Ponderosa RV Park, CA

Here’s our campsite in the Gold Country in California!  Out our window is the South Fork of the American River.  Those are class II rapids and we often see kayaks and rafts cruising down the river and over the rapids.  Others are at the river’s edge panning gold.  We’ll be here about 10 days.

On our way here, we met Eloise’s Niece Loretta Pesetski in Truckee, CA.  We had a leisurely lunch at a Chinese restaurant and enjoyed catching up on events.

Above and below poor Eloise has been ‘stickered’ on our way to a geocache.  It’s a small price to pay for being in the forest, but those stickers can really hurt!


You can see one of the kayaks trying to go upstream.   We can’t figure why he was trying to do that, but he didn’t make it!! 

Saw this turkey while we were out geocaching.





Not too far from our camp is Georgetown.  We were looking for a place to get a bite to eat and walked past this remarkable hotel in this small time backwater town.  Just up the street we found a BBQ place for lunch, and we each took half our plates home.  Delicious.  We don’t eat meat much anymore, so it was doubly great!



On Monday we drove across the 4th highest bridge in the US, the Auburn/Foresthill bridge, and the highest in California.  Opened in 1973, it’s 730 feet above the river.  Until 2010 it was the 3rd highest, until the Hoover Dam new bridge was completed near Las Vegas.  So in order, the highest is the Royal Gorge in CO, 2d is the Hoover, 3d is in W. VA, and now 4th is the Auburn.  They were doing some maintenance on it when we went over it, and we don’t have pictures.


Bottom photo is the geocache in its normal position.  Center is how the film canister is nestled in the fake rock, and top picture is one of us signing the log.  This cache was right at the entrance to Old Town Auburn.  We found several around this area, and several we did not find, which I don’t want to talk about.








This was the scene from our site all weekend long.  So many rafts and kayaks you couldn’t count them!!  It was fun just watching!  That’s it for here, next post will be about 2 weeks from now at Oregon House, CA…See ya!

The Silver State Square and Round Dance Festival at Reno in May, 2013 is history.  We had such a great time here!  Callers were Hunter Keller, and young and energetic guy, and Tom Miller.  Hunter did a call where he impersonated several of the well known callers and did an excellent job of it.  Had us in stitches!!

 Met some new friends and saw some old friends too.  Actually, all our friends are old, whether we just met or not...it's just a symptom of aging.  Don't want to try to keep up with the young'uns anyway.

The RV park was right on the grounds of the GRAND SIERRA CASINO.  It was nice to be able periodically to get back to the motor home quickly to rest our feet and take a pain pill!!  

Our picture above was taken during the festival.  They charged $5 and didn't even offer to refund any of it.  They said my being ugly didn't qualify for a rebate.  But, doesn't Eloise look stunning???  That's one of my favorite outfits of hers.  We can't haul very many around in the motorhome, and she has to limit the crinolines  too. 

 This guy was a hoot!  He was in one of the RV slots, and had pushed out this rear-end of a 1959 Cadillac.  Notice the baby grand piano mounted forward.  He said that he has played this in Europe and all over America.  Sometimes playing with Jerry Lee Lewis.  I asked him how Jerry Lee was these days, and he said he still plays some, but likes to spend his days watching soaps on TV!!  As a teen,  I worked several years for Mr Turner in Skyline subdivision in California...he had just bought a new 1959 Cadillac and I thought he must be one of the richest men in America!!  It wasn't a convertible but it was pretty cool!  I drove my beat up Model A Ford at the time, so anything that ran was pretty cool.

 This is a shot in the round dance hall.  Round dance is like ballroom movements that are done as couples moving in a reverse clockwise direction, while a "cuer" tells the dancers what moves to make, and it's all done to the beat of the music.  Round dance is graded from 2 through 6 levels of difficulty.  Eloise and I are fairly comfortable at level 5, and are not planning to try for 6.  There are so few dancers in this picture that I'm guessing it was a level 6 dance.  When lower levels are on, there can be two circles of dancers.  With everyone going in the same direction, doing the same moves, it's a fairly safe sport.  The floor was really full when we went to a phase 4 teach the next day.

