Meeting Up with Friends, Getting the Rig Weighed and a Surprise Repair NV/AZ

Boulder City, NV
Elks Lodge
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Congress, AZ
Boondocking

A short drive and we arrived at the Elks Lodge in Boulder City, NV.  This has to be one of our favorites.  It's in town nowhere near train tracks or freeways.  Right behind the building but set back and very campground-like.  Beautiful landscape and nice pavement with W/E.  We were just here to overnight on our way in to Arizona.  

Our main reason to stop here was to finally meet Pam and John of Oh, The Places They Go!.  They have been RVing for years and are the hikers I'd like to be.  They are always hiking someplace great!  We met at a nearby Mexican restaurant after they showed us around the cute town of Boulder City.

We enjoyed the views of the river and colorful mountains on our way to Arizona.

While having lunch in Kingman, we decided to get the rig washed since it was right next door.  Poor thing was so filthy after all the boondocking we had done.  We usually wash and wax it ourselves but one or twice a year it's nice to have Blue Beacon do all the work!

With a crew washing both sides it gets done so quick!  We just have to dry it off and we're on our way.

It was a 4 hour drive to our friends new place in Prescott Valley.  We met Skip and Tammy in Colorado and have stayed in touch since.  They're both retired fire fighters from the area and decided to move back to be closer to family.

They took us out across the valley from them in their ATV and they showed us some old abandoned homesteads and ovens.

Not sure the history on these ovens.  I'll have to look more into it.

The Prickly Pear Cactus were ripe so we collected a few to be used for later.

They also took us to an old spring that is still running.

We wandered around several old home sites.  We found many old objects left behind and admired them but left them where they were.

An old brick.

Not much left of this old place.

View looking back towards Prescott Valley.

Me, Steve, Tammy and Skip.

We hiked around some and also found a geocache while we were out here.

We got back in time for Skip's famous BBQ while Hurley played with their new puppy, Sadie.  She was 6 months old but slightly bigger than Hurley.  He's good with puppies but not too sure what to make of one bigger than him.  She was very energetic and Hurley is less enthusiastic in his old age.

"Please let me in!  I don't want to play anymore!"

While Skip was BBQing I carefully cleaned, skinned, smashed and juiced the Prickly Pears we collected.  And voila! We had some tasty margaritas!

Cheers to a beautiful sunset!

We thanked our friends for the FHUs at their place and the wonderful time together the past couple of days then moved on to Congress where we'd be getting our rig weighed.

We had an appointment to get the truck and trailer officially weighed at the Escapees Park in Congress.  We're not members but they will weigh you for $40.  We boondocked a mile away on some BLM land near the area of Ghost Town an Cemetery Roads.  It's a nice area and not as spooky as it sounds.  Even though the Old Congress Cemetery is right there.  Cool cemetery.  The location of our spot was 34.1920 -112.8490 near the back.

It was getting dark pretty quickly so I didn't get too many pictures.

We had a nice large area but it was a bit uneven so we had to unhitch.  We also drove in very slow as we didn't want to get all dusted up after our nice wash job.

The next morning we got up early and headed to our appointment.  This is the third time we have been officially weighed since we went on the road.  We have been about 300lbs over the first two times and this time it was nice to see that we got down to only 100lbs over.  We might be able to whittle that down a bit more, but not too sure.  Everything else was reported great as well so we were off to Surprise where we spend most of October at Steve's stepmom's.

As soon as we set up we noticed something looked off.  A quick look and Steve saw that a bolt had worked loose on one of the hangers.  It had bent it pretty good. 

We had an RV Tech come out and weld a new hanger and put in a new wet bolt.  I like repairs when they are simple and rather cheap. About $350.

All is well again!

Next up some new sights in the Phoenix area.

Hotels for Clowns and Roads for Aliens?

Tonopah, NV

Boondocking

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Alamo, NV

Alamo RV Park

Off to Tonopah where we'll boondock one night on some BLM land.  We were looking forward to visiting the World Famous Clown Motel and taking a Mining Tour.

We arrived in the late afternoon and parked in front.  The Clown Motel started in 1985 when siblings Leroy and Leona built it in memory of their father who loved clowns.  He died in a mining accident and is buried next door in the old cemetery.  I like their advertising:

"We'll do everything to make your stay comfortable, but what happens after dark is out of our hands."

(My sister would love it here. NOT!!)

Conveniently located next door to the Tonopah Cemetery!  Many miners are buried here from the Tonopah-Belmont Mine Fire of 1911.

That was enough excitement so we drove through the cute town of Tonopah and parked down the road from the Tonopah Brewing Co for a little dinner.

Just outside the town limits we took a right on a road for some BLM boondocking.  We found this place on Campendium, our usual Go-To.  Fairly flat gravel with just a bit of hiway noise.  Quiet at night.

The next morning I called the Tonopah Mining Park to see what their parking situation was and if we could fit our rig while we visited.  No problem, they let us park down below where it was wide and open.

Tonopah Historic Mining Park Visitor Center

There we are!

Instead of the walking tour we decided to take the Personal Polaris Tour.  They only charged us $10 each as there was no one else there.  Since it was cold an windy, this was great!

Looking down at the town of Tonopah.

Old mine shafts

They grated over many of them so you could walk over them.

This is the Mitzpah Mine and Hoist House.  This mine was the richest of all the Tonopah mines.

Looking down the 600 foot mineshaft.

One of the first steel hoisting works built in the country.

This is the Hoist House which contains the hoisting works, large compressors and huge tools.

A replica of an old tent camp.

The mountains surrounding town have pretty much all been mined.

Desert Queen Hoist House and Mine.

We spent several hours here and then it was on our way to see some of Nevada's strangest highways.

Instead of continuing south on 95 towards Goldfield, we chose to go more east on 6 to get to...

Hwy 375.  Better known as the Extraterrestrial Highway.

There's not much out here but open desert.  And Area 51.  Shhhh, it's a secret.

We didn't see any aliens.  Just this cow that would not move off the road.  We had to coax her.

The town of Rachel sits about half way through the 100 mile route.  It's a town of about 50 people that caters to tourists, UFO seekers and geocachers.  There is a string of about 1500 caches hidden along this route.  

In the above two pictures each green dot represents where a single geocache is hidden along the Extraterrestrial Highway.  Some people hide them in patterns which when viewed from above form shapes.  This is called geo-art.  This takes a lot of work and is very creative. We just looked for a few that had big enough turnouts and the famous one, the first one, hidden in the brush in a mailbox, guarded by an alien.

The first cache in the Geocaching ET Series is hidden here.

The old "Little A' Le Inn" in Rachel, NV.

Be careful where you walk!

We drove a few hours and ended up at a small private RV park in the Dot On A Map town, Alamo. It's called Pickett's RV now but it used to be Alamo RV.  We really wanted to make it a bit further to the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge to boondock but didn't want to pull in after dark not knowing the area.  I didn't get a picture of Alamo RV, but it was a simple side by side gravel lot.  W/E, $30.  Great Verizon at both locations.

No abduction took place so if all goes well we'll arrive in Boulder City tomorrow to meet long time blogging friends Pam and John of Oh, the Places They Go!