The bus with the Flxible emblem on the front

Our view from the parking lot of Cabela's, the town of Lehi and the lake surrounding it

Saturday, May 30

Hi there, we are now in Ogden, UT, staying at the military famcamp here. Yesterday, we stayed in the parking lot of Cabela's in Lehi, just south of here about 50 miles. We even spent some money in their store, imagine that! We had a really long driving day today, I'll tell you. The weather is great, so glad to be out of that hot weather down in the desert! Tomorrow, we're heading up to Garden City, UT, which is in the northeast part of the state, to stay in an RPI park for the next three days. I'll try and take some pictures of what it looks like around there. I did take one lonely picture of the view from the parking lot, of the lake and city in the distance, but, other than that, I didn't see the point of taking a picture of the bus in the parking lot or the famcamp. So, I will post that, along with another picture that Ron thought I posted the other night. I do apologize to those of you who were looking in vain for the bus with the Flxible emblem on the front, that Ron had installed. He thought I put it on, I didn't think it was that important. So, here it is...

The new bridge will be finished in late 2010, quite a lot of work still to go. In the following days, I will be posting more pictures of our journey north through Utah, glad you could stop by and see what we've been doing so far.

As you can see, the pillars are gone from each side, just a flat expanse of road bed

I was just reviewing the pictures and noticed I did not put the one in on how the new bridge is going to look when it's finished. It's not the best picture, as Ron took it through a plexiglass window, but, you'll get the idea. It looks a lot like the older bridges on Hwy 1 in California, I think.

One of many rocks with petroglyphs, nearby

Our camping spot for the night at Parowan Gap BLM

Inside the Valley of Fire State Park

If you enlarge this picture, you might be able to see the road continue on the left side in the distance

Road construction along the lakeshore drive, which was smoother driving than the actual pavement

The extreme western end of Lake Mead, near Overton Beach

In The Conservatory at The Bellagio

A closer view

The beautiful glass blown flowers in the lobby of The Bellagio Casino

In The Venetian Casino

Standing on the 37th floor of the Marriott Hotel, looking down on the Strip southwards

As you can see by the ring on the rocks, the lake is way low, about 100 feet down from normal levels

The Visitor Center and Observation Deck

Looking from the dam, it looks really high doesn't it?

A view of the parking garage and gift store

A closer view of the arch

The new road bed, the pillars you see are just temporary, supports and pillars will come down when it's done

The arch for the new bridge

This is part of the new highway going to the bridge at Hoover Dam

Thursday, May 28

Tonight finds us about 15 miles northwest of Cedar City, UT. We left Las Vegas this morning and it was already 100 degrees. We had a great time in Las Vegas, just next time, we'll go when it's not so hot. We got great, cheap tickets to the Blue Man Group who we saw last night. They were great! We had a last big fling with the Rayners on Tuesday. We had a 2 for 1 dinner buffet at Orleans Casino, plus paid $3 each to see a movie there because it was senior day. What a deal!

While there, we decided to go see Hoover Dam, since it's been years since we took the tour. My, how things have changed and not for the better, pricewise. The simple tour through the dam is now $11, for the power plant tour, which is not bad. But, there is a more complete tour that costs $30 each! (Ron says it's the power plant tour plus a couple of extra stops). Plus, we had to pay $8 each just to get into the Visitor's Center, what a ripoff! As if that wasn't enough, we had to pay $7 just to park in the multi level garage. Good grief, things were definitely better prior to 9/11.

When we left today, we drove the Lakeshore Dr north so we could drive through the Valley of Fire State Park. It was a beautiful, scenic drive past the lake, and red rocks here and there. It cost us $6 to drive through the state park and we didn't even stop anywhere because it was so hot. But, we know where to go next time we drive through, when it's much cooler.

So, the pictures you are going to see are from Las Vegas, Hoover Dam and todays drive. For those of you who may not know, they are building a new bridge over the canyon that is going to take all the traffic away from driving over the dam. You will see what it's going to look like in the pictures...

Our spot at Wilderness Lakes

Our nice shady spot at Pio Pico

If I remember to take my camera with me while we're walking around Las Vegas, maybe I'll even post some pictures from that, but, so far, I keep forgetting. The pictures will get more interesting as we head north into beautiful country. And, even though these pictures are out of place, I'm posting them anyway. Our spots at Pio Pico down in the San Diego area and Wilderness Lakes, north of Temecula.

The bus getting a wheel alignment

Getting the eyebrow window re-installed, hope it helps with the leaks

Another view

This steering wheel is 4 inches smaller across than the old one and a lot prettier, too.

Charlie welding in the bracket to hold the steering column

Our telescoping, tilting steering column that we bought at a big rig salvage yard

We all three own VL-100's. Charlie also owns a Clipper, like the red & white one that was in the movie "RV"

Our bus is in the foreground, then, Dan's behind the Joshua tree, then, Charlie's beyond that

While we were getting our work done, our good bussin' friends, Dan & Marge came up to have Charlie put in their new rear suspension, too. Here are a couple of pictures of all three of our buses together...

Ron helping Charlie re-attach everything

The new one set in

Helper Ron

Removing it to put the new one on

Here's Charlie working to get the old front suspension off

The new one looking spiffy and will last the bus longer than our lifetime

This is the old rear suspension we had done back in March

Monday May 25

Okay, it's been about a week now, guess I'll post some pictures. We are finally out of California, YAY!! Las Vegas, as you can imagine is HOT!! Temps in the mid 90's, and we have no A/C in the bus, but, we are managing. We usually try to be somewhere else in the middle of the day, preferably with air conditioning. Bill & Fran Rayner are in the park with us, the Thousand Trails here not very far from The Strip. We all went to lunch today at Sam's Town and had a good time.

The first pictures will be of the suspension work we had done, and then the installation of the new steering column and steering wheel. We also had our destination window and the eyebrow window re-installed because they had issues with leakage. Now all we have to do is be somewhere where it rains so we can see if he did a good job or not. The sunscreens are doing a very good job of keeping the bugs out, so we're glad we got them.

Tuesday, May19

Hello there, well, sorry I haven't updated this blog in awhile. We've been in the southern California area, but, some of the places we've been in weren't too reliable in cell connections, so I've pretty much gotten terribly behind. I do have some pictures to post of some work we had done on the bus a few weeks ago. Mainly, we decided to add new front suspension as well. I will get the pictures together of what we've done so far and post them in the next day or so. We are finally almost ready to depart California for our summer travels. Right now, we are at the Wilderness Lakes Thousand Trails near Temecula, but, we leave Friday to head for Las Vegas to spend a few days sightseeing, then, we'll head north on I-15 towards Utah and Idaho.