d been here before and had posted similar photos on the blog. Not sure if I had the shrimp. though, and I’m too lazy right now to search…

There’s a fascinating piece of desert south of Vegas which mysteriously continues to call me. I don’t know what it is, the place is ungodly hot, it ripped the canopy off my truck last trip and the place is full of desert rats. Speaking of canopies I drove slowly along the highway that heads into Bullhead City this morning and couldn’t find it…

I shot a couple of videos as I drove. They’re raw and unedited and convey the experience from my driver’s seat. The first is just landscape while the second captures the huge solar electric plant that helps feed the Las Vegas power grid.

For some reason, I can’t see these videos on the Pioneer Hotel paid connection. If you can’t see them either then I need to fix some code when I get back…

Video 1  Video 2

update: I may have fixed that first video…

Today’s drive down I-15 from the top of Utah, through the Virgin River Canyon of Arizona and on into Mesquite, NV was long, beautiful and hot, with Salt Lake City being a fifty-mile long strip mall that you just need to get through without getting hit by Mormons with their prayer book in their lap.

Rolling down into the southern desert today my sweet little truck was indicating displeasure at the 3200 RPMs I was asking of her, to maintain 70mph when the temp was at 108°, but she handled it well and is now sitting in the shade at the Virgin River Casino, by the pool.

Me? I’m ready to shoot this post out to world and head to the hottub down there, which was unoccupied last time I looked :-)

Update: Just spent an hour chatting with a couple of retired guys at the tub (younger than me) and the general consensus was: Hillary needs to be smashed into the ground, and even though he’s a character, Donald needs to win. I hear this everywhere I go…

Woke up to a beautiful Teton sunrise through my office window this morning, like a message from the travel gods to get ready to get hot! A few hours later I splashed down in the 112° pool at Lava Hot Springs and got a good soak in before my room was ready.

I’m enjoying the afternoon here, not too crowded yet as Summer begins to unfold. Heading back to the pools in a bit, then tomorrow, Mesquite, NV!

Here’s the weather forecast for the next seven days across my three different travel destinations next week.

• Tuesday: Lava Hot Springs, ID, 84 – 56, Clear.
• Wednesday: Mesquite, NV, 113 – 75, Clear.
• Thursday: Laughlin, NV, 108 – 78, Clear.
• Friday: Laughlin, NV, 101 – 75, Clear.
• Saturday: Laughlin, NV, 102 – 73, Clear.
• Sunday: Laughlin, NV, 100 – 74, Clear.
• Monday: The Desert, 105 – 76, Clear.

…and I’ll be soaking in hot water daily. This is to make up for every day my fingers froze when I pre-tripped my bus last winter at thirty below.

Some Mondays are better than others and today was great. It started this morning when the stranger held the door open for me at Basin Travel and said good morning. It continued when I got to the counter and Karla told me the guy in front of me was paying it forward and bought my coffee.

I was facing two more weeks of work followed by a tortuous trip to I.F. on the following Monday, June 13th, to work with dispatch. I wasn’t getting out of here for some travel until the middle of June. Yikes!

And then, those Wheels that keep on Turning, suddenly began to align. The visit to dispatch was put off until August, my morning pickups at Hatches Corner next week were canceling away, and Karen said she could handle next week no problem. That means that when 401 school ends this Friday, I’m done!

So, I scoped out room rates in the desert starting next Wednesday (I still have to pick up Steph on Sunday) and got some great prices: 5 nights across two locations, for an average of $34 a night. It’s on! In a week I’ll be heading to the desert on Horses with no Names, seeking heat and back pain relief, and maybe find my canopy along the way.

Oh, and the driveway guys finished up the project they started back in October…

I’ve located the nearest dealer for Raider truck toppers down in Hyde Park, Utah (north of Logan). I don’t know anything about these toppers other than they’re a competitor to the top of the line Leer. Nobody shows prices on these things so you need to get a quote from the dealer based on your vehicle.

I didn’t like the $1600 price for a Leer from my local Idaho Falls dealer so I’m branching out. I’m also still entertaining the idea of finding my old one in the desert, but as every day passes, the idea wears thin.

