We have been a little lazy about keeping the blog updated, but will try a little harder. We left Yuma and headed north on a very nice sunny day, stopping in Quartzite for lunch. The next stop was Lake Havesu and the London Bridge and then on to Kingman and the Blake Rv Park and Horse Motel.
talked to the owner when he came over to see the truck. He explained the horse motel part....they have 12 stalls that people traveling with horses rent to rest the horses while traveling. Horses do not travel well in trailers and need a solid place to rest so he rents the stalls out and has a corral to walk them. The horses owners do the feeding and care.....another unique idea. Stayed for two nights. We were trying to decide if we wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. While we were thinking about it, some people stopped in and said it was
snowing in Williams and at the Canyon ( the first of May !!!!) This made up our minds..... next trip. Even though the weather was cool.. in the 60's, we left for Nevada and took the highway to Las Vegas across the Hoover Dam. Signs on the highways said no commercial or rental trucks crossing the dam, but we're an rv so we went that way. We stopped in Cloride NV for lunch.. another out in nowhere town that we saw signs for and went to check out.
A unique, almost ghost town in the desert. Lunch was at Yesterdays Restaurant.... good food. While we waited for it to open a truck stopped in the middle of the road and a guy got out to check out the ltlgrntruck and spent a 1/2 hr talking. One other car passed and two other guys walked by.
A real busy morning. From there it was on to the Hoover Dam, then Las Vegas and on to Pahrump which is about 65 miles NW of Vegas on the edge of Death Valley.
Jan managed to find some entertainment there. There were at least 3 casinos in town. The rv park was playing Texas hold-em the night we pulled in. Once we got settled Jan went to find out about the stakes. So Mondays and Wednesdays were texas hold-em games and Tuesdays and Thursdays were cribbage games. The rest of the nights were spent checking out the casinos. At $5 for the buy in, the card games were good entertainment.
As you saw on the previous post we had a great time at ATHS National show. When the ATHS show ended Sunday we went along with about 40 other trucks on a bridge tour. They had a route set up that took us on 5 bridges in the San Francisco Bay area... The Oakland Bay .. Golden Gate..Richmond-SanRaFael..Carquinez and Benicia/Martinez bridges. We stopped for a mini truck show and a delicious box lunch at a park along Hwy-1 on the Pacific Ocean.We drove the ltlgrntruck through parts of downtown San Francisco.... Wow What Fun... sure glad we were playing follow the leader... Just like everywhere we go people standing on the sidewalks point and wave and give us thumb's up. It still amazes us the reactions of people to the ltlgrntruck. When the tour group turned south we left them and turned north on the beginning of our journey through the Pacific Northwest. Our first stop was on the Russian River at Duncan Mills. We realy do not make too many plans on our travels. This area was a surprise. We were just headed to Hwy-1 on the coast but found this area a favorite getaway for S.F. people. It has a redwood grove nearby and the river is a favorite for canoeing and kayaking. A neat area, so we stayed a couple of days. When we left, we went on the coastal highway. WOW again. The coast is amazing. Sometimes when looking I forgot to look where the truck was going much to Jan's dismay. So we didn't travel very far and made many stops just to look at the new world we had entered. We saw lots of sea lions and seals and stopped at a couple of lighthouse and landed at Caspar Beach between Mendecino and Fort Bragg where we stayed for 2 days enjoying the rain !!! not. We met several interesting people in town. One stopped us on the street by standing directly in front of us to take our picture where he was joined by another person who had just grabbed his camera out of his car. One of the locals( transplants from New York who used to sell clothes to the Meijer stores that we retired from... Small,small world ) told us that times were so bad that most people had to wear "2-3 hats, like flippin' burgers and growin' weed in the garage" just to keep their heads above water. We can attest to the hardships a lot of people are going thru. We see so many "for sale", "closed" and just plain empty buildings. God help this country.
And now I am privileged to pass this award to" these were the words in David's 
People said it really does get that hot and it was only the middle of May. They, also, said that as it is 200 ft below sea level, we would find 7 and 8 % grades to get out on the other side. Since the little green truck doesn't really like these climbs with these temps, we decided to take the easier route up US 95 to Reno. As this route is mostly desert we were quite surprised when we got to the place we picked to stop for the night.
As we entered town we saw a lot of bunker looking structures and in town there was a Munitions Museum ???? All kind of Questions. On the other end of town was a very large lake that we didn't see until the next morning. We didn't go to the museum but learned that the town has been an ammunition depot for many years. It started as a Navy Depot in 1930 and was transferred to the Army in 1977. Last night we were listening to one of our hero's Gov. Jan Brewer defend herself and her state and she said that her father had worked at the Hawthorne munitions depot during WW II. How interesting when a place you have been to is personally referenced by someone. As we left in the morning the road followed along the shore of Walker Lake, 
12 mi. long by 5 mi. wide lake in the desert. It was a beautiful drive along the lake. As we left the area we entered another world on the edge of the desert.The area becomes a farming area as you come into Fallon & Fernley & Reno. We stayed at a campground outside of Reno for a couple of days and then went to the parking lot of T.E.C. Trucks, a Volvo, Mack truck dealer that helped sponsor the truck show. 
have a neat grille made to look like a new Volvo truck. They furnished hotdogs, hamburgers, salads, cookies and drinks all three days of the show. They even managed to get the little green truck in for an oil change and to help me adjust the brakes and repair some air lines. 
were all great guys and the truck show was great because of their help in-spite of the cold winds and snow and sleet we experienced .... this was May21-22-23 .... crazy weather.
