oct 18-20, 2013

Friday Oct. 18. Opa Henk needs a part for the RV, the heating in the living area is not switching on. Outside temp, 29 degrees; inside, 50 degrees, a tad chilly. The bedroom is OK and I’m tempted to just stay in bed until it warms up, but, more fun to go somewhere together. So we’re off to Carson City, NV. The first RV place doesn’t have the part, but they’re connected to a Honda dealer. Hmmm. We pass a handful casinos in half a mile and find the Honda folks.

I’ll make the  long story short – it took more than all morning. I guess Opa took the day off… And now we don’t have a Mazda anymore, but a Honda CRV instead; and the financial consequences weren’t that bad. Honda’s CAN be towed, unlike the Mazda, even though the salesman said it could. There are even directions in the manual. Good. I will keep this car until it dies, which, since it’s a Honda, will take about 20 years and I’ll be 82.

On our way back, in the Honda (shaking my wise head), the next RV service place has the missing part so now we will be warm in the morning as well!

Saturday Oct. 19. First back to the Honda dealer to have a towbar installed. On its back, so it can tow something else. I’m not sure why now, but whatever. We wait and wait and eventually they’re done. Then we drive off for today’s special, the Lake Tahoe scenic byway circle. We start with crossing over the Carson Range. On the east side dry sagebrush-type vegetation, far apart, changing to a mix with very tall pines higher up, then more and more pines plus fir and spruce and aspen when we descend to the lake. It has the clearest, bluest water, beautiful mountains, cute touristy towns, and an evil road section with a lake-side (our side) shoulder of 4” beyond the white line and abyss-like drop-offs – on one piece, on BOTH sides… shudder… I’m glad Opa is driving! The West side of the lake apparently gets much more rain and has many more trees including incense cedars and sugar pines. Unfortunately we didn’t find any huge cones. Not that we went for any of the hikes, there were so many tourists (besides ourselves) that there was hardly any parking, and on the California side they wanted $10 at every parking area. No way.

Sunday Oct. 20. Last night we watched the Red Sox win and today we watch the Pats lose. Oh well. We see two jackrabbits on the campground in the morning on our way to church, and we go for a beach walk in the afternoon: white pelicans, cormorants, gulls, and coots on Washoe Lake; magpies and what may have been a meadowlark in the sand/sagebrush/dune area alongside.

Late afternoon I climb on the RV roof with a bucket of car shampoo, Opa hands me the garden hose and we wash first the roof, then the four sides of the RV. We double-checked, and it’s not prohibited to wash your motorhome. This is rare, so we have some fun playing with soap and water. It’s plenty warm – well over 70 degrees – in the afternoon, but when the sun gets nearly drops behind the mountains it suddenly gets chilly. And we’re wet. So we’re happy to be done…

Tomorrow there are some phone calls to be made about car insurance and electricity to our future home site. After that we’ll get ready to move on. Next stop: Sacramento, CA.