Anyway, the dealer is Mountain Toppers (map)and their yard looks kinda interesting, just like their website, but maybe they have a used one back there that will fit. It’s also along the way with Lava Hot Springs so maybe I can kill two birds.

Except, I don’t kill anything, unless they’re a bird flying along Hwy 33 trying to dodge farming equipment and fly under my bus. The thump haunted me all day yesterday and all I could say to myself was, accident…

When I pulled into Bullhead City, AZ over last Spring Break and realized my trucks canopy had been blown off by an 80 mph windstorm, somewhere out in the massive desert I had just crossed, my first thought was to secure my gear. I just assumed my poor canopy was gone forever and now that I’m back home and ready to start another Summer adventure, I feel lost without it.

New canopies are not in my budget, and tonneau covers are problematic, so I have decided to buy four bolts. When school ends around here and my employer and I agree it’s time to start my summer off, I’m heading back to that desert to attempt to find it.

I don’t have high hopes for this adventure but I have four bolts just in case. What the hell, if I spot it I can drag it out of the desert, bolt it down, and see what happens next. If a rattlesnake bites me in the process, oh well, that’s the end of next…

I spent my formative teenage years in Paradise California, a place where I excelled at Track and Field in High School, set a few records, and eventually flunked out of their damned stupid school. I actually had a counselor tell me that I wasn’t college material.

So, I took his words to heart and hitchhiked around the country for a couple of years, landed in Height Ashbury for a bit, and eventually got my Computer Science degree from Merritt College in Oakland with a 3.98 GPA, in 1971. Go figure…

There is a road that drops off the canyon from the high buttes of Paradise, onto Butte Creek, and into Chico. It’s a road I remember fondly from my youth when I used to test my driving skills on it, in my old hot rod Fords.

There’s an old covered bridge at the bottom and it was hit, and damaged, by a car in 1965 (not me) so they closed it down, built a new bridge, and made a park out of the old.

I’m heading to California this Summer and I will visit this old bridge, so stay tuned. I will also drop down your way in Petaluma Skoge, so make me a bed…

Click the photo below, to check out the map…

I jumped out of my no-tell motel bed in Provo, UT at 0430 and was fueled, caffeinated and hitting I-15 North at 0500. I asked the young Mormon cashier boy at the 24 hour Maverick store if I could beat the SLC morning commute by leaving now and he just smiled with glazed over eyes and said I suppose, which really means he doesn’t get out of Provo much. I did beat it and Piper’s purring on my lap now as I write this.

It was a fun adventure and I’m glad I went. I had my share of close calls though, like walking down a straight 3-story flight of stairs at the Virgin River carrying my bags and my old knees started to give out. I had visions of me toppling down head first, and it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t, but after loading up my truck I took off into the early morning, spotted a convenience store and after confirming nobody was on the road, turned left towards it. Some little blue car pulled out fast from somewhere and we almost smacked but my cat like reflexes saved me again. There’s just something about Mesquite…

The next day I was standing on a cliff overlooking Laughlin, NV as the wind began gusting really bad. I had battled the wind climbing up there to take some pictures but I thought for a minute I was going to become a kite! I managed to get out of there and avoided all rattlesnakes. This is the same wind by the way that had ripped off my poor canopy earlier in Arizona (or was it Nevada or California, they all converge here).

Anyway, the pluses outweighed the minuses, I’m tanner, and home again.

My goal was to pull out of Laughlin this morning at 0500 for my return home and I hit it on the mark. I decided that my midway destination would be Provo Utah which is just south of Salt Lake and five hours from our house. I’m here now.

I’ve never been in Provo before but I found downtown and a downtown motel to hang out in. I had a craving for some Asian food and I ended up in a Japanese joint that served up some fine Tempura and a strong Saki. Stomach content, I mosied around and took some shots which you can see by clicking the photo below…

I met my maid this afternoon, a cute bubbly little thing that just had to tell me her life story about getting divorced a year ago after 20 years and her old man ripping off the cabin they were living in and, you know… I felt a possible hit coming on so I mentioned my significant other, got my garbage dumped and towels changed, and then tipped her $20 for taking care of me these last four days. As she walked out the door she gushed why can’t I meet a man like you?

Very flattering, checking out early tomorrow, heading North…

I guess I still got it, not that I need it, as I approach 70.