Day 23 Saturday 7/13

Well we are nearing the end, only a few more days…where did the time go? And speaking of time, wake up was normal and all that stuff, but sadly we left late, by an hour. I know not normal for us but we all started moving a tad late and we had a large amount of things to do for some reason. But hey, It doesn’t matter there isn’t really much planned for today, we just want to take it easy as we head off to our next spot.

Eventually we reached the state border, I don’t rightfully remember which one we went into but I am will to say it was Nevada. Which meant we also crossed a time zone and thus gained another hour. A little thing about time changes, you mind understands them, but your body doesn’t…and thus causes a good amount of trouble when you are traveling. And on that note of traveling…the Nevada desert gets old after a while, sure there are a good amount of hills and the small mountains, but come on it’s all dirt and the small bush. So as you can tell…I was getting fed up with just looking at the same old same old after a while.

And around lunch, local time, the course of our vacation hits. We have a tire problem on the RV. One of the rear passenger tires decided it was to be a pain. So we had to pull out at the next exit and replace the thing. And as luck is luck, Nevada heat is at our backs….and extremely hot tires at our fingertips. It was so not a fun experience, but then again it never is. But it was nice to be done with it and for us to continue on with our trip.

But as our luck had it, we didn’t have to go that far before we got off the freeway anyways, this time for a gas stop. It really was sad that we couldn’t haven at least gotten to the gas station, but apparently our luck had decided to flee us.

Well I should say our plan was to fill up, but apparently we dad decided against it given it would have been too difficult to get into it, so instead we went to a different gas station, a “nearby” Costco. And like always, once filled up we were off.

Around 1:30 we got to our stop for the day, and no I did not miss putting in Lunch because we hadn’t had it at this point yet….which meant I was HUNGRY! Well that was eventually settled, and then mom and dad went off to fix a tire while me, sister and nana stayed back and settled into our slowly cooling RV while it was boiling hot outside….why is Las Vegas always hot? Like over a hundred whenever we come here?

Well anyways it was decided we would brave the heat so we could go get dinner, thankfully we just had to walk to the nearby casino and walk through it to get to where we wanted to eat. And then when done with that…I had to move quickly back to the RV to drop some leftovers off then haul my butt back into the building, for we had decided to watch a movie.

The movie being the newest Star Trek, was I really quiet liked. And because of it, I am sitting here thinking about everything I write and how it would sound with Scotty’s accent. Damn that movie, even it was good.

Tomorrow….oh tomorrow…that is when we should begin our final trek home. The last several hours until we are back in California, the mountains, real mountains, and the grand city I have grown up in and still don’t know what is where. But hey, it’s LA as long as you know what the building looks like and the general direction, you’re normally good…normally.

Keep your fingers crossed and knocking on that wood, we may be near the end, but this is when it all comes together. We don’t need another tire going! And if it does…please make it in cooler weather, I hate the heat out here…Next post, Home…

Typed July 13, 2013

Day 20 Wednesday 7/10

Surprisingly wake up was a bit late today. Not by much but enough to notice, but it wasn’t that much of a problem. The simple thing is that after waking up it was getting ready for a LONG day of driving in the van.

And I am not kidding, we spent darn near the whole morning and afternoon driving around in that van of ours. Our few stops for were photos and later lunch, and one other thing I’ll talk about later.

On one of the stops though I did have some fun. My mom sort of goaded me into climbing a small rock face and try to get to a little ledge. I didn’t decent, was able to stand next to the ledge, but not get in ledge, I just couldn’t get a good hand grip or foothold, good thing to because getting down was WAY harder than getting back up. But it was still a fun thing to do, I even rediscovered how good your palms can be when climbing up and down a difficult item.

But sadly that was the only fun thing we did, for driving was boring, extremely so and eventually…we got a flat. That is right, the first flat of our trip was in the Van. A tad abnormal because normally the flat is on the RV and we got tires ready for that, but nope the Van decided to go and get a little tiny whole that I could cover with my thumb in a place that can’t actually be repaired. So needless to say we had to pull over and put on the temporary for a bit, until we got to town and then dropped into the local car shop and got two new tires, for the tires on that Van really needed them.

Personally I hate changing tires, it is usually hot, and the tires extremely uncomfortable move. But I admit there is little that can be done about. But right now, I just feel like complaining, sorry.

Well anyways when the Van was done with its repairs we dropped by the RV did a few things then went to dinner, had dinner of course then came back and settled into a normal evening.

Tomorrow is a travel day, a quick one to my understanding. I don’t know how much I can actually say about that when it comes, but then again, I’ve found out things can be longer than I thought before.

And by the way Chris, No we did not see fireworks that day, we did see them before we left Oklahoma  though.

Typed July 10, 2013

Vacation 2012 - Day 1 June 22

Day 1:

     Well the first day we spent most of the time ether sitting around or getting the RV ready. But at one point we all got off our butts and started to just get the RV ready.

To get said RV ready all we really had to do was load up who knows how much crap into it. And like every year it is too much crap.

     But on a different note we were able to leave around 4 o’clock, and yes that is PM and also pacific time. But we did not go all that far before we stopped to make sure all the tires on not just the RV but also the trailer that the thing tows along with it were full of air.

     That check on the tires did not prove to be very good though. For around an hour later, don’t ask me what happened between then and getting on the freeway for I was zoned out and sleeping lightly. Anyways as I was saying about an hour later the outside duelly on the passenger side had a problem.

     Now the problem wasn’t that the tire went flat, it was that the treading of the tire, the part that connects to the road, well it just came off. That is right, the treading just came off. The only thing we had to keep the air in was the mesh part of the tire. Now that was kinda cool to look at an all, but it was very dangerous.

     We had to go a ways before we were able to pull over and change tires, it was also then that we noticed the blowing of the treads caused more damage. The mud catcher that usually surround the tires, well that got destroyed. But we got to work on changing the tires. My dad worked on getting the bad tire off and I worked on getting one of the spare tires we got.

     Now the spare tire is on a little item had been made in back of the RV. It is held onto the RV were we put our sewer lines but also uses a piece of metal and a couple of screws to keep it up. It took me a bit to get the damn thing down, but once down I was able to roll it over to dad easily. But also once downed I heard a noise that comes from one of the screws popping out.

     So when I had finished rolling the tire over I went back and looked for the blasted screw. Once I found it I also saw something that did not look right. The metal part that we used to hold up the tire, it had a large gash threw half of it and the other half looked like it could break at any time.

     I immediately told my father about it and he agreed. We took the metal off and threw it into the RV; we won’t be using that part anytime soon.

     It took us around another half hour before were done with changing the tire, and near the end of that time a tow truck FINALLY stopped by. We did nothing more than tell him what was going on and that we didn’t need any help. He said alright and left.

     Now I said we stopped to change the tire about an hour after we left right? Well even if I didn’t, I just did. But anyways it took a little over 50 minutes to change that tire. So we started to move again around 5:52, I think.

     But after that, the ride was pretty quiet. I fell asleep for around two hours at one point and when I woke up we were pulling into a place I think is called Kramer Junction. We had to fuel up and get some food for dinner. Subway was what we got, but for some reason I was starting to get sick and couldn’t finish my sub, oh well.

      We spent several more hours on the road before we finally stopped for the night at some place; don’t remember where or when, I was trying to fall asleep by that point.