Wednesday, September 8th we went out after lunch to do some shopping at Walmart. It has been a while since we did grocery shopping so we were out of a lot of things. After shopping we went back to the park and relaxed the rest of the afternoon. At 6:00 p.m. we went down to the clubhouse for the twice weekly Texas hold-em game. We have always played in these games and had a good time. Almost every time we have been here we play with most of the same people. There were at least four people we have played with on other trips to this resort. Jackie won $5 and I lost $5, so as a team we broke even. The buy in is only $5.25 and you play for two hours.
Thursday we woke up and began waiting for our friends Barry and Colleen Cohen to arrive. They are our best friends who live in Indio at the Motorcoach Country Club. They live in their coach full time, but rarely travel because Barry still owns and operates a transmission repair shop. They are members of Western Horizon, Charleston Peak is their home park, so they said they would drive up for a few days when they found out when we were going to be here.
About 11:00 a.m. they arrived and we had a grand reunion. We had not seen them since we left the California desert back in April. After we let them get settled in we went out to a local Mexican Restaurant for a late lunch. We all like a place here called Romero’s. The food and service are great. After lunch we went back to
the coach and the girls started their normal Skipbo tournament. They can play this card game all day, every day, and never get tired. Barry and I sat outside, watched TV and talked until the sun started to creep onto the patio and made it too hot. We then went inside and watched television for a while. Later Barry and I went over to his coach and watched TV while he made some of his great spaghetti sauce. The girls played cards until about 10:30 p.m.Friday, September 10th we went out after lunch for a visit to the Pahrump Elks Lodge. This is our home lodge, Barry belongs to the Indio Lodge. We sat at the bar and played the nickel slots, had some cocktails and talked to some of the local members. After about an hour, I hit a Royal Flush and won $200. I had done the same thing last October when Barry and Colleen came up to visit us. Within twenty minutes Jackie yelled out from the other end of the bar that she had hit a Royal too! $400 in winnings in less than an hour. Yea us! We stayed for a little while longer and then headed back to the coach. Barry and I spent a few minutes fixing one of the windshield washer outlets on our Jeep and then just sat and talked outside while the girls resumed their Skipbo challenge. About 4:00 p.m. we all went down to the park’s clubhouse for a social hour. We talked to several other guests and had a good time. This is a very social park. We then went back to our coach and had dinner, a corn beef and cabbage dinner that I had put on the stove in the morning. The corn beef was great and everyone enjoyed it. After dinner the girls
resumed their perpetual card game and Barry and I went in the back of the coach and fired up the karaoke machine. Barry loves to sing, but he would never consider going out in public to do it. He will only sing when he and I do karaoke. I bought my first karaoke machine and discs back in about 2002 when we still lived in the house in Indio. Barry and I started singing then and still do anytime we get together. We sang for about three hours, until we got hoarse, and then just listened to music until the card game was done about 11:00 p.m. Everyone then headed off to bed.Saturday, September 11th we went out for a late lunch at Tomasinno’s Italian restaurant here in Pahrump. This is a very nice place, which is actually a supper club with jazz music most nights. They are open for lunch though and have great food. The portions are huge and the food pretty tasty. The place is owned by the guy who owns the local Chrysler/Jeep dealership, which is right across the street from the restaurant. After lunch we went to the Pahrump Nugget Casino for some gaming. Again, Jackie and I were quite lucky with both of us clearing close to $100 each before we finished our gaming. Barry and Colleen broke even. We then went back to the coach for cards and conversation. Later in the evening Barry and I spent several hours looking at the pictures from my parent’s photo albums which I had recently scanned into the computer. The party finally broke up about 10:00 p.m. and we all headed to bed. Sunday morning Barry and Colleen packed up and headed back to Indio about 10:00 a.m. We will not see them again until we are back in the desert in December. We were kind of wore out from three days of partying, so we stayed in and played the rest of the day and evening.
Monday, September 13th, was a chores day. I had a lot of little repair jobs to do around the house and spent most of the day doing various tasks. We did go out after lunch to get some repair supplies at Home Depot and to run some errands, like going to the County Clerk to fill out the paperwork for our absentee ballots in November and for me to pick up the paperwork for my concealed weapons permit at the Sheriff’s Office. At 6:00 p.m. we headed down to the clubhouse for the Texas Hold’em game. Both Jackie and I were lucky tonight and both of us ended up five dollars ahead. Since the buy in is only five dollars, we both doubled our money. At this rate we will be rich in a couple hundred years.
