Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Earl and I had a nice relaxing stay at Antelope Valley RV Park in Delta, Utah.  We were close to a gravel road where we could walk the dogs, which made it nice. 

This morning, after it got light (the dogs got us up before 6 AM!), we drove into town to fill the car and truck with fuel and then went to McDonald's for breakfast.  Instead of our usual sausage and egg biscuit, we had one of their breakfast burritos...Earl had the sausage and I had the steak (hamburger, really).  We both agreed that the steak breakfast burrito was the best and it's something we'd order again.

After breakfast, we left Delta and headed south on UT-257, not connecting with I-15 again until we reached Cedar City.  Continuing south on I-15, we entered the Virgin River Canyon which is located on the portion of I-15 that crosses through a small portion of northwestern Arizona.  We've never driven this portion of I-15 before and the scenery was spectacular!  We may have to come this way in the spring just so we can drive through the canyon again!

Tonight we're at the Virgin River Casino which offers free overnight parking for RVs.  While we don't gamble, we usually do partake of one of the restaurants...tonight we ate at the casino's buffet which was offering Mexican and Southwestern food.  The food was pretty darn good.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

We left Curlew Campground around 8:00 AM and headed south to the HappiJac factory in Kaysville.  I'd looked up the location on Google Maps, so we knew which exit to take and which direction to go from the off ramp.  However, Google Maps showed the location on the south side of the road, but as we came to the road, a left turn would have put us in a residential neighborhood...this can't be right!  We pulled over while I called the factory to find out their location.  It turned out we should have turned right instead of left.  After turning around and finding the correction road, we still had difficulty finding the place!  The number of the building is on a small concrete sign at one corner by the road which we missed going by the first time...and, instead of a large sign on the building saying "HappiJac," no name appears at all on the building.  It isn't until you get to the front door, which isn't situated on the main road, that you see the name of the company painted on the door.

But we did finally find the place, went inside, and were directed around back where an employee came out to assess the problem with our jack.  He tested the motor...it was OK.  He tested the jack itself (the screw part inside the casing)...it was OK, too.  It turned out that the problem was in the wiring, evidently miswired at the Eagle Cap factory.  Once the guy rewired the jack, it worked perfectly!  And, not only did we not get charged for the work, the guy doing the work gave Earl two bits for his drill so that he can run the jacks up and down quicker than can be done with the remote!

After the jack was repaired, we went in search of a gas station to get fuel for both the car and the truck.  We then had lunch at Marie Callendar and were waited on by a waitress with the reddest hair I've ever seen...probably not her real color, and as I think about it, maybe she'd dyed it for Halloween, since it was on the verge of being orange!

After lunch, we located a PetsMart and bought another harness for Blaze...the third one we've had to buy for him (the latest was bought earlier this month) because he chews through them!  This time, we bought this harness: Reflective Sport Harness.  He should have a much harder time of chewing through this one since it'll be much more difficult to get his mouth around it (crossed fingers)!

The time had now come to drive through the gauntlet that is Salt Lake City!  Actually, driving through the city wasn't too bad...the bad part came south of Salt Lake City when we had to go through miles and miles of construction.  Finally, though, we got to our exit and headed west to Delta and our home park, Antelope Valley RV Park, where we can stay for free up to four weeks each year.  We're only staying a couple of days this time, though.

Monday, October 17, 2011

We left Spokane on Tuesday, October 4 and headed south on US-195 through Lewiston, Idaho where we picked up US-95.  We continued south to Hammer Creek Recreation Area, just south of White Bird, where we spent the night.

After breakfast the next morning, we continued south on US-95, intending to spend the night at Mann Creek Reservoir; however, it was raining most of the day so we figured that the camping area around the reservoir would be nothing but mud, so we continued on to my mother's place south of Nampa.

We spent 11 days visiting with my mother and had a great time!  While there, we visited with a cousin (once removed) who has done a lot of genealogy and had dinner with an aunt and two of her daughters.  We never did make it out to cemeteries in the area, though, to take pictures of relatives' gravestones.  We'll have to do that this coming spring when we visit my mother again.

Sunday morning we headed out and traveled east on I-84, spending last night at the campground at Curlew National Grasslands, north of Snowville, Utah (the campground is actually in Idaho). 

Today we'll continue south on I-84 to Kaysville (north of Salt Lake City) and stop at the HappiJac factory so they can repair or replace one of our jacks which hasn't really worked right since we first got the camper.