Our RV Adventures

Today was a travel day, from Williams, AZ to the Thousand Trails RV Park in Las Vegas. But before I tell you about that, I wanted to recount our visit to Bearizona yesterday.

Bearizona is a drive-thru/walk-thru wildlife park that just opened last year, and new exhibits are being built even now.

Here’s my sweetie with the park mascot.

These are American Burros who are apparently more interested in dinner than us.

Next we had the American Bison or Buffalo.

This guy was only about 20 feet from the truck, and I think he was bigger than the truck.

These are Gray Wolves. When we pulled up to their area, they were just laying around under the trees until one of the park guys went by on his ATV. They all perked up and came running over to the road, I guess thinking they were going to be fed.

In the next area, we had Dall Sheep. We saw a lot of these along the roads in Alaska.

And more sheep, this time Big Horn Sheep. We’ve seen these a number of times traveling out west.

This is the fabled White Buffalo. True albino buffalo are extremely rare, but I don’t know what these are. They could be leucistic, which means they would have blue eyes instead of the pink eyes of an albino, or they could be a buffalo/cow cross.

Finally we saw bears, lots of bears. Black ones, brown ones, little ones, big ones. All around us.

But the cutest ones were the four 3 month old cubs. They were playing, falling, and wrestling like a bunch of puppies, into everything.

I even shot some video of them.

They even had a baby javelina, with his own bed.

He even has his own toy to play with. I wonder if the Big Horn Sheep have a toy javelina to play with?

Another one of those ‘so ugly they’re cute’ animals.

In the Petting Zoo area, Terry made a new friend. In fact, for a while we thought he was going to follow her home.

A baby fox.

But, beside the bear cubs, I think everyone’s favorite were the Bobcats. It was almost like they enjoyed posing for us.

They would sit on the rock for a while, take a break and wander off, and then come back and sit on the rock again.

Just beautiful animals.

We all had a great time at Bearizona and look forward to visiting it again next year to check out the new animals.

Bearizona is well worth your time if you’re in the area.

Now back to today.

We left the Canyon Gate RV Park in Williams about 9, heading for Las Vegas 213 miles away. The reason we left so early for such a short trip was that Nick had planned to stop at the Speedco about 15 miles outside of Kingman and get the oil changed in his rig. And I was going to check out the instant oil analysis service they offered.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. Despite Nick having called twice and being assured they worked on RV’s and could get him in and out quickly, when he pulled into the parking lot, he was basically told to get out, and that they only worked on big trucks driven by guys working for a living.

When Nick mentioned that their website says they service RV’s, the guy said he didn’t care, just move!

And then they seemed to go out of their way to make it difficult for us to get out of their parking lot. So much so, that I ended up damaging the left front corner of my rig getting out of a tight turn.

Even stranger, a flat bed tractor-trailer pulled in right before us, and after talking to the same guy, started to leave immediately. But then had to wait for Nick to move out of his way. In doing so, he told Nick “these guys are a bunch of a$$hole$”.

So either his truck wasn’t big enough, or he wasn’t working hard enough, I guess.

I know that plenty of RV’ers have used Speedco, but I never have, and now never will.

So, after this brief but unpleasant interlude, we were back on the road to Las Vegas, about 115 miles away.

We were a little worried about the high wind advisories we were seeing, warning of bad conditions crossing the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, but except for the occasional ‘interesting’ wind gust, the trip was smooth and the scenery was great.

Both Nick and Jan had worried about crossing the new bridge, but because the sides are high, and RV’s are supposed to stay in the left lane, you never realize that you are almost 900 feet about the Colorado River as you cross.

It’s really kind of disappointing.

We got into the Thousand Trails here in Vegas a little after 1 and got set up. Then about 3 we drove down to Boulder Station Casino to check out the buffet there.

And it was just as good as last year. As usual we sat around talking for a good while before heading home about 5 pm.

We’re going to be here for two weeks, and hopefully we’ll have as much fun as last year.

More tomorrow.

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Thought

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Here’s Part II of our Grand Canyon visit yesterday.

Today we visited the Bearizona Wildlife Park here in Williams, but I’ll save it for tomorrow’s blog since we’ll be traveling and won’t have much that is blog-worthy.

We walked further along the rim, just taking in the fantastic scenery.

This is a view of the legendary El Tovar Hotel looking back from Fred Harvey’s Lookout Studio.

More great views.

Around 1 pm we headed back around the rim to the Bright Angel Dining Room to have lunch. Unfortunately, the place was busy so we didn’t get a table by the window overlooking the canyon, but in consolation, the food was delicious.

I had the BBQ Sampler Plate with chicken, ribs, and pulled pork, with two very tasty BBQ sauces, including a Prickly Pear Honey sauce.

Jan had a Pistachio Chicken Salad Sandwich on Ciabatta bread.

These people are heading down one of the many hiking trails. They start out along the rim,

then work their way thru the tunnel.

You can take the trail all the way to the bottom of the Canyon and on to the fabled Phantom Ranch

The beginning of the bright green strip is where the Phantom Ranch is located.

Up close, it looks like this. It’s a 12 mile hike down here.

And then another 4 miles along here, out to the edge of the bottom canyon.

I was really surprised Jan was able to do this. She has a real fear of heights so this was a feat for her. I’m really proud of her.

I, on the other hand, am more like this guy. The higher, the scarier, the better. Jan calls it ‘riding that ragged edge”

I call it fun.

Heading back to the train depot, we took a quick detour into the El Tovar Hotel. While Jan was checking out the gift shop, I stuck my head in the main dining room. Talk about nice!

Finally, about 3:15, we boarded our train car for the trip home.

We pulled back into the Williams Train Depot about 5:45 and made our way back to the RV park a few minutes away.

And we had something great waiting for us. Terry had promised to have one of her great Mexican dinners waiting for us. Spicy Chicken Enchiladas, Roasted Shredded Pork Tacos, and Refried Beans. WOW!

The perfect end to a fantastic day!

More tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day:

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