Tuesday started out to be the day we were going to do our laundry, however, in the morning I noticed that the voltage on the chassis batteries in the coach was low. The chassis batteries are the two twelve volt batteries that start the engine and operate all the automotive accessories and lights on the coach. We also have four six volt golf cart type batteries that power all the twelve volt house lights and accessories. I did some more checking and found that the chassis batteries were dead - they wouldn’t even begin to turn over the engine to start it. I had noticed when I was doing my maintenance chores the day before that the chassis batteries had used a lot of water, which was unusual since they normally are being charged. Since they were the original batteries and well over five years old, I figured they had just wore out. I needed to get them changed before they went completely flat because then all the computers on the engine and transmission would reset which could cause problems.
I threw on some clothes and headed out to find batteries. My first two stops were two of the consumer auto parts stores in town, Checker and Auto Zone. Neither of them carried the large type of battery needed for a big diesel engine like we have in the coach. I then went to the last place, the Napa store, and he told me he had two left in stock which matched what I had in the coach. Yea! I bought the new batteries and hurried home to change them out. This was a pretty quick and easy job, except for the fact that the batteries weigh close to a hundred pounds each. I got them changed out and tested and everything was fine. I then took the old batteries back to the store and got my core charge back. Job complete, in just a couple of hours. After lunch we went and did our laundry. About 5:30 p.m. we went out to Romero’s Mexican restaurant for dinner and then headed over to the Pahrump Elks Lodge for the Lodge Meeting. We haven’t been to a Lodge Meeting in close to two years, so we figured we would make this one at our home Lodge. This evening’s meeting was also an Initiation night, where a new member would be initiated into the Elks. This meant that the meeting would be a little longer than a normal business meeting. It was also the night that the District Deputy Grand Exalted Ruler visited the Pahrump Lodge. The DD, as he is known, is the Elks official in charge of all of the lodges in a particular district of a state. In the case of Nevada there are only two Districts, South and North. Pahrump is in the South District, which includes Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Mesquite, and a couple others. The DD is supposed to visit each lodge in his district at least once during the year. It just so happens that this year’s DD was a member of the Pahrump Lodge, so it was really a homecoming rather than a visit, but he still had to do his DD duties. The DD is supposed to review the books and administration of the Lodge to ensure that everything is being done in conformance with the requirements of the Grand Lodge of Elks, the National organization. The meeting was fun, we met a few folks from our lodge and the initiation is always moving no matter how many times you sit through it. After the meeting we headed home.
Wednesday, September 15th we finally got out to do some geocaching! It has been about two weeks since we were last caching. Because we have been through Pahrump at least three times since we started geocaching, we have already found most of the
easy, urban caches. There were a couple of new ones right in town, placed since we were here last October. However, most of the caches on our list were desert caches, which meant more travel time. The bottom line is that we were only able to find eight caches in our
afternoon of searching, BUT - the last cache we found was number 1,800! We finally hit our next milestone. After caching we headed back to the coach to relax for a little bit before heading down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. We didn’t do quite as good this night as we did on Monday, but both of us broke even. Not losing is sort of like winning, isn’t it? After poker we headed home for the night.Thursday was a shopping day. We stopped at Terrible’s Casino before we went to the store and it lived up to it’s name - Terrible! We both lost our twenty bucks. Oh well. After that we went to Walmart and got our stuff and then headed home for the rest of the night.
Friday, September 17th we didn’t do too much until about 2:00 p.m. when I started getting all the stuff together for karaoke. We had mentioned are ability to host karaoke to the office when we checked in. The activity director had asked us to do
karaoke this Friday right after the social gathering. I gathered all the stuff from its various hiding places and went down to the clubhouse to set up. At four we went down for the happy hour and about 5:30 p.m. or so I started karaoke. I was surprised to find
about six people that wanted to do karaoke and they had selected multiple songs. Several of them, including a couple named Don and Phyllis, were very good singers. We had a great time and had singers until we closed up at 8:00 p.m. They also asked us to come back next
Friday, so I guess they were happy with the outcome. After karaoke we put a lot of the stuff in the clubhouse storage room and then headed over to the Nugget casino with Don and Phyllis and several other folks to listen to a county and western band. Phyllis is the activity director for the RV resort and the one that asked us to do karaoke. We did a little gaming and listened to the music until about 10:00 p.m. when we headed home and off to bed.Saturday, September 18th we headed out after lunch to a local weekend swap meet in one of the community centers. We looked around, bought a couple of things, and then went out to do some exploring. We drove South and West away from our RV park and
ended up at the two Pahrump brothels, the Chicken Ranch and Sheri’s Ranch. They are right together at the end of the road. There is a dirt road that continues South for another mile to a couple of white posts that designate the border between Nevada and California. We parked on the border, took a couple of pictures and then headed back. While we were down around the brothels we also got one geocache which happened to be down in that area. We then headed back to the coach. After we got to the coach I went over and visited our friends, Bob and Bette Thomas. Bob and Bette are the Treasurer and Secretary of the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA, the same Chapter that I am the President of. At the FMCA rally in Redmond Oregon the Chapter voted to disband or dissolve. We simply couldn’t get enough people interested n the Chapter to keep it alive. I wanted to gather all the material from the Chapter from Bob and Bette so I could decide what to sent back to FMCA. I now have all of the paperwork from the Chapter in my possession. Sunday was a stay in and rest day. We stayed in the coach, did chores and played the whole day.
