Day 10 and 11: Las Vegas, NV to Tonopah, NV

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Ben

Shabbos was wonderful as expected. It was really nice to spend the day with my parents.

This morning I went for a quick ride. It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve been on the bike, the longest hiatus from riding in years. And I felt really lousy when climbing the hills, as if I hadn’t been on the bike for 2 weeks. I could tell I was out of place, as all the joggers and cyclists I encountered had a skin tone that, were it a crayon, would be called “edge of pie crust”. Anyway, here’s the ride:

I could see downtown Las Vegas in the distance:

I rode to the end of Horizon Ridge Boulevard and back:

It was 109 degrees on Shabbos, and it was similarly hot today. After having a third old tire replaced on the RV and stopping at Lowe’s, we headed North towards Yosemite. We stopped for lunch at the ghost town of Rhyolite, just a few miles East of Death Valley:

The famous bottle house, built around the turn of the last century out of bottles and mortar, is well preserved:

It was really hard to turn our backs on Death Valley, but we will be back in a couple months when it’s cooler. We continued North to Tonopah, where we’re staying in the Banc Club Casino parking lot. The drive was windy and wet with a good bit of lightning as well. Thankfully, it’s much cooler here than in Las Vegas, it’s probably in the mid-60s right now. Tomorrow we will drive into Yosemite!

We drove about 240 miles today. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Tidying up the electronics

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Ben

I had a spare moment one morning this past week, so I turned a mass of wires and boxes laying on the bottom of the cabinet into a wall-mounted model of efficiency. Pictured here are the back of the stereo, our WAP, the PoE adapter for the WiFi antenna, and the booster for our cell antenna.

Day 9: Cedar City, UT to Las Vegas, NV

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Ben

Today we arrived at my parent’s house in the early afternoon after a major shopping stop at REI to pick up a tent and packs and sleeping bags for the kids in anticipation of some serious backpacking in our near future. We will spend Shabbos here and head North on Sunday to our first long-term destination, Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park.

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 8: BLM land near Sinclair, WY to Cedar City, UT

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Ben

Waking up this morning at the BLM campground felt like a real homecoming. We are back in the west! The air was cold and crisp in the morning, and the smell of sage was in the air:

The kids did a bit of fishing and whittling:

We left the campground pretty early, and managed to drive all the way to Cedar City, Utah. We stayed at the Walmart there. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 7: North Platte, NE to BLM land near Sinclair, WY

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Ben

This morning, I called a couple shops in town and found the part that I needed to replace to restore our turn signals and running lights. Here I am doing auto surgery in the parts store parking lot:

To avoid the high passes of the Rocky Mountains, we decided to head North through Wyoming. It added 50 miles to our route, but I figured it would be a lot less stressful.

The most amazing part of today’s drive was how quickly we transitioned from the Midwest to the West. Once we crossed the 9000 foot pass into Wyoming’s high country, it was clear we had left the word of Corn behind. We queued up the John Denver as we drove into the sunset, marveling at the rugged landscape before us.

Eager to kickoff our entry into the west with a more meaningful overnight location than a Walmart, we use the Allstays app to find a BLM campground on the North Platte river a few miles north of Sinclair, Wyoming. It only has 5 sites, each 200 yards apart, and it’s free! We pulled in and there was serious solitude and wonderful dark skies.

It’s nice to be home!

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.