Today we headed into town for groceries, water, and PPG fuel. We also got rid of our trash and picked up a couple items at Lowes and Michaels.
When we got back to the RV, we pumped the water into the RV from the bladder in the pickup:
Good Shabbos from Jean Lake, Nevada!
This morning, I was summoned from my room by B exclaiming “Quick tattie, a hot air balloon!”:
We then noticed that the fellow with the white truck was setting up a PPG! I went over and said hello to Tuan, who was up in the air in no time:
Tuan flies a trike buggy PPG instead of foot launch:
Meanwhile, M and B rode their bikes around:
I decided to get my PPG put together and join Tuan in the air:
Up I go:
Birds of a feather. Or rip-stop nylon:
Tuan filmed me from the air as he flew behind me. The video is here:
Tuan kept flying, but I had a perfect landing and then stowed my gear:
B created a shirt using batik, a process in which wax is applied to fabric to prevent portions of the fabric from absorbing dye:
The finished result:
I got in a sunset flight:
During family game time, I disassembled our Canon SD1100IS camera to try and clear out what I think is sand jamming the mechanism that extends the lens:
We didn’t have any turkey today, but we did have a great day!
This morning we drove out to Jean Dry Lake, 15 miles south of Las Vegas, to set up camp for a while. Last night only got down to about 50 degrees, and the rest of the week is supposed to be sunny with highs around 70, which is just perfect. M and I inflated his motorcycle tires and oiled his chain. We also installed a front axle that came in the mail to replace the one that was missing from the original crate. So far we’ve been using a bolt from True Value Hardware, which worked surprisingly well:
We’re all alone our here:
I had the pleasure of going out for a shortish ride, seeing where the pavement ends on the roads around the lake:
We love the desert sunsets:
We’re looking forward to spending a couple weeks out here!
With overnight lows in the mid-20s, we are very ready to get back to the land of warm winters. We decided we would drive the entire 400 miles to Las Vegas today.
We stopped in Hawthorne to use a casino dump station and top off on diesel. The town is almost completely surrounded by Hawthorne Army Depot, the largest ammunition depot in the world, covering 147,000 acres with 600,000 square feet of storage in 2,427 bunkers and above-ground buildings:
On our approach to Tonopah, we saw the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project as well as an observatory in the hills observing the town.
We stopped in Beatty for a bathroom break:
We continued south to Las Vegas, spent some time at my parents house, then drove over to overnight at the Camping World on the outskirts of town. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
We woke up to another cold morning, this time in the parking lot of the Walmart of Susanville, CA:
Last night I attempted to exchange our RV batteries at Walmart. Since we live in an RV, I scan and throw away everything. Unfortunately, Walmart changed it’s policy a year or so ago and now requires the original receipt. This seems silly to me, as the Walmart register system knows from the barcode if the receipt is valid, to prevent people from returning the same item twice using one receipt, for example. If the barcode is scanable, and the receipt is valid, why does the kind of paper it’s printed on matter?
When I called the Susanville Walmart from the parking lot, for whatever reason they said that a copy of receipt would be fine, so I took one of my two batteries in for exchange, as this has gone wrong too many times to go to the trouble of removing both batteries from the RV. When I took in the battery, they said that since the battery didn’t say “2 year replacement” on it, the battery had no warranty at all. I knew this was wrong, and eventually persuaded them to attempt the exchange, which of course worked.
The folks at the service counter weren’t sure this was OK, so they wouldn’t do the second battery without talking to the store manager. This morning, I took the second battery in and the store manager was there. He had a battery tester, which they didn’t use last night. Thankfully the battery tested as bad, and he allowed me to exchange the battery. So we now have two new batteries, and these batteries now have original receipts which I will be putting in ziplock bags and taping to the batteries.
After installing the new batteries, we drove southeast to Reno. There, we topped off our diesel and refilled our propane at an incredible $1.86 per gallon! We then continued on to overnight at the Walmart of Fallon, Nevada. See the trip map for driving details and our current location.
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