We arrived here about 1:30 or so and got checked into the resort. This resort used to be a part of the Western Horizons Resorts membership RV group (WHR), however, earlier this year we learned that the company lost the park through foreclosure. This was confirmed when we checked in and were given a notice that the park was now owned by City Bank. We learned that if this was your home park, the park where you originally bought your WHR membership, that they had bought the contracts and would continue to honor them. However, if it was not your home park, and ours in Arizona, WHR members would be allowed to use the park only through the end of 2012. This was disappointing in that Charleston Peak was our favorite WHR resort. Now we will have to make other arrangements when we come to Pahrump.
We were only able to get a site with 30 amp power, but that shouldn’t be a problem because it is late enough in the year that we won’t have to be running two A/Cs. Normally we are here earlier in the year and it is not as crowded. There were only a handful of empty spots and all the 50 amp were taken. We got settled in, I put up the outside gear, and then we just stayed around the coach for the rest of the evening relaxing.
Wednesday, October 26th, we left the coach after lunch and drove down to the UPS store to pick up our mail in person. The manager, Machelle, was happy and surprised to see us. We talk to her all the time through the year when we call to have mail sent, but we only see her when we are staying in Pahrump. After getting our mail we headed to the laundromat. We haven’t done laundry in over two weeks because we have been busy, so we had a lot of stuff to do. Once we got our laundry done we went back to the coach.
I spent some time locating a supplier for a control panel for our inverter. As we were getting ready to leave Needles on Tuesday we noticed that the control panel inside the coach for the inverter system was going crazy, flashing and giving weird messages. A little trouble shooting indicated that the inverter itself was working fine, just the control panel was bad. The list price on the part was about $250, but I found an online supplier that had the part I needed for $142 and could get it to me in a couple days. Yea!
About 6:00 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. We really like playing poker at some of the RV parks we frequent. This particular park has a lot of regulars and we knew a number of the people who were in the clubhouse for the game. Since the park is nearly full, there were a lot of players and we filled three tables. The buy in for the game is $5 and they play until 8:00, about two hours. Between Jackie and I we lost 80 cents for the evening. We probably won’t starve with those levels of gambling losses.
Thursday, October 27th, we decided to go out after lunch and do some geocaching. We have done a lot of geocaching in this area, since we are here every year, so finding caches we haven’t done is getting more difficult. Nonetheless, we did find some and went out for an afternoon of mostly desert caching. Because the caches were widely separated, and most were out in the desert, requiring driving on gravel roads and trails, and even walking a few hundred yards, it took a while to get from cache to cache. We managed to find ten caches in about three and a half hours and decided that was enough. After caching we went to Walmart for some groceries and then home for the rest of the night.
Friday, October 28th, I left the coach about 8:30 to meet an instructor for my annual qualification shoot for my concealed weapons permit. As a retired peace officer, I qualify for a Federal permit that basically trumps most state laws regarding carrying a concealed weapon and weapons possession. This is handy for full time RVers since we occasionally go to states like Massachusetts and New York where they frown upon ordinary people having guns. Criminals have guns, just not regular people. Anyway, one of the requirements of the Federal law is that the retired officer has to qualify with the weapon at least once per year. I have a guy here who takes me to the desert, lets me shoot for qualification and then signs off my paperwork for $30. I met him at 9:00 and was signed off and done by 9:15. I went by the Sheriff’s Office in Pahrump to drop off the paperwork and get my new permit issued, but they were closed. Seems that they are celebrating “Nevada Day” and the offices are closed. Nevada day is actually October 31st, which is Monday, but they decided to celebrate on Friday instead. Go figure. By the way, Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864.
After I got back to the coach and had lunch, we went out to something related to geocaching, but not finding caches, HIDING caches! Obviously, in order for people to find caches, other players have to hide them. Since geocaching is primarily a participant driven sport, there are some rules for hiding caches, among them that they expect people to limit their hides to a reasonable distance from their residence. This is because the cache owner is responsible for maintaining the cache, keeping new logs in it, making sure it’s dry, that sort of thing. We finally decided that we wanted some caches out there with our name on them, so we made up three caches and took them out and hid them. We can do that here in Pahrump, because that is our “home” address on the caching website.
