Author: kathyanyc

Tuesday, 3/14 – Wednesday, 3/15: We did stay another day in Seligman.  Walked to breakfast against a biting NNW wind with gusts approaching 40 mph, ate breakfast and strolled back to take some pictures.  We thought about going to Williams to take the Grand Canyon train but it’s too damn cold!  This town has an interesting history, meanwhile.  Founded by a German banker who realized the trains had to stop here to put on water, it became a way stop for many traveling coast to coast including some of the rich and famous.  It was frequently used as a backdrop for western movies and hosted celebrities from John Wayne to Elvis Presley. Pictures of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and the like are featured in many of the restaurants and motels.  Our room was proudly presented as the “King’s”, referring to Elvis although you can be pretty sure he never stayed at the Canyon Motel. Many of the souvenir shops skew toward 1950s kitsch and old cars line the roadside.  Two tour buses emptied into Lilo’s diner as we ate breakfast, toting out containers of chocolate coconut pie and carrot cake for the road and taking selfies. Not sure what we’re up to for the next couple of days, but if it doesn’t warm up we will probably head farther south.

Seligman fire squad

Downtow Seligman

Thursday 3/7 – Monday 3/11: We spent the last couple of days at the Welk resort quietly. Thursday while Jan and Charlie took a safari ride at the San Diego wildlife park, Ron and I wrote a blog post, took a walk to the shops and checked out the menu at the Canyon Grille, where we ate when the Stoffers got back.  Friday and Saturday we mostly read and chatted.  It’s been chilly and cloudy – not much of an incentive to spend too much time outside.

We left on Sunday (after a nice brunch at the Grille) and went our separate ways.  Ron and I drove east to begin the final leg of our journey; pretty much the first time we drove in that direction since beginning this trip. We’ve mostly gone west, lots of times north or south but only east once last fall when we left Yellowstone for our visit with Diane and Jim in Colorado.

Our first destination was Joshua Tree NP where we camped just south of the park on BLM land.  We had planned to stay inside the gate but between spring break and super bloom, we hadn’t a chance to score a site. And the super bloom did not disappoint.  Mile after mile the yellow, purple, white and pink flowers rolled from road to horizon.  Less crowded than Sunday, when we first arrived, but still packed with people with cameras all along the drive.  I kept hopping out of the van to snap just one more photo, while Ron used our small camera from the driver’s window. And when the flowers quit (in the higher northern section of the park) the teddy-bear cholla and Joshua trees took over.  Quite a sight.  At the end of the park drive we entered the town of Twentynine Palms, where we ate a delicious lunch at the inn of the same name, recommended highly by our friend Howie. We weren’t sure we would find it at first but thanks to Google maps we located it immediately.

While eating we contacted Emily and Bill, fellow campers we met last fall at Lake Meade NRA to find out if they were in the area.  They were and we drove another 100 miles (or so) to join them at their site in Craggy Wash BLM dispersed camping area, just north of Lake Havasu City across the Colorado River in Arizona. The Lake Havasu area is a magnet for campers from all over the country, particularly the northern states.  RV parks line the river, fill the state parks, nestle in the wildlife refuge and pretty much take over the town itself.  The city is of recent vintage, its growth fueled by the re-creation of the London Bridge which spans a man-made canal off the river itself.  Brought over from London (where it had outlived its usefulness over the Thames)  brick by numbered brick in 1971,  it is the main tourist attraction in the area. Because of the heavy rain we passed it by and headed right to Craggy Wash where we spent the night co-camping on Bill and Emily’s  site, two miles on the rutted dirt road into the campgrounds.  The weather did not look likely to improve so we left the following morning after chatting for an hour or two with our friends.  Hope to meet up with them again some day.

Our plan has always been to follow Route 66 – the “Mother Road” – as much as we could so we drove to Kingman AZ, had breakfast at the famous Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner and got some info to lead us on our way.

The volunteer at the visitors center warned us that bad weather lay ahead; cold temperatures, wind and snow were forecast foe the following couple of days – right on our route! Forty miles on we landed in Seligman, the town that Pixar used as the setting for Cars, and took a motel room for the night.  Maybe two, if the forecast doesn’t improve.

