Staying Warm In Sin City
It was October 1st. We had a reservation at an RV park just outside Kennewick, WA. We had packed the night before and were ready to pull out of Osoyoos by 8:15 am. The drive to the US border wasn’t even 10 minutes. There was no line-up, no search of our truck, only the trailer. The agent checked our fridge and looked to see if we had any pets. We were quickly on the road again.
There was one place called Rocky Ford we passed, the fields were full of boulders. We don’t know what they used the grounds for. Cattle? You couldn’t grow very much with all of the boulders covering the ground. The land was barren in many places along the route.
That first night was in a pull-through site. The park was a paved lot with trees around the outside. We were right in the middle of it all and were glad to be pulling out early the next day. It had felt like we were in a shopping mall parking lot.
We went to Costco for gas and food. We hoped that gas would be cheaper and that the food would be too. With the exchange rate, from CAD to USD, we paid approximately the same. We had to put $200 of gas into the truck for the distance we covered. We hadn’t put gas in the tank since the beginning of September.
Hagerman, ID was the next destination. We were stopped outside Baker City, Oregon by a truck fire on Interstate 84. We sat stuck for 2 hours. A truck that had been hauling hay was fully engulfed in flames at the bottom of the hill. When the highway opened up again, we saw that the semi was now a smoldering black lump of ash.
We ended up driving through Boise, ID during rush hour traffic. The day was long and exhausting. We didn’t unhook the trailer when we arrived in Hagerman. The sun had set, and we missed out on the beautiful scenery coming into the area where the RV park was situated. At least we experienced a beautiful sunset when we got through Boise.
The next day we headed for Vegas. We drove through lots of rain, with one stretch after Lund that was really heavy with hail. A weather advisory phone notification came to warn us about flash flooding in the area. It came after we had already white-knuckled our way through the storm.
That night in Vegas we treated ourselves to dinner at In-N-Out Burger. The next morning we bought more groceries. We found shopping for food in Vegas expensive. Our first attempt to get the basics (bread, milk, cereal) took us to a corner “grocery.” Inside the store was chips and booze, not the staples we needed.
We found it loud at the Hitchin’ Post RV Park with military jets flying overhead and sirens from emergency vehicles racing down the road. Even the sound of people walking by our trailer was loud because of the crunch of crushed rocks under their feet.
We drove down to see the Strip. Our GPS struggled to get us there because of construction. When we finally got to the hotels, our truck was overheight for the underground parking. We ended up at the Tropicana and used their overheight surface lot. The security guard said it was okay to park there all day for free if we spent a few dollars inside at the slots.
We had made plans to stay where it was warm for the next six months. How long would we last in Vegas?
We prefer to set up and stay in one place for a while. Slow travel is less expensive.
By October 2nd, we had put 5000 kms on the trailer since we had picked it up in May.
It’s essential when you travel to stay healthy and be able to look after your rig. You need to be able to lift things and reach into or under anything.
We are grateful to have a place to stay every night that is familiar, our Coffee House.