Monday, September 20th my brother Russ from Las Vegas drove up for the day. Zen, his wife didn’t come because she was not feeling well. We sat and talked for a little while. While we were chatting our friend Ken Woepke came over to visit. Ken and his wife Bonnie are full timers and have been on the road for ten years. We met them several years ago and cross paths with them from time to time. They are here at Charleston Peak for a week or so. After Ken left Russ, Jackie and I went out to lunch at Terrible’s Casino and then did some geocaching. We had gotten Russ interested in Geocaching last year and he is nearly half way to our total already. We were doing desert caches, so they took a while to get to, but we still managed to find six caches in a couple of hours. We then headed back to the coach and talked for a while until he left to go back to Vegas about 5:30 p.m. We then headed down to our Texas Hold’Em game. Didn’t do so good this time, between us we lost $5. After cards we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Tuesday we left after lunch and drove down to Las Vegas for a Costco run. We needed to stock up on liquor before leaving Nevada and heading over to Albuquerque. We also stopped at the big Bass Pro Shop sporting goods store because I needed to buy some 9mm ammunition. It takes about an hour to get over the hill to Vegas and we spent a couple of hours at the various stores before going back over the hill again to Pahrump. We did stop for a geocache which was in the parking lot near the Bass Pro Shop. We also did two caches along Highway 160 just East of Pahrump. After all our errands we headed home and relaxed the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Wednesday, September 22nd we went out after lunch to try some gaming at the local casinos. We had a good time, but didn’t win any money. The luck we had the first week we were here seems to have departed. In the evening we went to our Texas Hold’em game at the clubhouse and did a little better, I only lost fifty cents and Jackie lost about eighty cents. Not bad for two hours of fun. We had two tables with eight players each, so we had a good time. The people at this park are very friendly and very easy to get to know.
Thursday we got up early and were out of the coach at 9:00 a.m. We signed up to go on the “tag along” Jeep ride into the mountains East of Pahrump with a group from the RV park. We had one guy in a VW dune buggy, one Jeep Wrangler, us in our fancy Jeep Grand Cherokee, and four people on quad ATVs. We headed up following along on
the gravel roads which gradually deteriorated into a gravel trail, but it wasn’t too bad. I kept the speed down and the Jeep handled it well despite not being set up for trail riding or true four wheeling. We only went sixteen miles up into a place called Wallace Canyon, but it took us two hours. We had packed a lunch and the bunch of us stopped up in the canyon and had lunch. We went from 2,600 feet in Pahrump up to over 6,000 where
we stopped. We were actually up in the pine trees. We even found a geocache only a few hundred feet from where we stopped to have lunch. After lunch we headed back down, taking a different route. We had a great time with some great friends and saw some great views. I wouldn’t attempt the trip by myself, I’d be too worried about what we would do if something happened to the car, but going up with a group was fun. We got back to the coach about 1:00 p.m. and relaxed the rest of the day. While we were out Jeeping, Scott, the local guy that washes and waxes rigs here at the RV park, was working on cleaning up our coach. He finished the wash today.Friday, September 24th we went out and did our grocery shopping and picked up our new coffee pot at the UPS store. Our previous Cuisinart coffee pot had quit working less than a year after we bought it. It was a $100 coffee pot so we figured that it should last longer than that. Jackie contacted the company and they sent us a new
one for free. Yea! After running our errands we went back to the park and I went down to the clubhouse to set up karaoke for the evening entertainment. We went to the happy hour and then started karaoke. We had a good crowd, lots of singers and we went until about 8:00 p.m. before we quit and packed up everything. We then went back to the coach for the rest of the night.Saturday we went out after lunch and did our laundry. After laundry we went to the Pahrump community park for the Pahrump Fall Festival. This is an annual event, similar to a county fair. They had a carnival set up along with a lot of booths for crafts and trinkets. There were also a lot of booths from community groups and