Monday, 3/4 – Wednesday, 3/6  highlights:

• Monday was spent relaxing on the resort grounds. The featured Monday barbecue lunch turned out to be grilled burgers on the Canyon Grille patio, served with a bag of chips and a cup of water.  Since there were only three other guests attending, we pulled a couple of tables together and invited them to join us.  An interesting group of people: Lorraine, from Bismark South Dakota owns several time shares (including one at this property) and spends the winter months visiting  them and nearby family and friends while escaping the bitter climate of her home city.  She was a registered nurse before retiring many years ago, and owned a high end dress shop in Bismark for several years. Jean still works as a systems engineer for Lockheed Martin and keeps their satellites aloft and functioning.  She also owns a number of time shares, including at this Welk resort, and is a regular visitor along with her boyfriend (her term) of many years,  Pat, a former Vegas bar tender and rock musician who played drums and bass in a few cover bands.  After eating we went to the weekly farmers market held here and bought some locally grown strawberries and lettuce along with a barbecued chicken and huge rack of ribs to have for dinner.
• Tuesday we drove up to Newport Beach to visit with Mary Beth and Jim.  They rent on Balboa Island for several weeks every winter to spend some time with their west coast grandchildren – and to escape the snow back east.  We rented a “duffy” – a small electric boat – and toodled around the harbor for two hours, ogling the yachts, sailboats and houses. As we ate our lunch we were joined by a gull who landed on the front deck just outside the plexiglass windscreen.  He stayed pretty much there for most of our trip, once trying to eat my sandwich through the wind screen,  a few times fending off a much larger gull, once or twice flying away only to come back a minute or two later.  I used my Merlin app to identify him as a Hermann gull, newly arrived from Mexico and greatly outnumbered by the other gulls on the California coast.  After our ride we took a short walk along the shore front to see some of the more spectacular house up close.   On our drive back to Escondido it began to rain in earnest so the tacos we  bought wound up being eaten right in the car.

• Wednesday was the most promising day weather-wise so we packed a lunch and headed to the Anza-Borrego desert to check out the desert bloom. It was spectacular, reputed to be a super-bloom this year,  with yellows, purples, pinks and whites carpeting the desert floor.  The fall rains coupled with cooler than normal temperatures forced the germination of thousands of annual seeds, some of which may have lay dormant for dozens of years.  There were several varieties of evening primrose, multiple forms of verbena and desert sunflowers and even a low-growing desert lily.  Beautiful and well worth the 1 1/2 hour trip.  I hope to see more when we get back on the road Sunday morning.

 March 1-4: Even though the weather was less than stellar, our trip down Rte. 1 on the California Coast was memorable. The breakfast room at the motel in Seaside was tiny and packed so we left with just a cup of (mediocre ) coffee and headed back to the coast.  Spotting a sign for Coastal Access – which seem to appear every five miles or so – we pulled into Point Lobos State Beach and drove up the bluff to Whalers Cove to make a pot of our own coffee.  We watched as a group of scuba divers suited up and slid into the cove, swimming otter-like among the kelp beds.  But there were many miles to cover before we reached Escondido so, reluctantly,  we ate a little breakfast and left after only an hour to get back to the road.

The views all along the way were stunning, rocky cliffs right down to the water, waves crashing on the beaches.  Although the sky was clouded and the intermittent mist limited the view, we could appreciate the lure of this stretch of coastal beauty, recommended by everyone we spoke to.

As an aside, in some ways we overestimated what we would spend on this trip and in some ways underestimated.  Take fuel costs, for example. We know we are driving a vehicle that at its best gets 19-20 miles per gallon on the flat and at about 55 – 60 miles an hour, so we weren’t at all surprised when we found ourselves fueling up every other day or so.  Especially when going up and down mountains or after days of 75 mph freeway driving.  And there was the wide range of prices we were seeing for plain old unleaded gasoline in the state of California; only rarely did we see anything below $3.00 a gallon, pretty much in line with what we thought we might find there.  But, when we decided it was wise to top off the tank on a long stretch of coastal highway between Big Sur and Morro Bay, imagine our shock at the $6.99 per gallon posted at the pump.  $6.99! Ron decided to put in a couple of “insurance”  gallons and get back to civilization asap.

We reached Morro Bay in the rain and checked into the park campgrounds before heading out to explore the area.  The Maritime Museum was on the way to town and we made a quick turn into the parking lot for a quick look. Wound up spending well over an hour looking at the exhibits and perusing the works of local artists.

