Dory transits cross country

[Ronnie]

I have had that happen. Nice when it is a simple fix. You sure are getting to see some beautiful places. Makes me want to get out and explore.

[joeblack5]

Ha. Yes . was our lucky moment. Sofar we had a lot of luck. Will seen if we can beat the statistics.
We left a wet very windy wally but with a rainbow in yucca valley and stopped at yoshua tree town to get our junior ranger badges. Then we hit to local thrift stores and I loaded up on cassette tapes at $.25. Dire straits... Supertramp... Pat benatar...Linda Ronstadt. ... Kids are slightly surprised.

Then we started direction Parker. Beautiful drive. Boondocked just North of parker at the entrance of a casino.
Next morning ..thursday..hiked around and checked out the Colorado river. Then of to the library to try to stay on par with schoolwork.. Laundromat .. In the afternoon we tried to get in a state park along the river but when we saw how people were packed and the fee we decided to overnight at the boat launch at Parker dam.

[joeblack5]

In the morning we hiked at the parker dam area and after breakast we followed 95 north thru havasu. Not very impressed with the all play no work impression we moved on to I40. Then we checked several overnight camping spot along the backroad to Topock. Ultimately decided to drive thru to Laughlin post office to pickup a heavier some wave inverter. We made it with 3 minutes to spare...and it was there. ..great service. Then we found an amazing campinspot on lake Mohave just north of the Davis dam on the Nevada side. The dirt road in was a bit of a challenge but worth it. No internet or phone. Saturday we hiked around a bit and for the inquisitive minds we took the jeep to bullhead city and are now in the library.

[PNW_Steve]

There are some familiar spots!

I stopped in Laughlin for a 3 week contract job while living in my first bus.

Met a girl, got married, built a house and sold the bus. Three weeks turned into 7 years.

Have you been up to Oatman?

[joeblack5]

Hi Steve, not yet but we will in a couple of days. Seems to be a nice town for our kind of stuff. kids will love to see the burrows. This camping area is telephone cove.

[o1marc]

Originally Posted by joeblack5

Hi Steve, not yet but we will in a couple of days. Seems to be a nice town for our kind of stuff. kids will love to see the burrows. This camping area is telephone cove.

Burros, the animal, or burrows, holes in the ground?

[PNW_Steve]

Originally Posted by joeblack5

Hi Steve, not yet but we will in a couple of days. Seems to be a nice town for our kind of stuff. kids will love to see the burrows. This camping area is telephone cove.

I know Telephone Cove well. I wouldn't mind being there right now

[Ronnie]

Familiar spots for us too.

[Native]

My folks lived in Las Vegas and when they made their drive to Florida each year, they stopped in Lauglin the first night. It was a whopping 70 mile drive the first day. We used to kid them about it. Now, I fully understand making a short hop the first day!

[joeblack5]

Nice to hear that so many people can identify with our traveling locations. Marc , burro , it is. Sorry for the misspelling.

We stayed at telephone cove for 7 days. Good time.hiked a canyon of two. Hiked a mine. Installed a new inverter and took a nice long.. 20 minute.. hot shower..... 3/4 gallon soap water and the 3/4 gallon rinse water.. Altogether a success.

On our way out of telephone cove we did our library thing one more time. Got a couple of SciFi books for 0.50 each... Vogt..zahn and Ben Nova... Kids enrolled in a Lego day. The youngest made a tire store.

Topped of fuel. Filled water and loaded supplies.
We made it to Goffs , a route 66 town. Camped on an empty lot just before the rail road crossing. State police stopped by. Just curious and no problem.. We had a good night hearing the trains roll in and out from both directions.
Next morning we checked out the school / town museum of Goffs. We had a great time.

[cadillackid]

Love lovew love this trip!! Ive never really seen eye to eye with my father too much... but the one thing I'll always thanks him for is travel.. all of our travels in an old (bnew at the time) scout to many of the places you guys are going!! anyone can go to disney - world 6 years in a row.. but soooo loving that you are taking your kids on a real true adventure.. a trip they will remember for a long time. and some day may take their own kids on!..having fun while seeing new things and learning lots!!! yeah **THAT** is what bus life is about!
-Christopher

[Native]

You folks sure are doing it right. Stay as long as you want, go when and where you want. Not many can have such an adventure!

[joeblack5]

Thanks Chris and Native.