We did one cache in a tree just outside the RV park and Winery where we are staying. We did one desert cache, a coffee can under some yucca plants just north of the RV park, and one light post cache (LPC) which is a simple cache hidden under the metal box that sits on most parking lot light posts. We named the LPC Smokey’s Cache in honor of our cat. After we hid the caches we came back to the coach and submitted new caches to the website. You have to hide the cache first because you need the GPS coordinates to submit the cache. Once the caches are submitted they are sent to volunteer reviewers who just check to see that you got all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted properly.
While we were out doing the caches we picked up our mail and my control panel for the inverter had been delivered. When we got home I plugged it in and it worked great. It is even the same size as the one I replaced, so I didn’t have to do any modifications. I programmed the new remote and now everything is fine again. Yea!
About 5:30 we went down to the Pahrump Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner. We had a drink and sat at the bar playing nickle slots for a while and then went into dinner. Tonight was a costume
party, although we only wore our Halloween shirts that we had bought for the Farmington rally. Dinner was supposed to be just finger foods, but it was actually quite good. They had chicken strips, fries, meatballs, sausage and sauce and several other tasty dishes. The party only had probably 30 people, and only a dozen or so were actually in costume. We sat with a couple that was originally from Wisconsin, which gave us something in common. The guy was also a
former Marine and they had a son who was still in the Marine Corps, which gave us plenty to talk about. We had dinner, a couple of drinks, and stayed until they judged the costume contest, at which time the party pretty much broke up. We were home in the coach by 7:30 and just relaxed the rest of the evening.Saturday, October 29th, we decided to take a drive to Shoshone, California, to see what was going on with their annual Old West Days celebration, which was being held this weekend. We actually had two choices, Beatty Days, in Beatty, Nevada, or Shoshone’s festival. Beatty is about 65 miles north of Pahrump and has a pretty neat annual festival. We were there back in 2007 and had a good time. One of the highlights of their Beatty Days celebration are the bed races. Kids push hospital beds down the street in a race. They have to change the sheets twice during the race. Pretty funny to watch. This morning I looked up the schedule for this year and found that the bed races were scheduled for 12:30 today and we could not get there in time. We decided to try the Shoshone Days instead. Shoshone is only 27 miles from Pahrump, across the border into California. Shoshone is the southern gateway to Death Valley and is
a very small town, almost a village. We past a half dozen old cars coming out of Shoshone on the way there, so we figured we missed whatever car show they might have had. We did find a sort of craft fair going on with a couple dozen booths, so we spent an hour or so wandering around the fair. We also visited the Shoshone museum, which was actually very interesting.After the fair we did some geocaching. A couple of the first caches we looked for were right outside of town in an area that goes by the name Dublin Gulch. It is a canyon that goes west from town and
along the rock walls on the sides the old pioneers in the 1800's cut a bunch of caves into the rock, put wooden doors on the front, wooden floors down, and lived in them. Several of them even had stove pipes coming out of the roof. The rock was some kind of very soft sedimentary material which would have been fairly easy to cut into. One section of the wall looked like an old motel. One of the more interesting things I have seen, and certainly not something I
have seen before. We had three caches in the canyon and we found all three thanks to our Geo-Jeep’s ability to handle rough desert trails. We also did a cache that was located next to the old roadbed from the railroad that used to go through the area. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, ran through remote reaches of the Mojave Desert from the Santa Fe Railway railhead at Ludlow, California, through Death Valley and Amargosa Valley, terminating at the Mining towns of Tonopah and Goldfield in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada. The railroad was listed as a common carrier, however it was built by Francis Smith the "Borax King" and his Pacific Coast Borax Company primarily to transport borax to processing and market. Grading began on the T&T line in 1905 and completed in 1907, with the T&T tracks ending at Gold Center, Nevada. The line also shared tracks with other local railroads to service other mining towns in the area, including Beatty and Rhyolite. Once the mining boom ended, the railroad struggled to survive, as borax shipping came to comprise the majority of its business. After the borax mining and operations were moved from the Death Valley region to the Boron, California mine and facilities in 1927, the line relied upon whatever traffic could be found. Over most of its existence, U.S. Borax (USB) had made up the losses from the railroad's operations. By 1940 the entire line was out of service and in 1942 scrapping of the line began at Beatty and terminated a year later at Ludlow. All that remains of the line are the eroding rail beds cutting across the desert.
