Back in Vegas 08

We got back to Vegas on Wednesday. Had a great ride. No rain. The Tehapachi Pass did have snow but the rodes were clear. Got more pictures of the windmill farm in the Pass above and also got a good view of the Monte Carlo Hotel that caught fire in Las Vegas last week as we came into town today. We are settled back in Thousand Trails in Las Vegas and will be here for two more weeks. Then on to Texas.

San Jose, CA 08 Week 1

We're having a wonderful visit with my aunt and uncle. They actually live in Morgan Hills, CA which is just outside San Jose. The Thousand Trails campground we are staying at is less than hundred yards from their house. It's been raining everyday that we have been here but we haven't minded at all since our primary reason for this visit is to visit family. Even with all the rain, the surrounding mountains are still snow capped. This pictures above of the snow capped mountains were taken just down the street from my Uncle Joe and Aunt Bev's house. Morgan Hills is such a pretty town. It has such wonderful homes built on the hillsides and the people here are so friendly. I've really enjoyed going to the Curves in Morgan Hills. My cousins Karen and Jodi live in San Jose. On Friday, we had a girls day out and my aunt, I and Jodi went to see 27 Dresses. It is a great movie. We really enjoyed it. It was one of those movies you wish would never end. Saturday night we took my aunt and uncle to Vic Stewart's steak house just outside San Fransisco in a town called Walnut Creek. Jim has a list of the top ten steak houses in the U.S. that he got out of a travel magazine and decided he was going to make it a goal to visit each one. Vic's was on the list and it is the first one we visited out of the ten. I brought my camera and when Jim went to take a picture of me, my aunt and uncle, he realized I didn't have a SD card in the camera so we couldn't take a picture of our first steak house visit. Duh! I could have died, I was so mad at myself. I left the disc in our laptop back at the RV. But anyway the visit was wonderful. The atmosphere was wonderful, the service great and the meal was wonderful. We had met the Executive Chef, Tyler, earlier in the evening at the bar while we were waiting for the dining room to open, and Tyler later came to our table later in the evening to make sure we liked our dinner and talked about our travels. Overall it was a very enjoyable evening. On Sunday, Jodi and Dave hosted everyone at their house and Karen and her husband, Tom and two of her children, (Julia and Jason, his wife Melanie and granddaughter, Heather) came over. The photos above are of the whole clan. We had a great day and Jodi and Dave cooked a great meal. It sure was fun to have everyone together. On Monday, Jodi and I went to see the famous Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. (While all this girl stuff was going on, Jim and Joe had a ball running around and doing guy stuff--without benefit of female supervision as Jim and Joe said! They visited an air museum, ate at the senior citizens center, Jim got to hear Joe's Choir sing, and Jim and Joe got pedicures--yes you heard me right, pedicures! Apparently they had all the girls in the store doting on them! Anyway back to the Winchester House--The lady who built the house, Mrs. Sarah Winchester, (wife of the 2nd President of Winchester Rifles and Guns) was originally from Connecticut but after her baby and husband died, she went kind of crazy and superstitutous and after seeking advice from a physic (sp? fortune teller?) left for CA and was told she needed to build 24 hours a day to keep the spirits away and live a long life. So she built this beautiful home (see above) that has 160 rooms, stairs to nowhere, doors to nowhere, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, etc. She was fascinated with the number 13 so most of the decor contains the number 13 in some form or fashion such as 13 windows in a room, 13 drain holes in sinks, 13 candles in the candeliers, etc. She had 13 servants, 13 gardners, and a construction crew of 13. It was a fascinating tour. Tuesday was our last day in San Jose, and we ended it with dinner with Aunt Bev and Uncle Joe at a little Fish and Chip place in San Jose that cooked the best fish and chips. It reminded me of the way we could get fish and chips growing up in Rhode Island. We returned to Las Vegas, NV on Wednesday.

San Jose, CA 08

We left Las Vegas on Wednesday, Jan 23rd headed for San Jose, CA. We headed out I15, then took routes 58, 99, 46, I5 and route 152. After we left the Mohave Desert, the ride became very scenic. We thoroughly enjoyed the views. Our favorite part of the trip was going through the Tehachapi Pass (I5) and the Pacheco Pass (H152). TheTechachapi Pass contains a huge wind farm. The wind farm was started in the 1980's to generate electricity. The So. CA Edison plans to expand this wind farm to 50 sq miles. It was unbelievable to see all the windmills. The Tehachapi Pass runs between the Tehachapi Mountains and the Sierra NV Mountains; thus it connects the San Joaquin Valley to the Mohave Desert. It has some awesome railroad tunnels running through the mountains and along the mountains. We actually got to see trains passing as we rode along. The Pacheco Pass (H152) was also very beautiful and scenic. We learned it was home to the Aussymus Indians and was built by them as a trade route along the coast of CA. After gold was discovered in 1848 the pass became the main route from coastal CA to the mines. It is very plush land and there are many fruit, wineries, etc crops. Along the way we didn't hit any rain until we got to Pacheco Pass. By the time we reached San Jose the rain had stopped. While we were getting set up, a gaggle of turkeys came right up to our RV as if to say what are you doing here. They weren't even scared off by our dogs. After we got settled in, we went over to my aunt and uncle's house which is very close to the Thousand Trails campground we are staying at. My aunt Bev had made a wonderful dinner and after dinner we watched Americal Idol. Yep, I'm still into American Idol. By the time we left to go back to the RV it had started raining again hard. When we woke this morning we heard that I5 got a foot of snow and is closed down. Boy were we lucky or what! It's still raining here today but we'll make the best of it. We discovered the rains doesn't affect the turkeys and their morning route through the park, they were here again this morning checking us out!

