We have had a good week in Salt Lake City, and really enjoyed our time here. We look forward to coming back again.  Pony Express RV Resort is an excellent base for exploring the area, though we actually have not done any “exploring” while we’ve been here. Most of my time has been spent doing genealogy research at the Family History Library, and Terry has been busy finishing up a project for her son’s wedding.

Salt Lake City is an interesting town. Many of the city streets are very wide, 132 feet to be exact, designed by the early settlers, with room enough for a covered wagon pulled by a team of four oxen to turn around.

The Mormon influence is obviously very strong, but one of the first things we saw coming in from the west on Interstate 80 was a billboard advertising a topless “gentlemen’s club.” A local business owner told me that just a block or two away from Temple Square, the centerpiece of the Mormon religion, State Street is known for drugs, prostitution, and gang activity.

We have a long day ahead of us today. We’re headed for Gypsum, Colorado, where we will stay at River Dance RV Resort for a few days while we attend Terry’s son’s wedding in Vail. The route my Microsoft Streets & Trips computer mapping program suggested was U.S. Highway 40 into Colorado, and then state routes southeast to Meeker and on to Rifle, where we would pick up Interstate 70 into Gypsum. That’s about 370 miles from where we are.

But, I have learned that one cannot always trust mapping programs, or GPS units, for that matter. In talking to several people who are familiar with this area, we decided to take a longer route that they tell me is a much easier trip – Interstate 15 south to Spanish Fork, where we’ll pick up U.S. Highway 6 and follow it to Interstate 70, near Green River, Utah, and on to Gypsum. This route is about 25 miles longer, but looks to be an easier trip.

That’s a longer trip than most fulltimers do in one day, and we prefer shorter days on the road ourselves. But we can handle it, and we want to get in and settled so we’ll have a couple of days to relax and enjoy some family time before the wedding.

I’m not sure what kind of Verizon service we’ll have in Gypsum. Their coverage map shows they have high speed EVDO, but I have learned that one cannot always rely on what the maps show. Then again, here in North Salt Lake the service has ranged from super fast to just a little bit slower than sludge. So if you log on tomorrow and there is no blog, be patient and I’ll get it up as soon as possible. Likewise, if you send me an e-mail and don’t get a speedy reply, be patient and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

After the wedding is over, we have to make a fast trip across the country. We want to stop in Forest city, Iowa to have some work done at the Winnebago factory, and then we have to get to Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup the first week of August. From there, we have to rush down to Elkhart, Indiana to get all of the last minute details handled before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally the end of August.

Several blog readers have invited us to stop and visit on our trip east, but I’m afraid there just isn’t time. One of these days, I’m going to stop all this busy-busy nonsense, get myself one of them there recreational vehicle motorhome thingies, and just relax and travel!

Thought For The Day – Yes, I do understand your problem. I just don’t  care.

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I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of far off rain, and then I realized that it wasn’t rain after all, but rather the sound of the wind in the tall pine trees here at the Show Low Elks lodge campground.

Yes, it was windy again in northern Arizona, as it is all too often this time of year. The weather report included a high wind advisory for the entire region until 8 p.m., and  they were monitoring more dust storms along Interstate 40, which has been closed numerous times in the last few weeks. I don’t like driving a motorhome in the wind, so I was glad we drove up from the Phoenix area the previous day!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we have a nice site here at the Elks campground, but it isn’t very level, and even with our jacks extended all the way, we were still decidedly low in the rear. We weren’t in danger of anything falling off the walls, but we were out of balance enough that our shower wouldn’t drain correctly. We’ve encountered this before and I wanted to do something about it.

So we went to Lowes and bought an eight foot long piece of exterior grade treated 2×12 board, and I had the store cut it into one foot lengths, giving me a total of eight squares.

Back at the motorhome, I pulled in our slide rooms and retracted our HWH leveling jacks, and then we put four of the wooden squares under each rear jack. Then I hit the automatic jack button, and we leveled right up. 