We only cached for an hour or so and ended up with five new finds and one DNF. After we got back to Pahrump we went to the Pahrump Moose Lodge for a cocktail. We have never been to this Moose, since I only joined the Moose last fall. They have a pretty nice lodge building not too far from the center of town and the place had quite a few people at the bar. They have a handful of slot machines, which, of course, we were obligated to try. We both lost our $5 and called it good enough. We had a couple of drinks and talked to a number of people. They were very friendly at the bar. They are big on karaoke and have it several nights a week, so we are planning on coming back later in the week. After visiting the Moose we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday, October 30th, we just decided to have a stay at home day. We both got a few chores done and simply relaxed for the entire day. Monday I got up early and went to the medical lab for my quarterly blood test. Rather appropriate to have blood taken on Halloween After lunch we went out to do some chores around town. I took my concealed weapons paperwork to the sheriff’s office and got my new permit, we picked up mail, and I went in and got a haircut. The last time I got it cut was when I had my long braid cut off in Yuma back in February. I like the pony tail, but I don’t want the long braid again, so I plan on getting it cut at least once a year from now on. She took off about four inches and still left me with a nice pony tail.
After we completed our errands we stopped at two of the three big casinos in Pahrump where we have player cards. We stopped at the Pahrump Nugget first and played for about an hour before deciding we had lost enough. We both lost about twenty bucks. We then went across the street to Terrible’s and lost another ten, though again, we played for an hour before giving up on winning. After our gambling foray, we went home for a little while before going down to the clubhouse at the RV park for Texas Hold’em. I won big tonight, winning about three dollars over two hours in the game. For a five dollar buy in, that’s not too bad. However, I also won the $10 prize for the highest winning hand of the night. About three or four hands in I got a straight flush, second highest hand in poker. I had a little scare right at the very end of the evening when there was a possibility on the board of someone having a straight flush one card higher than mine, but it didn’t pan out. Jackie lost part of her stake, but we still ended up about seven bucks up for the night. Yea!
Tuesday, November 1st, I got up early and took the car into the local Jeep dealership to have the oil changed. Unfortunately, I got turned away because I hadn’t made an appointment and they didn’t have time to do it today. I made an appointment for Wednesday and went back home. We were going to go out and do some geocaching today, but the wind came up and was blowing about 20 mph, with gusts in the 30's, which makes desert caching too uncomfortable. You end up getting sandblasted. We spent the rest of the day in the coach, listening to the wind and playing on our computers. At 7:00 an insurance agent drove up from Vegas to talk to us about medicare supplement and drug policies for me since I start Medicare in February. I ended up signing up with United Healthcare through AARP since it was the least expensive policy that covered all deductibles and copays that Medicare doesn’t. I went with the Humana Walmart prescription plan. I calculate that come February I will be saving over $400 per month on health insurance. Yippee! After the insurance lady left we watched TV until bedtime.