We feel pretty fortunate indeed.
Last night we boondocked in Ludlow next to the Ludlow cafe. After Goffs we were tired so we stopped at 5 pm and made dinner.
Next morning we had breakfast at this rte 66 joint. You can get a 10% discount coupon at the gas station at the opposite side with any purchase. ( coffee in my case, that I had bought the evening before).
The restaurant wants you to present the coupon before you order which makes one wonder if they give you less food? Either way the food was decent and we felt better with the 10% discount.
Here I realized that I messed up with driving i40 between Goff and Ludlow and so had missed some of the precious rte 66. We played more attention leaving Ludlow and stayed on 66. That turned out to be a good decision as we ran by Pisgah crater. So we pulled of the road and drove Dory next to the crater and lava tubes.
Someone their explained where we should be looking and off we were. Rosie stayed in Dory since the terrain was not paw friendly.
We found and entered several tubes and caves and it became quite exciting. The pic of the kids against the rocks is actually inside a 60ft long underground lava tube....
Enough to see for another day we decided to boondock at location. Thought about taking a shower and so Dory has to be horizontal or better lower in the back. I blocked up the front end and took the opportunity to grease the steering pins and inspect and clean the front airbags. Later we found cinder rocks with a nice blue shine. No idea what they are.. May some home grown jewellery opportunity.

[o1marc]

I'm envious. You've gone more places and seen more stuff on this trip than most people see in a lifetime of week vacations. I bet the kids have no idea how important this could be in their life.

[Ronnie]

We've been in lava tubes also in New Mexico. They look just like that! Thanks for sharing your adventures with us.

[Sleddgracer]

the blue in lava rocks are caused when ---
'The phenomenon is caused when the volcano's sulfuric gases come into contact with air temperature above 360°C."

[joeblack5]

Hi Marc.... Will see ...the human mind has a short memory. Our kids probably no exception.
This morning we started with a hike into the remains of the crater. Then the kids and I thought to take one more quick look in a cave we spotted yesterday. ( see my hand out of the underworld) then we got carried away with another one that was a 300 ft tunnel with in entry and exit. After that we got really lucky with a tunnel going straight down 60 ft and then opened up into a couple of huge caves that could hold 2 Dory's. There was a geocache pot with memos back to 2010. Wife was freaking out since we were underground for 45 minutes.. The walkie talkies dont work underground. Anyhow noone got hurt so that was a plus...We rolled of the crater 4 hours later then expected but quit excited.

Back on 66 on to Barstow to refill supplies so that we could camp at red rock canyon along rte 395.
Out of Barstow we had some honking and waving fun with the train that ran besides us. Wonder how often these engineer get waved at anymore these days. He seemed happy enough about it. We stopped at Boron rest area to eat. Seems to be a nice museum there so red rock has to wait a little longer.

Ronnie where in new mexico?

Sleddracer..were you able to see the blue on the small rocks? Similar as you have seen. Tried to research it more but sofar no luck.. The color remind me of titanium welding heat colors. Picked some blue and red coated rocks . will take a pic but they look more like heavy thick paint.

[Sleddgracer]

Originally Posted by joeblack5

Hi Marc.... Will see ...the human mind has a short memory. Our kids probably no exception.
This morning we started with a hike into the remains of the crater. Then the kids and I thought to take one more quick look in a cave we spotted yesterday. ( see my hand out of the underworld) then we got carried away with another one that was a 300 ft tunnel with in entry and exit. After that we got really lucky with a tunnel going straight down 60 ft and then opened up into a couple of huge caves that could hold 2 Dory's. There was a geocache pot with memos back to 2010. Wife was freaking out since we were underground for 45 minutes.. The walkie talkies dont work underground. Anyhow noone got hurt so that was a plus...We rolled of the crater 4 hours later then expected but quit excited.

Back on 66 on to Barstow to refill supplies so that we could camp at red rock canyon along rte 395.
Out of Barstow we had some honking and waving fun with the train that ran besides us. Wonder how often these engineer get waved at anymore these days. He seemed happy enough about it. We stopped at Boron rest area to eat. Seems to be a nice museum there so red rock has to wait a little longer.

Ronnie where in new mexico?

Sleddracer..were you able to see the blue on the small rocks? Similar as you have seen. Tried to research it more but sofar no luck.. The color remind me of titanium welding heat colors. Picked some blue and red coated rocks . will take a pic but they look more like heavy thick paint.

I'd seen it before but never thought of why it was coloured like that, so looked it up and pasted what I read in case any one else was wondering

[o1marc]

When mine is done I'm pulling up this thread, you been to so many places I didn't even know were out there. On the way back from Seattle I kept seeing small museums and local lore sites and stuff, these are more important as I get older. When I was a child growing up in the SF Bay area, every summer Dad would pack us up and we spent a month at Yosemite, back when they had the firefall. Dad would get up and go to work and Mom and us six kids had a blast. Great memories. I divorced when my daughter was around 2 and I didn't get to take long trips like that when I only had every other weekend. She lives in Australia right now and her mom just passed away 3 weeks ago. I'm hoping when she gets home around Christmas, she'll be able to take a trip like yours with me. Thank god Australia doesn't just let Americans move there permanently.

[JDOnTheGo]

Lookin' good Johan!

I know there are some lava tubes south of Grants, NM in the El Malpais but, as of a few years ago, they stopped letting people inside them due to the damage that people were causing.