Back on the Road for a Short Trip

We are settled in tonight at the Nellis Air Force Base Pet Friendly Temporary Lodging Facility after an eight or so hour drive from home.   This adventure will be a short trip - eleven days start to finish.  We are headed to Long Beach, CA for our granddaughter Stephanie's graduation from Cal State Long Beach. The reason we are going to take that much time is that Roger wants to enter and leave the LA basin on a Sunday while hauling the RV behind him.  He is hoping that it will be easier for him traffic-wise.  We will be staying at a Navy RV Park on Seal Beach Naval Weapons Center in Seal Beach, CA.  It happens to be the next town over from Long Beach and close to the university, so, hopefully we will be ideally situated for the graduation festivities and family visits.  

Where we are staying tonight is a part of the Nellis Inn lodging facility, in a segregated area near the RV park.  Little one bedroom apartment style rooms in a 4-plex building.  There are about 10 buildings.   They are not posh by any means, but comfy with a living room, dining table, kitchenette, bedroom and bathroom.

 No carpet - my guess is that is because it is a pet friendly room and it makes it easier to clean.  Once Maggie's ball came in from the truck and she got her dinner she was fine. In fact, she is spread out on the couch next to me and the ball, sound asleep.  

She didn't sleep much today. She kept wanting to see what was going on.  
 

Her pill wore off about the time we hit Las Vegas so the last half hour or so she was a bit antsy, shaking, and shedding like we needed the fur to make a nest or something.  The rest of the day she did quite well. She even sat patiently in the truck while we got some dinner. We could see her sitting on the console staring at the restaurant door we went through - but not barking or crying - just waiting! Good dog!!

We are here for one night, then tomorrow we go pick up the RV where it has been stored since the first of April and check into the RV park for one night.  This gives us, a) a break from driving after an eight hour day; and, 2) time to get all the systems set up and running before we take off again.  One of the things that Roger needs to check out is to make sure the new brake controller he installed in the truck works the brakes on the RV.   If you remember, when we left Santee the first of March, the brake controller wasn't working and Roger had to brake the RV manually. This is definitely not a good way to do things!  He's since bought and installed a new one,  and, with any luck it works and we won't have to come up with a Plan B.   Then, bright and early Sunday morning we leave Las Vegas for Seal Beach, CA.  

Today we started out early.  We were on the road at just a few minutes before 8, which is usually my getting up time. 

Walker Lake with Mt. Grant in background

The weather wasn't so great - low hanging storm clouds and intermittent rain.  We could see the bottom part of the mountains but not the top.  The snow last night had dropped pretty far down - it looked like about 6,000 feet in elevation. Fortunately the valley only got rain and it wasn't raining when we loaded the truck.  It was in the low 40s this morning when we got up and stayed that way most of the morning as we drove south.  We had some light rain, some heavy rain and then some sleet at we climbed up to about 6,000 feet at Tonopah.   We switched drivers there at around noon and as soon as we started dropping in elevation, the sun came out and we had patches of blue sky with lots of puffy cotton ball clouds. By the time we got to Las Vegas it was in the high 60s. Basically Roger drove in all the crummy weather this morning, and I got the nice weather and dry roads this afternoon.   Worked out great!!! 

Traffic was light but we did get stuck behind this guy for a while and when you're on two lane roads "a while" can seem like forever!! In case you can't tell what that vehicle is, it's a flatbed trailer loaded with a pre-fab building that was very heavy, very large (read very wide), and very slow.