Yesterday Terry and I, along with Greg and Jan White, drove about 30 miles down to Boulder City, Nevada to stop at Bee’s Mail Service, which has handled our business mail forwarding ever since we hit the road. A new owner, Jean Wilson, bought the company a while back, and we wanted to stop and introduce ourselves, and put a face with the name. Jean is a very friendly lady with a strong business background, and we look forward to a long working relationship with her.

Boulder City was the base camp for the workers who built Hoover Dam back in the 1930s. At the time, it was the world’s largest concrete structure, and a statue at the dam honors the men who undertook this gargantuan task.

Another major construction project has been going on at the dam for a few years now, construction of a bridge that will bypass the current narrow, winding U.S. Highway 93 that crosses the dam, and is no longer adequate to handle the 14,000 vehicles that travel it daily.

Looking up from the ground, I can already tell you that this is one bridge I won’t be driving over, I don’t care how strong the supporting structure is. I’ll take the longer detour south through Searchlight and Laughlin and then over to Kingman, Arizona.

The project’s website says that the bridge will be finished by September of this year, and the bypass will be carrying traffic by November. I don’t know, it looks like there is still a lot of work to be done before that happens.

We wanted to see the progress on the bridge, so Greg drove us down to the dam, inching along in a long line of traffic moving at a snail’s pace. That was okay with us, we all four get along well, and we enjoyed the views of Lake Mead as we drove into the canyon.

I said that this area has a lot of bighorn sheep, and no sooner had I spoken than eagle-eyed Miss Terry spotted several of the animals lounging on a ridgeline a couple of hundred yards from the highway. We all scrambled for our cameras, but about then the traffic started moving and a horn honking behind us made us miss the shot.

Greg made a U-turn at the dam and we drove back up to the Lake Mead Visitor Center for a potty stop, and to take some photos of the lake’s deep blue water. Then we drove down to the shore, where we saw this sailboat heeled over to the side, barely moving, with little breeze to fill its sails.

Our next stop was the Camping World in Henderson, where we didn’t find anything that we couldn’t live without. By then it was late afternoon and we were all getting hungry. Jan was in the mood for Mexican food, so we stopped for an early dinner at Lindo Michoacan in Henderson, which was named Best Mexican Restaurant in a Las Vegas newspaper survey.

As I’ve said before, Miss Terry loves Mexican food, but after living in Arizona for years, she is a bit of a snob about it, and it takes a lot to impress her. I asked her how Lindo Michoacan rated on a scale of 1 to 10, and she gave it a 25! Our waiter was very attentive, the portions were huge, and the view of Las Vegas from the windows that make up one wall were magnificent.

As you can see in this photo taken with my Blackberry, Jan, Terry, and Greg look well fed. Even after eating as much as we all could, there was still enough left over to take home for lunch today. Jan and Terry assured Greg and I that this was a place we’d be going back to before we left the area!

Thought For The Day -You may have a screw loose, but that’s okay, you still have that screw, you haven’t lost it .

After our long day trip to Yuma on Thursday, we didn’t feel much like going anywhere yesterday, so we spent the day doing administrative tasks. I think the only time either of us went outside was when I carried the trash down to the dumpster.

Now that I had a better idea of the size and layout of the buildings available at the Yuma fairgrounds for our rally, I was able to update and refine the seminar schedule. I posted the updated schedule to the bottom of our rally web page, but there are still some gaps that I need to fill in as other seminars are confirmed. This is still a tentative schedule, and there will no doubt be changes as we get closer to the rally dates.

While I was busy with that, Miss Terry was doing some paperwork, logging in rally reservations, and recording some receipts for expenditures we made recently. When people learn that we are fulltime RVers and that we make our living by writing about our travels, they say that it must be fun having a job that is a permanent vacation. Yes indeed, it is a lot of fun. But it’s not all touring interesting places and sightseeing. There are a lot of days just like yesterday, when we’re sitting at our desks working at mundane tasks. But I still wouldn’t trade it for any other job in the world!

It was just as well, because even though the storm clouds had moved on, yesterday was pretty chilly, and we weren’t too interested in being outside anyway. We hope it eventually warms up enough that we can do some geocaching, or maybe even get our kayaks into the water.

Yes, there is a lot of water in Arizona, from small lakes like Lake Patagonia and White Mountain Lake, scattered all around the state, to some huge impoundments like 22 mile long Roosevelt Lake, northeast of Phoenix; or Lake Mead, which stretches for over 110 miles along the Colorado River, in the northwestern corner of the state.

Lately I have been looking at digital camcorders. I don’t need anything professional, but I’d like to experiment with putting some small videos on the blog from time to time. I’ve owned a couple of older style camcorders years ago, but the technology has changed a lot since then. I’ve been doing a little bit of research, and realized that I have a lot to learn, with so many choices and options on the market these days. I’d appreciate feedback from any of you who have camcorders as to what features you like and don’t like about yours.

I have to brag just a bit. A few months ago I collaborated with Christine Pinheiro on a new book titled The Step By Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit. Actually, Christine did all of the work, I just gave her some input, and she was kind enough to share credit for the book with me. Our book has won the Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award for 2010 in the writing category. I’ve never had one of my books win an award before!

Bad Nick didn’t want to go outside yesterday either, so he stayed in too, and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled They Should Have Aimed Higher. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?

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Arizona is an amazingly diverse state. Those unfamiliar with the Grand Canyon state might think that is it all cactus and sand, and there is certainly no shortage of desert here, but there are also towering mountains that are covered with dense forests, and snow capped much of the year. This explains Arizona’s climate, where you can build a snowman in the morning in the high country, then drive a few hours and have a cookout wearing shorts and T-shirts in the desert that afternoon.

We had temperatures in the 80s in Apache Junction just a couple of days ago, here in Kingman I dug our Olympian catalytic heater out of one of the bus bays to keep us warm last night, and our daughter called yesterday to report snow at her home in Show Low. I told her that had better end soon, because we want to get over there and spoil those grandkids, and Grandpa doesn’t approve of being in the snow.

A while back I listed some of my favorite RV blogs and websites, and readers keep asking me for more. There are so darned many that I could spend hours a day just trying keep up with them all, but for your reading enjoyment, here are a few more that I check in on often:

White Truck Blog – Bob and Jan have converted a vintage 1965 White semi truck and a moving trailer into a beautiful home on wheels, and share the stories of their travel adventures.

Hitch Itch - A great collection of RV blogs and information can be found on this site. Give yourself plenty of time to explore it, because it has a lot of good information and links.

Backroad Chronicles - Our friends Joy and Phil have been faithful Gypsy Journal supporters for years, and their blog is always fun to read.

Traveling USA – Bob and Donna have wandered America from coast to coast, and I enjoy seeing the country through their eyes.

Moon River And We – Bob and Molly are wonderful people, and I always enjoy checking in with their blog to see what they are up to.

So what are we up to? Terry and I are going to take a day trip up to Nevada today to touch base with Aunt Bee’s Mail, the mail service that handles our business mail, and to check out an RV that we are interested in. I always enjoy the trip up to Lake Mead and across Hoover Dam. It has some of the most dramatic scenery in this part of the West. One of these days we want to camp at Lake Mead and do some kayaking on its awesome blue water.

We have a terrible internet connection here in Kingman. It’s one of the few places we have been where our Verizon air card is darned near useless. About half the time we get knocked offline when we try to open a website or even an e-mail, and it’s incredibly slow all of the time. So I’m going to close this post and try to get it online before we lose our connection yet again.

Thought For The Day - The successful person will learn from their mistakes and try again in a different way.

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