The restaurant we chose for dinner (the Galley, because it had scallops on the menu and Ron loves scallops!) wouldn’t open for another hour so we parked near Morro Rock itself, along with dozens of other vehicles. Now the last time we were at the rock, about 15 years ago, it was sunny and warm and the resident peregrines were fledged and learning to fly.  This time it was rainy any chilly and there wasn’t a flying bird in sight.  But there were many swimming birds –  common loons, red breasted mergansers, western and eared grebes, buffleheads, cormorants – all the usual suspects.  And we were mesmerized by the sea otters, mostly what looked like parent-child pairs, as they floated on their backs, sometimes with abalone shells almost as large as they were.  We watched a young otter snatch a piece of food from its parent and swim away to eat, another using its rock to practice cracking an empty shell.  There were a couple of single gray-headed otters as well, what we assumed to be patriarchs or matriarchs of the family, rolling over and over and occasionally sticking their heads straight out of the water and looking around.

Continuing down the coast, we looked for our last camp night before meeting Jan and Charlie at the Welk resort for a different kind of experience.  Ron found Dohenny SB in our book more easily than we found it in reality.  While the day use area was pretty clearly marked, the campground was not.  To complicate things, we got there just as the annual gray whale festival was winding down, disgorging hundreds of participants onto the local streets. After driving back and forth a few times, and just as we were leaving out of frustration, we stumbled onto the campground entrance.  As Ron was venting to the camp host, a fellow camper volunteered to help us with the complicated check-in process and drove back with us to the entrance.  It turned out to be a lovely campground and we spent a fairly quiet night listening to the rain and surf before heading south once again in the morning, stopping briefly for a breakfast sandwich and some donuts.

We got to the condo just before noon and packed some stuff for a week in one place.

February 25 – March 1: There seemed to be lots of camping near Isabella Lake, just east of Bakersfield CA so we picked one site and headed that way. Paradise Point, right on the lake, looked like a great choice until we got there and found the gates closed because of a toxic algae bloom on the lake.  As we drove away we found one campground after another on the lake also closed.  Luckily, Boulder Beach, a wooded location on a cliff overlooking the water had its gates open.  For a while we were the only ones there besides the affable host Bob and his two little dogs. We spent a comfortable night, had a nice birding walk in the morning and headed into town to find breakfast before driving into Bakersfield for some food shopping.  After picking up staples (and a few treats) at Trader Joe’s we drove to the Kern River National Wildlife Reserve for a 6 mile auto loop and got to a nearby KOA (which wasn’t really a KOA we decided) just after dark. Many water birds at Kern, including thousands of coots, cinnamon teal, Western grebe, American avocets, black-necked stilts, great and snowy egrets, raptors including red tail hawks, red shouldered hawks and osprey, blackbirds including red winged, tri-colored and yellow headed and lots more that I’ll report on ebird when I get the chance.

As we left Bakersfield we had decided, as we often do, to follow an alternate itinerary, heading west to Paso Robles and then north the Gilroy; the Garlic Capital of the World. Even though it was drizzling we walked around Paso Robles for a couple of hours visiting the visitors’ center, a great coffee shop and a few antique stores. Finally found a glass doorknob to bring home.  We’ve wanted to replace the dented brass ones in the apartment with glass knobs to remind us of Davis Avenue but haven’t been able to find  many until now.  Can’t wait to install this one.

The ride north on Rte 101 gave us real insight into the agricultural nature of the state.  Fields of lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes and endless vineyards lined the road. Trucks with produce going both ways sped by and signs announcing wineries and farms were everywhere. Gilroy didn’t disappoint either. Starting with Garlic World and the Garlic Shoppe on Rte. 101, to the list of garlic restaurants and garlic bobble heads in the souvenir stores, this town takes its reputation (and primary industry) very seriously. We had a nice lunch in the Old City Hall restaurant (where the bathrooms are located in former jail cells) and continued on to Mt. Madonna, a Santa Clara county park complete with groves of redwoods, two of which (the Twin Giants) are certified to be over 250 years old.

We finally got to the coast and the Pacific Ocean and decided to stop at the first public beach we saw, Moss Landing State Beach. Loads of shore birds and a few dozen harbor seals, including at least one newly born pup. Pulled into Seaside and checked into the SureStay motel, a Best Western property, for a long awaited shower and some laundry.