Wednesday, November 3rd, Jackie got up early this time and went in for her blood tests. About 12:30 we took the car over to the local Jeep dealership and dropped it off for it’s oil change. We then walked across the street to Romero’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Pahrump. We had a nice lunch and went back to the dealership, but the car wasn’t quite done. About 1:30 the car was finished and we went out to do some geocaching. We end up having to drive about 25 miles out of town to cache, but we still had some fun. We managed to get nine new finds, including one that was just
across the border between California and Nevada on a little highway out of Death Valley. As is usual with Nevada, there was a small hotel and casino right on the border and, for whatever reason, there was a giant cow statue in front of the hotel. We even took a picture.After caching we scurried back to Pahrump just in time to go down to the clubhouse for cards. For the third time I came out ahead, this time I won about $4.00. Not enough to keep food on the table, but still better than losing. After cards we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Thursday, November 4th, we went out after lunch to some more geocaching in the Pahrump area. As I mentioned earlier, we are having to go further and further out of town to find caches that are new to us. Today we cached to the north of town, out in the desert. Although we were not truly “four-wheeling” we were certainly on roads that you wouldn’t take your dad’s Buick on. We ended up getting only four caches in about three hours, mostly because
of travel time. It took nearly an hour to get from one cache to another over the rugged gravel roads. We also got out into a dusty desert area where we had trouble finding our way out. We were within fifty feet of the main, paved road, but couldn’t get there because there was a six foot deep wash between our dirt road and the main highway. Finally found the right dirt road that led us out of the area. The car was so coated in dust and dirt that I had to take it to a quicky wash to get most of the crap off.After dinner we went over to Moose lodge to check out their karaoke. There were a lot of people there, mostly singing country music. One or two of them were pretty good. It appeared to be a crowd that comes every Thursday and the rotation was very long. It took almost an hour for my name to come up. I sang the one song and then we left. I really didn’t want to sit there through another hour of rotation just for another song. We went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Friday, November 4th dawned as a cloudy, cool morning with a promise of some rain. This was a little disappointing in that the guy that was washing and waxing our rig was only half done. We usually get it waxed once a year when we are here in Pahrump by a guy named Scott. He does a lot of rigs here at Charleston Peak and plays in the Texas Hold’em games. He charges six dollars a foot, which is about average, to do a wash and complete hand wax. In the middle of the afternoon I took all of our karaoke stuff down to the clubhouse so I could get set up. We volunteered to do karaoke tonight after the happy hour. We have done it here numerous times on our various visits, sometimes it is a busy, fun night, other times it sort of flops. Scott also got the coach finished while I was setting up and it looks great. We have a very pretty coach when it is all shiny and clean.
I got everything set up and working just before the happy hour started at 4:00. It is a pot luck, but most of the stuff that was there was snacks. About 5:30 we started the karaoke and I was surprised and pleased to see that there were about eight singers in the rotation and all of them
had multiple songs selected. Not only that, most were pretty good karaoke singers. We didn’t have anyone sing who was bad or way off key. We had a great time and sang until about 8:30 when most of the folks packed up and headed for home. It took me another half hour or so to get everything torn down and packed into the car so we could go home too. A very fun night.Saturday, November 5th was another really cold morning with the promise of some rain. We didn’t do too much except go to the store for supplies. We hit both the Walmart and the local Smith’s. Sunday we left the coach shortly after noon and drove down to Sherri’s Ranch
for lunch. Now Sherri’s is one of the two Pahrump brothels, both of which are southwest of town. The other is the Chicken Ranch. Now, as we understand it, the Chicken Ranch is just your run of the mill, legal Nevada whorehouse. Sherri’s, however, has a bar and restaurant, a hotel and spa that are on the property but not connected to the brothel in a business sense. And, believe it our not, they give tours. Sherri’s is a very high-end brothel according to everything that we have heard. We have talked about coming for lunch and the tour for several years, but just never got around to doing it. Today we did.We went in the bar, which was pretty standard sports bar with some booths scattered around the outside edge. The lunch menu was basic sandwich fare, hamburgers, fries, that sort of thing. I had a Philly steak and Jackie had a hamburger, both of which were good. The only thing that gave away where we were was that there were several very attractive women in lingerie sitting around the bar. While we were eating a well dressed, middle aged woman with a distinctly German accent came over and asked us if this was our first time here. When we said yes she offered the guided tour after we finished our lunch. This lady was clearly the boss of the place.