I was wondering how speeds would be on my my iPad here in Show low, as compared to in Apache Junction. While our Verizon phones and air card are on high speed EVDO here, the iPad is on AT&T’s extended network. There is a noticeable reduction in speed, no doubt about it. But it is not as slow as our air card is when we’re away from an EVDO signal and are on Verizon’s slower National Access service. The GPS and all other functions on the iPad work fine here, even on the slower extended network service.

Later on, Tiffany came by with her girls, and we had a nice visit. Here are Hailey and Destiny relaxing on the couch after a hard day at school and preschool. Destiny always looks to her big sister for direction on how to act like a big kid. Hopefully she won’t copy Hailey and break her arm too!

Tiffany’s husband Jim works the night shift, and he was up all day helping Tiffany with her job, so he was home sleeping before his shift started. We took the girls out to dinner, and by the time we left the restaurant, it was getting really chilly. Note to self – keep a jacket or sweater in the van.

Bad Nick was busy yesterday too, posting a new Bad Nick Blog edition of the Dumb A$$ Report. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

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We really enjoyed our time in Mount Airy, and we know it’s an area we’ll return to again. The people are friendly, the scenery is beautiful, and there is a lot to see and do.

Mayberry Campground is one of the nicest places we have stayed, and if you are passing through the region, put it on your list of places to stop. The park is laid out in a terraced design, with roomy full hookup pull through and back-in RV sites, and the Passport America rate of $12.50 a night is a heck of a deal.

The only drawback to the campground was that our Verizon air card was on National Access, instead of the high speed EVDO signal, so our internet connection was pretty slow. The campground has free WiFi, so most people wouldn’t have a problem, but I don’t have a WiFi adapter on the desktop computer I use, so I had to put up with sluggish service.

As much as we enjoyed our stay, we had places to go and people to see, so yesterday we hit the road and took U.S. Highway 52 to Winston-Salem, where we hooked up with Interstate 40 eastbound. For the next 120 miles or so, as we passed Winston-Salem, then Greensboro, and on past Raleigh, we were in moderate to heavy traffic most of the way.

From Raleigh we took U.S. Highway 70 east to Kinston. Except for all of the traffic, it was an easy driving day. We covered 220 miles, and according to the Silverleaf engine monitoring system, we averaged 7.9 miles per gallon. Except for a few short climbs, most of it was downhill. The elevation at Mayberry Campground was 1175 feet, and the elevation in Kinston is only 37 feet. 

We arrived in Kinston about 4:30 p.m. and took a site at Neuseway Nature Park. Situated on the Neuse River, the park includes a 52 seat planetarium, museum, nature trails, fishing ponds, and a campground with full hookup 50/30 amp electric back-in RV sites. At $12 a night, it’s a real bargain. 

Soon after we get settled in, Patti Ivey came by to visit. We met Patti and her husband Mickey soon after they became fulltime RVers. Mickey developed the excellent RVer’s Notebook computer program, which is great for keeping track of all of your RV travels, equipment maintenance schedule, the people you meet along the way, and a ton of other information and memories. If you don’t have the RVer’s Notebook, check it out. It’s an excellent resource.

Unfortunately, we lost Mickey suddenly three years ago, and Patti is no longer traveling. She returned to her hometown of Kinston, and continues to market the RVer’s Notebook. We have not seen her since she got off the road, so a visit was very high on our agenda for our trip to North Carolina.

After giving Patti a tour of our Winnebago motorhome, we went to dinner at King’s Restaurant, a North Carolina legend when it comes to barbecue. The food was delicious, and we enjoyed talking with Patti about life on and off the road, and the curveballs life sometimes throws at us.

Meanwhile, Bad Nick was back at the motorhome, writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled It’s Called Humor. Check it out and leave a comment.

We’ll be here a few days, visiting our friend and getting to know this new area we have never explored before. 

Thought For The Day – Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

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