February 23 – 24: We stopped for lunch just outside of Searchlight NV at the Whistle Stop Café, a little restaurant by the railroad tracks in the middle of nowhere. Had a good burger and chatted briefly with a few fellow diners from the Blue Knights, an international biker group that were convening in Las Vegas and taking a weekend drive. They were mostly retired law enforcement from across the country, with Texas, Nevada, California and even New York (Queens) represented in this group.

The Whistlestop Cafe.

Found art on the cafe walls.

Hotel California. For real.

As we continued on our way we realized that we would pass just south of Death Valley near the Nevada-California border.  Now it wasn’t on our trip list but it is a National Park and a legend as far as landscape and history so we decided to take another detour.  The nicer campgrounds were full – the end of a holiday week and a weekend to boot – but there were plenty of spaces in the parking lot-like Sunset CG so in we went.

The next morning we went to breakfast at the historic Death Valley Ranch, dating back to the park’s designation as a national monument in 1933.  Walked up to Zabriski Point, a spot the overlooks the salt desert floor of Badwater, at 230’ below sea level the lowest (and hottest) place in the US.

Also drove the Artist Palette loop, a short drive that took us past some colorful cliffs.

The road out of the park was winding and hilly, and halfway out we noticed our brake light was on.  Panic set in.  We checked the manual to try to troubleshoot.  It could have been any of three things, none of them good.  We decided to stop at the first town and pulled into the general store/gas station/camp office to see if there was anyone to help. No luck. Then Ron noticed a pickup truck coming into the parking area and decided to ask the driver if he knew how to check the brake fluid in a Dodge engine. Fortunately, his truck was a Dodge and he was able to help Ron figure out where things were under the hood, reassured us that sometimes his light went on for no apparent reason, and recommended a campground just a few miles away.  By then our brake light was out – and has not since reappeared – so we followed his directions to the Diaz Lake County Park and spent the night.

February 21 – 22: About a  month later than originally planned, it took us three tries to actually get to Las Vegas to pick up the van.

Try number one:  Cheryl dropped us at Newark at about 6:30 am, then turned around to go to the gym back on Staten Island.  We searched for a gate assignment for about 15 minutes, then for the Spirit desk for another 5 (lower, lower level, behind the pillars) only to find when we got there that our flight had been cancelled. Apparently after sending an email asking ticket holders to confirm their status (which we did), completing the pre-check process (which we also did),  after assigning seats, and after looking for volunteers to give up said seats they decided at 3:00 AM to cancel the flight, sending an email at 3:11 AM informing ticket holders of said cancellation.  3:11 AM!!! How many people actually check their email at that hour? And we were not the only ones caught unawares.  The scramble was on to find another flight; we rushed to terminal C, got on line at United’s Additional Services counter and waited only to find out all the seats on the morning and afternoon flights were sold. We called Cheryl and made our way back home to book a flight for the next day.

Try number two: Cheryl again brought us to Newark, a little later this time, and dropped us off.  After unsuccessfully trying to check in via the kiosk, we got an attendant to help us.  He took our information, checked the passenger roster and informed us that our flight was not the 8:55 AM one we were trying to board, but the 8:55 PM flight.  In my hurry to buy tickets I somehow overlooked that very important information.  At that point I lost it and became a blubbering mess.  He must have wanted to get rid of me so he booked us as standby for an afternoon flight and waived the very hefty change fees that United usually charges for basic economy passengers.  Trying to make the best of it, we took a cab to Jersey Gardens, caught a movie and lunched at Applebees before catching the airport shuttle back.  When we got to the gate we found that it was also a fully booked flight and that only 11 people had not yet checked in.  Since we were numbers 14 and 15 on the list we knew we weren’t going to make it so we settled in for another four hour wait.

Try number three:  This one worked.   We boarded a very crowded plane, took our seats and booked a hotel in Vegas for the night, one with an airport shuttle and a good breakfast.  Arrived at the Tru hotel, part of the Hilton chain, well after midnight and crashed.  Couldn’t say what the room looked like but the bed was comfortable and the room was warm.  After a good night’s sleep we took Lyft (our inaugural run) out to Best Time RV to meet up with the Zioness once again. Chatted with Brian about the Roadtrek drama, vans in general and his experiences before heading south once again.

