Until now, the transition to the new RV has kept us too busy to do full homeschooling days.  Today we did our best to get back on track.

This morning, B and I wired the remote switch for the inverter:

Now I don’t have to go outside and open up a compartment to turn the inverter on and off:

We had a full day of homeschooling, here I’m working with B on Scratch:

Between periods, Trish put the urethane clear coat on the kids’ tables:

After school we headed about six miles Southeast to the town of Darwin, population 40ish:

The town used to be much larger in the mining days.  These buildings are now all abandoned:

On the way back from Darwin, we checked out some mines that were on the map:

It’s a long, long way down:

This mine was even larger:

We then drove over to the abandoned Talc City Mine complex:

And then on to the adjacent Silver Dollar Mine site:

We went in just a few feet:

We found the spot where previous residents dumped their empty cans of food:

I looked online, but couldn’t find any information about this fellow:

This mine had the remnants of a rail system in the tunnel:

Several other mines dot the landscape:

In the distance, the Sierra Nevada mountains:

Tomorrow we’ll head into Lone Pine, right at the foot of the Sierra mountains:

This morning I finished mounting the bike rack to the rear bumper. Unfortunately, the new RV’s bumper is so close to the rear wall that our extra wheels won’t fit it their places on the rack, so for now they’re in the truck bed.

We don’t have a good way to carry the kayaks on the roof of the truck, so we left them at my parent’s storage unit and took the racks off the SUV. We are considering purchasing a pair of inflatable kayaks, but we used the kayaks so rarely that we may just make do without them. My parents are now the proud owners our storied Kia:

Trish stained the kids’ new tables to match the RV’s trim:

Tomorrow we’ll head West out of Las Vegas. We can’t wait to get back on the road!

Today we said goodbye to our old RV.  Jesse and Angela are excited to start making their own RV memories with their new RV!  Here’s Jesse after the hand-off was completed:

When I returned home (to BLM land) after finalizing the sale, I got to work on mounting the bike rack onto the new RV:

We’re still hoping to get on the road by Friday, as Saturday’s highs are expected to be just shy of 100 degrees.

This morning I took my angle grinder to the Suburban-brand oven grate from the old RV and modified it to fit our new Atwood oven.  Now we once again have a grate for meat and a grate for dairy:

This time around, we’re a little more reluctant build a second oven into the kitchen like last time, at least for now, so I built a quick and dirty slide mechanism for the second oven to emerge from one of our basement doors, so it can be used as a kind of outdoor kitchen:

It uses the same propane connection that is used for the generator:

Here it is retracted.

Tomorrow we hope to complete the sale of the RV and move the bike rack over to the new RV.  We hope to leave Las Vegas on Friday.