Las Vegas 08 Week 2

Jim and I basically had a relaxed week here. We started the week with dinner at the RV with my son, David, and my neice, Shaunna and her family. We had a great visit and ended the evening with a game of Mexican Dominos. We visited David at his bar, The Thunderbird Lounge, at the Aruba Hotel several times this week and enjoyed meeting and chatting with his co-workers. Jim and I even took a swing dance class at the Aruba. (That's why Jim is dancing with the guy in the photo above just in case you all were wondering)! Jim and I went to the movies to see Mad Money one afternoon - what a great movie. We laughed so hard, Diane Keaton was a riot in this movie. We went to see my great nephew, Jordan, play basketball again on Saturday. This game wasn't as successful as the first one. They lost the game and the poor kids on the team were crushed. But like we told Jordan, its not always about winning but how they played the game, and he played his little heart out. Even though they lost the game, we still enjoyed watching them play. On Monday, Jim and I went to Cirque Du Soleil at the Mirage. The theme was The Beatles Love. It was excellent. We had great seats. We were in the second row. The whole show was done to Beatles music. It was awesome. Tuesday night we went to the movies with David and saw Juno. Another great movie. We've also managed to get a little gambling in. We're not exactly big gamblers but we were pretty happy with our success these past two weeks. I started with $40 that I had put away just for gambling and I ended up these last two weeks with $80 so I'm pretty happy. Jim's in the hole about $10 but he figured he made up for the $10 with free drinks while he was losing it. So he thinks he's ahead if you count the drinks he got for the $10 loss. We leave Wednesday for San Jose, CA to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins. We'll be there for a week and then we head back to Las Vegas for another two weeks. The weather in Vegas has been in the 50's and a couple of days it was in the 60's but it has been sunny the whole time we have been here.

Las Vegas 08 Week 1

Before we left home Jim had paid $1100 to get the driver side front windshield replaced. We no sooner got to Vegas when Jim discovered he had a ding in the new windshield. Meanwhile I had noticed what I thought were pine needles on the passenger side windshield but after looking at Jim's ding I looked closer and it was not pine needles stuck to the windshield but two cracks six inches long shaped like a pie shape. Needless to say, Jim was beside himself. He got a hold of a guy who fixed windshield cracks and got him to come out to fix ours. While he was working on the ding on the new windshield, a crack occurred on either side of the ding about 12 inches each way. Jim almost died. But at least the crack went side to side instead of up and down and its in the top of the windshield so it doesn't impact the view. The windshield guy then stop-drilled the cracks on my side of the windshield to stop the crack from spreading - that crack is definitely going downwards so if this stop-drill doesn't work we got a bigger problem. So we'll see. Looks like we will definitely be going to the Winnebago factory in Iowa later this summer! Otherwise, we haven't done a whole lot. We went to Davie's bar (The Aruba) Friday night and enjoyed watching swing dancing lessons, meeting and chatting with his boss, and of course watching Dave in action at the bar. Saturday my great nephew, Jordan Taylor, (10 yrs old) had his first basketball game this season. So of course we went to his game to cheer him on. Jordan's team won 18 to 17. It was a very close game and I am proud to say Jordan got the winning shot. We were all proud of him. He plays every Saturday so that is what we will be doing on Saturdays while here. We took a ride out to Boulder Dam to see the construction going on. Because of 911 you won't be able to ride along the dam like you can do today and they have been working on making a new road through the mountains to take the traffice away from the road along the dam. So we decided to go and take pictures from the road just in case this is the last year to do so. Today Jim and I are going bike riding. It is a beautiful sunny day here in Sin City so we plan to go out and enjoy the outdoors. Hope our east coast friends and family are staying warm! Bye for now.

Las Vegas Bound Jan 08

We left home on January 4th headed for Las Vegas, NV. We were very bless on this trip. We kept hearing about these snow and rain storms but we seemed to be before and after them everytime we got on the road. We had beautiful sunny weather the whole time we were driving. We spent the first night in Evansville, IN at a Flying J. Then we made an unexpected detour to Tulsa, OK and spent the next 2 nights in front of Jim's brother's (Mason) house. We hadn't planned on going through Tulsa because we didn't think the weather would be good enough but we saw on the weather channel that Tulsa was going to have a couple of 70 degree weather days so we thought what the heck. We had a great visit. Jim's brother Rick and his wife and son came over as well as their sister, Jean; and Mason and Judy's children with their spouses and grandchildren. It was really great visiting with everyone. From Tulsa we headed west on I40 and spent the next night at a Kmart in New Mexico. That night we had a lot of wind and rain. The wind literally shook the motorhome and I sure was nervous, but it only lasted a short while and then the weather was fine from then on. From their we continued on I40 west and spent the next night in Flagstaff, AZ at a Wal Mart. We couldn't believe the snow that they got in AZ. It was at least a foot and more. We had 6ft snow piles in the parking lot. But the weather was sunny and the roads were cleared so we had no trouble. We got to Las Vegas on Wednesday, Jan 9th. After we got settled in at the Thousand Trails RV park, we met our son David for dinner and after dinner David came back to the RV to see Bono. As you can see from the photo above, Bono was happy to see David. We got the dogs shaved before we left VA so they've had to wear sweaters in order to keep warm. This is Bono's first sweater and he really likes it but he won't go to the bathroom with it on and he won't climb the RV steps with it on so he only wears it inside the motorhome! The picture above is Jim and his brothers and sister; from left, Jean, Jim, Rick and Mason. I got a new camera for Christmas and it's got a stabilizer built in for my shaky hand so I have been having a ball taking pictures.