Month: February 2018

Today was my last day of skiing. The weather was warmer, there was fresh snow last night, and the conditions were great. My goal was to traverse the entire width of the ski area. I managed to get to nearly the most southern ski lift and the most northern ski lift. By the end of the day I had made 19 runs, traveled 29.2 miles, traveled 22,869 feet vertically, and hit a max skiing speed of 50.8 mph. My longest single run was 3.3 miles with 2,324 feet vertical distance. I used a cool new to me ski app, can you tell? Hah! I was actually pretty impressed with the stats. I was able to ski much better today. Just in time to leave as usual.

Tonight we went downtown Park City and ate at the Blue Iguana Mexican restaurant. It was pretty good and we were literally the only customers due to the early time (about 5pm). After eating we saw the movie Black Panther. We really enjoyed it.

Day 2 of skiing. The slopes were a bit icy today making it a challenge. I wiped out three times in the first two runs. Ugh, I did manage to keep it together the rest of the day. Again, we chilled in the condo and ate leftovers.

Day 1 of skiing. The slopes were great, if a little cold today. This ski area is huge. There are 42 lifts. I stayed on the North end of the ski area today. I returned to the condo for a light lunch but decided tomorrow and Wednesday I would probably eat on the slopes. While I can ski to the condo it takes a lot of time out of the day. Tonight we cooked and stayed in.

We had a nice lazy day today. No need to get up at dawn and walk Maverick, even though it is bittersweet because we miss our buddy. We ate on Main street at the No Name Saloon. The Saloon provides great brew-pub cuisine. We drove around for a little site seeing, I got a haircut, and rented my skis for Mon through Wed. It should be great fun.

We got up extra early this morning so we could move the coach to storage. We got it parked in a VERY TIGHT spot by about 7am. How tight was it? I forgot to take a picture, but we had 4-6 inches clearance on each side of the coach. I couldn’t get in the spot without rubbing wires that were sticking out about an inch on the semi trailer next to me with my mirror.  I dare anyone to get their 40ft coach into a tighter spot!  It is a 6 1/2 hour drive to Park City so most of the day was taken up by the drive. The temperatures along the way dropped to 14 deg. The drive through the Virgin River Gorge on I-15 was an unexpected scenic surprise. The drive takes us tantalizingly close to Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Cedar Break National Monument, and the North-East Grand Canyon. We plan on returning someday with warmer weather.

We arrived in Park City about 3:30 to drop Maverick off at the pet resort. The Wyndham time share does not accept pets. The pet resort looks great but it’s still hard for us to let go of Red Dog for a whole week. The Wyndham is great. It’s located on the slopes of the Canyons ski resort. The resort is a ski-in and ski-out location with on-site ski rental. Pretty awesome. We ate dinner at Maxwells. Maxwells is a very nice Italian restaurant best known for pizza. The pizza was pretty darn good.

 

Today we went to see the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. We had a great time. When we parked at the dam visitor center the young attendant asked us if Maverick was a service dog (wink-wink). It is against their policy to let pets walk on the dam nor be left in the car. Mav was a great service animal. We saw several other service animals with dubious qualifications. We also went to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area visitor center and scenic overlooks. We had lunch at a local hot spot in Boulder City called the Southwest Diner. It was excellent. It was in the 40’s today and pretty chilly.

Starting Saturday for 7 days we will be in Park City Utah for a ski holiday. Today I worked to get a storage spot for the RV for next week and reserving this same RV park for March 3-6 for our return. I finally found an affordable storage facility but they required an extraordinary amount of paperwork. I met an old friend, Tom “Rags” Ragsdale for lunch in Henderson (a suburb of Las Vegas). Tom and I became good friends while working the Joint Strike Fighter program in the late 90’s. Tom ran the El Segundo targeting FLIR development team for me. Tom retired Raytheon about 11 years ago and we have managed to stay in touch since (a miracle for me). It was great reminiscing and getting caught up after all of these years. This afternoon we saw the Blue Man show at the Luxor. It was great fun.

Today we made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Las Vegas. The drive was pretty desolate.  We booked at Las Vegas RV Resort.  The resort is gated and pretty large.   The dog-walk areas are pretty small for a big guy like Maverick.  We plan on staying here in Las Vegas until Saturday morning. Once settled in here, we cruised the strip and Fremont street. The rest of the evening we just chilled at the coach.

As planned, we moved the coach to overflow parking this morning. It’s just a parking lot without any hookups and became quite crowded. The spot we claimed is directly facing the water/beach. Super nice. We only ran the generator a little in the late afternoon as a courtesy to the many close neighbors. The sunset at the coach was beautiful.

Last night in Quartzsite was very windy, so much so it kept us up some in the night. Today we headed out for Lake Havasu City, AZ and the wind remains super high. The new steering gearbox was really nice under these conditions. As a matter of fact, the longer I drive the coach the more I appreciate what a nice upgrade the new gearbox is.

We were surprised by the scenic mountains along Hwy 95 from Quartzsite to Lake Havasu City. It is really pretty. The road follows the Colorado River much of the way and has beautiful rock formations in the mountains along the way. Lake Havasu was bigger than we expected. We made reservations a few days ago for tonight at Lake Havasu City State Park. The park is very nice and provides 50A electric and water. We waited in line to dump our holding tanks on the way in. We want to stay two nights here but could only get reservations for one. The Park has a large “overflow camping” area that is a paved parking lot with no hook ups. We plan on staying tomorrow night in overflow.