November 22 – December 4:  Things fell into place once we got to Las Vegas.  Lou 2 generously let us use his condo in Green Valley, we luckily found Best Time RV and service manager Martin, who took the van into his competent care and promised to take care all of our (admittedly minor) warranty issues plus the more serious recall issues.  Since it would probably take a few weeks to get the parts from Roadtrek, he offered to keep it on his lot until we got back in January.

We rented a car and spent a couple of days exploring the area.  Highlights included:

• successfully navigating the Las Vegas bus system, we made it to the “strip” on Tuesday and saw all the glitz and glamour of endless casinos –  without the neon.
• a trip to Red Rocks, a national park just outside the city.  On the way back we ate lunch at Americana (a lovely lakeside restaurant in the Desert Shores neighborhood) owned a operated by Steve Blandino, a Staten Island native and CIA graduate who relocated to work the strip almost 20 years ago and opened this venue in 2016.
• antiquing in Antiques Alley, a cluster of shops at the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard, including one featured on national television.
• another memorable dinner at Three Georges, located in the historic Fremont District
• birding in the water reclamation area, a miles long strip of green bordering the Las Vegas Wash.

Boarded the Super Shuttle van as planned at around 5:00 am Tuesday 12/4 and caught United flight 548 for an uneventful trip home.

We enjoyed three quiet days in Echo Bay CG in the Lake Meade Recreation Area.  Found out from our fellow campers Emily and Bill – who used an altimeter app to measure today’s water level compared to what it was when they camped here 22 years ago – that the lake had dropped 122 feet.  That’s a lot of water! Between heavier usage downstream and less snow in the Rockies, Meade has suffered considerably.

We missed it, but while Bill was walking Cap, their dog, he spotted four burros and a big horn ram in the wash below the campgrounds. And a black-chinned hummingbird checked out our van on the way to the oleander blossoms nearby.  Later that day we took a ride to Redstone Trail, had a nice picnic and hiked the loop trail for about 30 minutes, but somehow missed the loop part and had to retrace our steps, back to the picnic area. A beautiful walk among red rocks and volcanic cliffs.

Ron uses his hiking stick to check for snakes.

Picnic at Redstone

20,000,000 year old shell of a volcano.

Sunday morning we pulled up stakes once again, stopped for a brief walk at the Wetlands Trail (which was really pretty dry) and found a spot at Boulder Beach CG for another couple of days.  Not far from the campgrounds was a marina offering cruises into the lake, through the Black Canyon nearly to the foot of Hoover Dam.  Since we had already decided to skip the dam tour, we signed on for the 1 ½ hour paddle wheeler ride and climbed aboard on Monday afternoon. At the entrance to the dock there were a lot of carp and bass, begging for handouts.  Coots, mallards and a couple of redheads had also learned that tourists mean snacks and circled the dock hungrily. It was interesting to see the coots diving straight down; we usually only see them breaking the surface as they search for food. From the boat we could see firsthand the water line mark over 100 feet above us.

Down 120′ in less than 25 years.

Hoover dam.

Redhead among coots, all begging for snacks.

The boat ride ended about 1:30 in the afternoon so we drove into Boulder City (the historic part), mailed a few things, wandered around antiquing for a while then had tapas at Milo’s Cellar for an early dinner.  Not early enough, though, as it was pitch dark when we returned to the campgrounds.  Luckily there were not many campers there so our meandering search for our site wasn’t too disturbing. The next morning we returned to Boulder City and stopped at the city park, where we had been told there were big horn sheep that grazed there.  And there were many, along with a couple of tour busses and a few families with kids, all of us taking pictures and trying not to disturb the sheep.  After wanting to see these magnificent creatures pretty much our whole trip, it was strangely sad to watch them in this environment, near swing sets and slides, being gawked at by tourists from Las Vegas.

We left abruptly and went to breakfast at The Coffee Cup, a pretty popular spot in the city, noted on the menu as having been featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners Drive-ins and Dives. Interestingly, when Ron and I planned this trip, one of the things Ron wanted to do was to follow Guy’s restaurant recommendations and eat at some of the places he’d touted.  Somehow, we forgot to do that.  The food at the Coffee Cup was so good we may have to plan better once we’re back on the road.

