Another beautiful Nevada morning dawned over us between Las Vegas and Death Valley:

B made a nice Mizrach for us.  This is especially useful in an RV since it changes every time we move:

We drove North towards Death Valley, stopping at an abandoned, partially-completed concrete factory a bit North of Highway 95 a few miles outside of Beatty.  I get the feeling we’re not the first people to visit here:

For lunch, we parked on BLM land just outside of Beatty and waited for my parents and brother to arrive:

Here’s what happens when you park in a wash:

Once everyone arrived in Beatty, we drove up to the ghost town of Rhyolite.  Hard to believe it was way back on Day 11 when we last visited here.  The Bottle House fence was open, so we could get up close:

The original mobile home:

Walking amongst the ruins, it was hard to imagine the town of 5,000 people that stood here in 1907:

Because one hoodlum isn’t enough:

I loved the backlit plants:

They were shaking in the wind:

Leaving Rhyolite, the rest of the crew returned to their motel in Beatty, and we found a nice spot on BLM land.  I set a new record with the WiFi antenna tonight, reaching an access point in Amargosa Valley over 20 miles away!  It had a “pay to play” reroute screen, but the fact that I was even able to connect was exciting.

As the sun set, the mountains were transformed into golden cutouts against the horizon:

Tomorrow we head into Death Valley!

Shabbos at Lake Meade was nice, but a bit crowded for our taste.  On Friday, we found out from one of the dealers that sells the Avalanche 360RB that another buyer in Las Vegas had just purchased one.  We contacted Steve, and set up an early Sunday viewing in North Las Vegas.  Rather than trundle out of Government Wash early Sunday morning and wake everyone around us up, we left Saturday night and drove to the Walmart of North Las Vegas to overnight there.

We awoke to a good view of our overnight neighbor, whose bus and truck were festooned with messages of repentance, some of which made more sense than others:

Steve picked us up and took us on the tour of the Avalanche.  It confirmed that this was the RV we wanted, which was a relief as we had already put down a deposit on one!  We stopped at home depot where we saw evaporative coolers for sale which made me consider a daring RV modification that Tricia would never let me get away with:

My brother David and his kids had flown in for our Death Valley adventure, so we drove back to my parents house where the cousins promptly began playing with fire, albeit in a controlled setting:

Tonight we drove North from Las Vegas towards Death Valley and overnighted on BLM land along the way.  See the trip map for details.

Today I moved the RV hitch over to the new truck:

We did the switch at my parent’s house, and their neighbor Ed was kind enough to lend us some tools to get it done:

The truck’s receiver is ten inches higher than the Kia’s receiver, so I had to invert the hitch.  With the Kia, the hitch ball was twelve inches above the receiver, on the truck the ball is level with the receiver:

We drove about half an hour out of town to Lake Mead.  The truck tows the RV with much more confidence than the Kia.  We’ll see how it is with a 6-ton fifth wheel behind it.

Good Shabbos from Government Wash, Lake Mead, Nevada!