Southward Migration

When I last updated I was boondocking in an abandoned mine area off Highway 50 between Carson City and Dayton Nevada. 

While we were there I had a friend stop over for a night on his way south.  An overnight guest?  But where would he sleep?  Turns out my office can double as a spare bedroom.

Here is my office in office mode.

And here it is when the fold up bunk bed is flipped down.  Our guest slept fine there.  (Scrappy is modeling the bed).

This boondock served us well for the 14 days we were allowed to stay there.  On 9/11, the last night we were there, we had a scare when many cars blocked us in.  We heard music and people speaking in Spanish.  There were lots of cars, and in such a remote dirt road area, late at night, that's frightening.  After a while it became clear they had come to our choice camping spot because they wanted to party.

I came out of the RV and attempted to greet them in Spanish.  Was that smart?  Probably not.  But I heard female voices among the crowd and that made me believe they weren't as nefarious as one might imagine.  A little while after I yelled 'Hola' to them the cars all left.  We slept through our last night with no more incidents.

This praying mantis on our ceiling is another visitor we had during the boondock.

My mother's medical stuff is as done as its going to be.  It's just too hard to get stuff done in Reno.  She's going to see her more accommodating doctor in Las Vegas.  I'm going to be a guest at a convention in October and they're flying me out of Vegas.  So Pahrump, near Vegas, is our ultimate travel goal.

On 9/12 we moved to the Washoe State Park.  I thought it would be a cheap night's stay where we could shower and maybe do some bucket laundry.  Since it was $15 per vehicle and we moved both our RV and car there, it was way too expensive.  But anyway, we got showered, dumped, got water, and did one bucket of laundry.  

I didn't take any pictures of the park, but it's a beautiful place to dry camp.  Large, spacious, level RV spaces that are spread out on two loops.  There's a lake there also, but it's too dry for boats to use the dock.  I didn't actually check out the water.  We just showered, dumped, the usual. 

The only problem with the state park, and the boondock, is that Juniper trees REALLY STINK.  I don't know if they always smell this pungent or if it's some special blossoming happening now, but they reek.  The park is full of them.

I'm trying to get to Tonopah, to a boondock we stayed at a year ago.  Tonopah is halfway between Reno and Vegas and there's a Passport America campground nearby where we can shower and do the rest of our laundry. 

So did we start heading towards Tonopah?  No.  We didn't.  We went east back to Fallon to stay at the Bonanza Casino again.  Because we suck.  We wasted money as usual.

During cold weather our cats Sultan and Scrappy will tolerate being near each other.

Tomorrow we will be making the long drive to Tonopah in one trip.  That's 4 hours to the boondock.  We'll stay there until we need to dump and then will check into that campground I mentioned.  After that, we're going the rest of the way back to Pahrump.

It's all familiar places right now, but we will be getting off the beaten path soon.  More on that later.