Spent our last two nights camping at Cottonwood Cove, also in the Lake Meade Recreation Area, at the northern end of Lake Mohave. Drove into town for breakfast and some laundry and nearly ran into a road runner crossing our path, too fast to pull out the camera.

Tomorrow we head into Henderson for Thanksgiving, then to Vegas for van service and a week at Lou’s condo preparing to come home for the Christmas holidays.  We’ll pick up the blog again in January when we return west to wrap up the Ultimate Road Trip.

Now that we’ve checked all the biggies off the list, we’re taking our time to get to Vegas.  Our first stop was in Quail Creek SP, a Utah park right on a reservoir. A little seedy and the woman at the entrance was a bit gruff.  We rode around to find a level site and she came roaring up in her golf cart to find out why we hadn’t returned to the office to pay.  We explained that we didn’t have levelers and so we were trying out a few sites before deciding.  She left abruptly without saying a word but when I walked out to the entrance (nearly ½ mile) with the money she was already on her way back to chew us out again.  She u-turned around me and met me at the gate, sweet as anything.  Some people probably shouldn’t work in public interface positions.

The next stop, not too far from there, was in the Virgin River Gorge Recreation Area, in a part of the area known as the Arizona Strip.  This is the small piece of the state that cuts across the northwest-most corner of AZ along the Virgin River and is almost more Nevada than Nevada at that point. It was a nice place, just  outside of Littlefield, and our site overlooked a narrow part of the river.  It was the first time in many days that we were able to sit out in the sun; we played cards and ate dinner at the picnic table and enjoyed the warmth.

State parks have been the big surprises of this trip and our next stop, Valley of Fire just a little north of Las Vegas, was no exception.  Just when you think you’ve seen every color of rock, every bit of petroglyph and every arch, the west throws something new at you.  We spent Veterans’ Day weekend at the Arch Rock CG in the park and visited most of the sights – Elephant Rock, the White Domes, the Fire Wave, the Cabins (built of red sandstone by the CCC for the first tourists in the 1930s), the Beehives, more rock art at Mouse Tank,  Atlatl Rock and its Anasazi petroglyphs that could only be seen by ascending a long metal staircase – all totally accessible and stunning to view. We also got to see the  elusive desert big horn sheep; we’ve been looking for them in every park, every BLM campgrounds, just about every mountain peak we’ve passed.  This time, when we read they were in the park, but rarely seen, we decided not to bother searching.  Then, poof, right by the side of the road to the White Domes, there was a ram and about nine ewes with a young ram, munching sagebrush and grasses.

Some of the beautiful red rock formations in the park.

The cabins, built by the CCC in the 1930s.

The only way I’ll ever do rock climbing.

Ron’s not interested….

We left the park on Monday to visit the Overton wildlife management area along the Muddy River, a place we’d spotted on the way in and when we got there, we saw that there were half dozen camping sites, only one of which was open.  Since they were free and we had no definite plans for the next day, we stayed.  Birding was the best we’d had in a long while.  The area is maintained as a waterfowl wintering spot and is open every other day during the season to licensed hunters.  Since it is a riparian environment, many other birds gather there and we were able to check off bushtits, house finches, phainopepla, western bluebird, Gambel’s quail, gray jay and mockingbirds as well as a peregrine falcon fly-by, only a few hundred feet in front of us as we walked the gravel road. Woke up to a spectacular sunrise and stopped at a schoolhouse museum in Logandale before leaving the area.

We decided to head for Lake Meade Recreation Area for a few days of recreation.  To get there we had to drive back through the Valley of Fire SP and pay another entrance fee.  Figured what the heck and found ourselves returning to Arch Rock CG for another night.  This time there was only one site available and as we pondered whether or not it was too close to the bathroom, a woman approached us and introduced herself as Chris from Arizona, a Roadtrek 190 owner.  She and four other Roadtrekers are here on their way from an informal week-long gathering in Death Valley, something they do every year.  Ron and I were enthralled hearing of their other travels – months in Alaska, months exploring Canada’s Maritime Provinces, road trips to Oregon and Washington, on the road most of the year and enjoying every moment of it.  They almost always boondock, rarely take a motel respite and have found places to camp everywhere.  They gave us some good tips on where to find showers and laundry, as well as unusual places to eat and stay.  We took good notes; tomorrow we head for Lake Mead and Hoover Dam.