commercial stuff, as well as a number of political booths. The election is only a month away, so the politicians take every opportunity to get out and try to earn votes. We wanted to find the Elks Lodge’s food operation too, because tomorrow we are working in the food booth for six hours. We volunteered to help since the Pahrump Elks Lodge is our home lodge now. We figured that as members we should contribute when we can. After a couple hours at the fair we decided it was too hot and we headed home.Sunday, September 26th we went over to the community park at 11:00 a.m. and started our shift at the Elk’s Lodge cook shack. It was a very simple menu, hamburger, cheeseburger, hot dog, or pulled pork. Beans, slaw and chips as the sides. Water
and pop. Five other people there and all of them had worked the shack in previous years and they took all of the real cooking and serving work. Jackie and I basically did odd jobs, kept things
stocked and helped where we could. The folks working were all very nice and we had a very pleasant afternoon. It was extremely slow, I think we only had a couple dozen food orders, but we sold a LOT of water. We had the cheapest water at the fair at $1 and it was almost 100 degrees outside, so we had a lot of water customers. We worked until about 5:15 p.m., helped clean up the shack and then headed back to the coach. It felt good to be helping out the Elks again. We used to do a lot of volunteering at the Indio Lodge when we still lived in the house there.Monday, September 27th we had been expecting my brother Russ, the one in Las Vegas, to come up. However, he contacted Jackie on Facebook and let her know that Zen, his wife, had chipped a tooth, so they were going to the dentist instead. Bummer. Jackie can certainly empathize given what happened to her earlier in the month in Fallon, Nevada. So we spent the day relaxing around the coach, doing a few chores and maintenance tasks so we will be ready to leave early in the morning. We had hoped to go out caching one last time, but the temperatures were going to be close to one hundred, so we just stayed in. At 6:00 p.m. we went down to the clubhouse for our last round of Texas Hold’em with our friends here at Charleston Peak. We were joking with everyone before the game started that we were leaving in the morning and needed fuel, so we were going to be playing aggressively. Damned if Jackie and I were not the big winners for the night. The buy-in is only $5, so it’s not exactly high stakes, but still Jackie left with over $13 and I left with a little over $12. We need to seem needy more often!
I will recount one interesting anecdote about the poker game tonight. We play Texas Hold’em and for those not familiar with the game, each player is dealt two “hole cards” which are theirs alone. Then five cards are dealt out on the table as community cards in three stages. The “flop” is the first three cards all put out on the table at the same time. After a round of betting the “turn card” is dealt on the table. After another round of betting the “river card” is dealt and then players make the best five card poker hand out of their two hole cards and the five community cards. Tonight, on one of the deals, the dealer put the flop on the table and it was three queens. I had a pair of sixes in my hand, so I had a full house (a pretty good hand) on the flop. After the betting round the turn card put out by the dealer was another queen! I have never seen four of a kind dealt in Texas Hold’Em in the first four community cards. I dropped out because I knew that someone in the group had a king or ace in their hand, which would take the hand. It turns out that a king did take the hand. That deal was quite a conversation starter.
Tuesday, September 28th was our first travel day in three weeks. Our time at Charleston Peak RV Resort is through. We left the park about 9:00 a.m., stopped for fuel, and then headed South towards Needles, California, 167 miles to the Southeast. It was still hot and I had to really watch the temperatures on the engine and transmission of the coach on the grades. There is a long grade out of Pahrump over the foothills and the water temperature got up to 120 degrees, the
hottest I have ever seen it on the motorhome. The warning light was only yellow - I’m not sure when the red light kicks on, probably about 125. Fortunately, it hit 120 just as we topped the pass and started back down the other side into Las Vegas. That cooled it off and I felt a lot better. We had to run the generator most of the trip so we could run the roof air conditioner to cool the inside of the coach. Once we got through Vegas and the traffic it was smooth cruising down to Needles and we got to the Needles Elks Lodge right at 1:00 p.m. We have never been to this Lodge. It looks nice and it has a half dozen big, level pull through sites with 50 amp, water and sewer hookups. All for $16, a bargain. We are only going to be here one night. We have to be in Albuquerque on Sunday, so we are going to be scurrying across I-40 for the next few days.Our arrival here in Needles marks the end of this chapter of our travels. We are headed for Albuquerque and the Balloon Festival, so look for the next chapter of our blog in a couple weeks with lots of cool pictures. Until the next time, make the world your oyster (whatever the hell that means) and enjoy life. See you soon.