 This driving range was part of the Grand Sierra complex.  We don't do anything other than putt-putt, but this looked interesting.  Yes, that's snow on the mountains.  It snowed here just a week ago.

This is Saturday night.  Everyone dressed in their best stuff.  This is just one of the 3 halls for square dance, and another for round dance.  There was a Mainstream hall, the easiest level of square dance, a "Plus" hall which is a little more advanced, and an "Advanced" hall, a level we are now trying to attain.  

 
 In the lobby there were vendors set up.  These are just a sampling.  Aren't those dresses good looking!

This is us at Sunday morning casual dress dance.  Notice that Eloise is wearing a red rose they gave her for Mother's Day.  She had to pin it on herself though.  

That was our Reno festival.  The picture of the 50 alley bowling facility didn't turn out.  Next stop is Ponderosa Thousand Trails camp.  See ya.

After leaving Nellis AFB, our first stopover was in Tonopah, NV.  We had planned to check into the Casino RV park, but I missed that turn.  Done that before too.  Cruised on down the street looking for a place to turn around, but then spied a large lot that said in large letters "FREE OVERNIGHT RV PARKING".  Guess which word got my attention.  We pulled into the lot and set up.  Then decided to hike 'uptown'.  Really.  The town is on a medium steep hill.  Found the newly renovated Mizpah Hotel and restaurant.  It was built in 1907, and over the years became famous.  Then run-down.  Then boarded up.  It was an interesting place.  I had a Philly Cheese Steak, and E was good and had a veggi burger.  I just wanted to rebel.  But it didn't work, since I first said I would have an order of fish and chips!  That got nixed pretty quick. 

Tonopah produced extraordinary amounts of silver over the years.  You can learn its history at the Tonopah Historic Mining Park and the Central Nevada Museum.  We didn't go.  Been to plenty of mines!  The Silver Top Mine hoisthouse and headframe seen above are Tonapah's most memorable landmarks.  The second richest producer in Tonopah after the Mizpay mine, you can visit the remaining artifacts much as they've appeared since the 1940's at the Tonopah Historic Mining Park.

Tonopah is rated the #1 stargazing destination in America by USA Today.  Away from the big city lights of Las Vegas and Reno, Tonopah, Nevada has the unique distinction of having one of the darkest nighttime skies in the country.  Even the most inexperienced stargazers will see more than expected.  While those in bigger, brighter cities are used to seeing only 25 to 50 stars because of light pollution, Tonopah skies show more than 7,000 stars including the Milky Way on a clear, moonless night.  Those with good eyes will be able to see stars as distant as a visual magnitude of +7.0, which is the faintest of stars.  

Next stop should be Fallon Naval Air Station, a couple hundred miles north of here.  Later....

The summer of 2012 was hot!  We stayed the entire summer in Mesa, AZ.  We were running both of our A/Cs all night/all day.  Monthly charge for electricity alone neared $250.  That's on top of the site rent.  We were there so that I could have both my bunions operated on.  Eloise got away to Iowa a little while for her 50th HS reunion.  Yeah, I married an older woman.

So, for summer 2013, we hit the road again.  First stop was in Sedona.  Can you make out the coffee pot landmark?   This picture is a little small, it is pretty clear on our original.   
Such a great area for hiking, biking and taking in nature.  Of course we drove up the Oak Creek Canyon to the overview there.  I don't see how those indians selling jewelry can make a living...there are so many crammed side by side selling what looks like the same items.  Our campsite was near Cottonwood, along the Verde River.  There was more water in it than I'd seen before.  In years past we blew up our air mattresses and floated down the river.  Maybe we're getting old, but neither of us mentioned wanting to do that this year!

  
So, here we are at Nellis AFB which is close to Las Vegas, NV.  That shade tree at our site was really pretty.  It's called a Desert Willow, and blooms all summer.  We planted one at our rental place in Benson, AZ.  But ours is a dwarf hybrid.  We'll be pulling out of here on the 6th of May, heading up toward Reno where we are signed up to attend a square dance convention for next weekend.  Should be fun.  That should be our next update.  See ya!