"The Villages" Trek Recap

Just for fun we keep track of expenses and mileage on our long treks.

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To us it was most surprising that we didn't travel in rain except in the NW. 

    Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. 

Going and coming home.

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MILEAGES:

    We left October 11th  and arrived at The Villages in Florida
                                           on November 16th.  --- 3416 miles

    In total, we traveled in the RV for 8460 miles. 
    We also "free-wheeled" in the CRV 3768 miles.

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MOST AND LEAST RV MILES IN A MONTH:

    October:  2231 miles

    February:    75 miles

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LONG DAYS – SHORT DAYS:

Longest Travel Day:  212 miles crossing Wyoming.

Shortest Travel Days: Our two shortest days were:

             6 miles between The Villages and the state park near by and

             7 miles between Usery Mtn Park and Pebble Beach in Arizona.

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FUEL PRICES:

Gas:         $2.99 to $4.23

Diesel:     $3.64 to $4.39.

For the total trip, the RV average fuel consumption was 10.25 mpg.

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WE TRAVELED THRU 19 STATES:

WA, OR, ID, UT, WY, NE, MO, AR, MS, AL, FL
            -- GA, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, CA, OR, WA

Spent 24 nights in FL,  24 nights in TX,  49 nights in AZ

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VISITS:

Cousins in WY, MO, TX

Siblings in FL, CA

Friends in FL, AZ, CA

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Safe at home in her garage, our now-considered-elderly Tiffin RV

has just over 113,000 miles on the odometer.  

We have considerably more. 

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And 4 year-old Miss Lily still is an uncomfortable road traveler. 

She does like to stay put – wherever that might be.

Moss creatures

Does anybody wonder why it might take us 36 days to make it home from Tucson?  Take a look at these pictures.  The green is not grass.  It is not fir boughs.  It is moss.  Healthy moss.  Slippery and pervasive.  Don't sit still for too long or you will be green too.  Starting with the space between your toes. 

Oregon Ducks may have webbed feet but Washingtonians get covered in green moss.

We finally found a forecast for 2 days without rain in Puget Sound.  We made a run for it!  Time enough between rain systems to unload the RV, wash it thoroughly, and get it parked in the garage.  

Ah, we do love the NW!

All in all, he was a nice guy

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

J. FRANK ADAMS

1855 - 1929

"MASTER OF HORSES AND MEN,

CONQUEROR OF DESERTS

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PROTECTOR OF THE POOR, AND

PARDONABLE EGOTIST"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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Don't you just love it!  Telling it like it is!

Malin, Oregon City Park

Lovely green campsites

After making our way across west Texas and a month or so in the desert southwest, it is so nice to have green grass in a campground. 

We are in western Nevada and the grass usually is a dull brown this time of the year.  Hmm! 

And it is so nicely trimmed.  No weeds; no dead spots; no sprinkler heads.  Double hmmm!

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Yep, you guessed it: Astroturf.  Our first campground with this in the sites.  It's been in place for 7 years and has been kept up.  Great!

Sparks Marina RV Park - Sparks, Nevada

An Omen?

Snow.  Just a smattering. 

We are wondering if this is an omen suggesting to us that it isn't time to go home yet.

 

Scheels - Sparks, NV

We’d never heard of Scheels, which is a sporting goods store.
If we had, we would have assumed that it was a huge sports store similar to Bass Pro Shops and Cabelas. 
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Well, they do carry a lot of hunting and fishing and boating and camping and cycling equipment and lots of sportswear
and have a restaurant like Bass Pro and Cabelas;
BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
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They have two arch-shaped 16,000 gallon aquariums in their entrances.
One salt water; and one fresh.

 They have both a golf video game and a NASCAR simulator to play. 
They’ve got a laser shooting gallery.
I know we probably missed a few more fun games.

  Lots of sporting equipment.
We were impressed by the walls of bikes and displays of biking equipment.

How many different types of handlebars do they need to carry?
How many different sizes and types of seats?

We were more impressed with the cost of some of these bikes!

Visitors can listen to many famous speeches of our president’s through animatronic displays of Lincoln, Adams, Truman, Roosevelt, Jefferson, Madison, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and others.
We listened to Abe orating the Emancipation Proclamation
and the Bill of Rights by James Madison.

Oh, yes, similar to Bass Pro & Cabela’s, Scheels has a wildlife mountain. But this one has 300 (!!!!) plus mounted animals. With the many other stuffed animals we found throughout the hunting section of the store, I think that there were way too many dead animals staring at customers.

 As if that wasn’t enough,
there is a real honest-to-goodness working 65’ 16-car Ferris wheel
in the center of the store.

What a fun place to explore and play.
As true outdoorsmen, we took only pictures and left only footprints!

Side note: George W. G. Ferris was the inventor of the Ferris Wheel
and he was a local boy and grew up nearby in Carson City

There are 22 Sheels stores in the Northern US.

Mules

Guess I’d never even thought about it: the differences between mules, jackasses, burros, donkeys, and horses.
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A burro is a small donkey. A donkey is a domesticated ass. An ass is a wild animal. A jackass is a male ass or donkey. And a mule is a hybrid offspring of a jackass and a female horse.

Mules ears are smaller than donkeys and longer than horses and they have a short mane. We didn’t hear one bray but the description is that it starts as a horse whinny and ends in a donkey bray. From the plaque we read (from the We Love Mules fan club, we think), mules are intelligent, have extraordinary stamina, are patient, and sure-footed. Did notice that they didn’t mention being stubborn!
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We’ve learned about mules while in Bishop, California for a few days. Bishop is where Mule Days is celebrated every Memorial Day weekend with a number of pack team competitions and a mule parade. Mules are still used a lot as pack animals in the mountains near here. We found a small compound just outside of the town where the US Forest Service has numerous mules in an enclosure and that is where we got these pictures.
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Remember the TV series Death Valley Days sponsored by 20 Mule Team Borax? Here in town is a mural of a 22 mule team used during building of a power plant in the mountains in the early 1900’s with 18 mules pulling and 4 pushing around corners and over the hills.

Below is a picture of a 52 mule team which hauled pipe sections weighing 52,000 lbs. to be used in the Los Angeles Aqueduct also in the early 1900’s.

Now isn't that way more than you ever wanted to know about mules!?!
"whinny-he-haw"

 

Telling it like it is

No sidewalks but now there is a small curb and a handicap ramp. Oh, my!
Seen: Bishop, CA