After lunch the manager introduced us to “Logan” who was a very attractive, tall blonde who then took us on a brief tour. We saw the public rooms, the lounge where the clients pick out their “date” and some of the more exotic rooms. She also showed us pictures of some of the bungalows that they have on the property, each of which has an individual theme, such as Romance Room, or Animal Room. She showed us a couple of hot tub rooms, as well as one that was the bubble room with a big bubble bath. She also showed us the bondage room, which was pretty interesting. No photos allowed, but stone walls, cages, chains on the walls, the whole bondage and S&M vibe going on.
Logan also gave us the general background of how the girls were all independent contractors who came to the brothel, and rented a place to live and work. They negotiated their own rates with the clients within certain parameters, and were given medical exams weekly. She also said that once they entered the property they were not allowed to leave for at least the rest of the week. She wasn’t allowed to discuss how much the girls charged, or how much she made. She told us she had been in the business for nine years, seven of which have been at Sherri’s. After the tour we tipped Logan, visited the gift shop (yes, there is a gift shop) and then left. A very interesting experience, and educational too.
After our visit to the brothel we stopped at the nearby Terrible’s casino for some gaming. We played about two hours and I managed to lose ten dollars. Jackie, on the other hand, came out $70 ahead. Yea! We then went into town and did our laundry. By the time we got done it was 5:00 and already getting dark. We changed off of daylight savings time last night, which means really early sunsets. We then headed home for the rest of the night.
Monday, November 7th, my brother Russ and his wife Zen came up from Las Vegas to spend the afternoon with us. They arrived about 1:00 or so and we spent the first couple hours just chatting
and catching up. We normally only see Russ and Zen when we come to Pahrump, so it’s usually once a year. He is a craps pit boss at the Golden Nugget in downtown Vegas. We introduced Russ to geocaching several years ago and he and Zen have really gotten into it. Normally we would go out and do a lot of geocaching with them, but the weather was really cold and windy. In addition, we have done most of the caches around the immediate area. We did go out with them for about an hour so he could pick up our three new caches that we put out last week. He also got four others in the area that were fairly close to our caches. After caching we went back to the coach for a little while and talked some more before going to the China Wok Chinese food buffet for dinner. We have eaten at this place before and the food is very good and very reasonable. We all ate way too much, but it was good. It is located behind the Walmart store on Highway 160, just south of Basin, for those who may find themselves in Pahrump looking for good Chinese. After dinner we went back to the coach and talked until they left about 7:30 or so.
Tuesday, November 8th, believe it or not our two week stay in Pahrump is over. The time seemed to just fly by. We got out between 9:30 and 10:00 and, after topping off the fuel tanks at the Smith’s store, we headed southwest towards Barstow, California. Even though I needed less than a quarter tank in the coach, we wanted to leave Nevada with full tanks because diesel is about seventy cents more expensive per gallon in California. Yikes. We went out the “back way” from Pahrump, the route that heads toward Death Valley before turning south and picking up Interstate 15 in Baker, California. This is a much shorter and faster route than going back to Vegas and taking the 15 from there. We stopped for lunch in Baker at the Mad Greek Café, one of Jackie’s favorite restaurants. We also were trying to connect with our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock. We knew that they were headed for Pahrump today and we had tried to get them to come a couple of days earlier, but they couldn’t. They also like the Mad Greek, and we figured that since they left from the Hemet area and were coming up the 15 that we would both end up in Baker pretty close to the same time and could get to see them at least for a few minutes.
We got to the restaurant just before noon and were almost done eating when they got there about 12:30. We sat with them until a little after 1:00 when we got back in the coach and finished the trip to Barstow. We settled into an RV park about ten miles east of Barstow, right outside the gate to the Marine Corps Logistic Base here in the Barstow area. We are on our way to the California coast near Pismo Beach and will only be here in Barstow for two nights.
Since this is the end of our two week stint in Pahrump it seemed like the ideal place to close this chapter of the blog and get it published. I will get another chapter out in a couple weeks or so. Until the next time, remember the words of Henry David Thoreau. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” We are!
