Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

Sunday morning November 14, 2010 (third travelogue of this trip).

I wanted to do a quick update on our testing. It went very well!!

Because of a confidentially agreement, I am not able to include details or photos.

I can say that we did several tests and our modules performed flawlessly! The person we are working with seemed very pleased and is quite anxious to develop the market.

The weather has been so nice here. Not sure I am ready to head back to the cold weather in CO {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello from Famoso Raceway near Bakersfield, CA

Hello from Famoso Raceway near Bakersfield, CA.

Wednesday evening; March 5, 2008 (Fifth travelogue of this trip)

We are currently located here.

We stayed an extra night at the East Shore campground. It has to be one of the best campgrounds/sites we have ever been in. The weather was great and the views spectacular!

View from our site at East Shore RV Park

Today we picked up our new couch in the middle of LA. The trip from Pomona to Bell Gardens just off the I710 and I5 intersection went well considering that is the heart of LA traffic. The factory was on a dead end street and we had to unhook the car. They had to disassemble the couch to get it in, but it sure looks nice and fits well. We then drove to Famoso raceway which is about 20 miles north of Bakersfield, CA.

Our new couch

We are here for the 50^th anniversary “March Meet” drag race. As a kid, I always dreamed of going to this very famous race. It is now primarily a nostalgia event. Several of my friends from my blower belt days with Gates will be here and I really look forward to the event. It sounds like the entry list is very large. We put an advertisement in the program, so this is an official business event {grin}.

Since we have converted to a blog format, and notified a bunch of friends, I thought we might catch some of you up on our travels in the bus. We made our first trip starting on March 6, 2006. Since then we have have traveled 38,600 miles and stayed 367 nights in our home away from home. We have traveled through 25 states. That adds up to spending half our life in this crazy vehicle and we love it.

The bus is 100% functional. By that I mean that we have all of the best systems (large inverter and battery bank for our 120 volt electrical needs, a great diesel generator, large house type refrigerator with ice dispenser, diesel fired boiler that furnishes great heat on cold nights and domestic hot water, large fresh/gray/black water tanks that let us go for well over a week without hookups, two-way satellite internet, washer and dryer, and air conditioning). We still have a lot of finish work to do including overhead cabinets, exterior paint, etc. The bus will never be done, but it is very comfortable. Our bedroom seems like a cocoon and we sleep very well (well, at least one of us does {grin}). We have full communication on board, including FAX, phone, email, etc.

Now back to the travelogue. We will leave our current location on Monday and start heading home. We will probably have to detour to the Las Vegas area to finish up an installation. We need to be home by Friday (3/14). We left on this trip on 1/5, so we will have been on the road for almost 2 ½ months.

That is all for now.

Hello from San Dimas, CA.

Our bus at East Shore RV Park

Hello from San Dimas, CA.

Sunday morning; March 2, 2008 (Fourth travelogue of this trip)

We are currently located here.

I can't believe that it has been almost a month since I updated this travelogue! We have been on the go at full speed since I wrote last.

As has been the case in the past, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Shoshone, a very small quiet community. At one time I found a good website on the town, but I can't find it now. This website has some information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshone,_California.

On Wednesday some great friends spent the night in the campground. Sean and Louise have a great blog: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/. They have a beautiful, unique bus with the living quarters above the drivers compartment (hard to describe, but their blog has some details). Folks often describe it as a “double decker” bus (not technically correct, but it works. We had planned to have dinner with them at the only cafe in town. However, a terrible windstorm came up and the whole area lost power. We cooked a large pan of frozen lasagna and had a great meal in our bus.

On Friday we made a long trip into Death Valley and visited the very unique “Scotty's Castle”. This is quite a structure and has a ton of history. Some information is contained at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotty's_Castle. We took two tours and were absolutely amazed at the structure and history. We had dinner in Furnace Creek in the park. We left our campground around 9:00 AM and got home about 11 hours later. I think the trip was over 200 miles. We continue to be amazed at the beauty and drastic geology variations within the park.

Saturday we went to the Amargosa Opera House. This is a very unique building/hotel in the middle of nowhere. Their website is: http://www.amargosa-opera-house.com/operahouse.html. A lady by the name of Marta Becket restored the building and painted beautiful murals in the Opera House and motel lobby. She has performed in the facilities since the early 80's. In those days it was a melodrama. Today she is too feeble to perform, so she sits on the stage and tells some great stories and sings a little.

The rest of our stay was filled with trips to Pahrump, swimming, working, and just plain goofing off.

We left Sunday 2/17 and drove to Chino, CA where we were scheduled to do a system install at a company called “The Paint Department”. I was there to train an installer. The person was good at detail work, but I ended up doing a lot of the work, since he did not have any experience and we got way behind schedule. It was a very difficult install and we did not get it done ( I will finish the install in the next couple of days).

From Chino we drove to Hemet, CA where we met up with other members of the Converted Coach group. We ended up missing most of the first day, but we still had a great time and got to see some old friends.

On Saturday (2/23) we caravaned over 60 miles to the Fairplex (Los Angeles County Fairgrounds) for the FMCA International Convention. We parked with the CVC group rather than with the vendors (who often are not friendly to bus conversions that are not “up to their standards”). We set up the booth on Sunday and Monday. The vendor area was open Tuesday through Thursday. The attendance, as has been the case for the past two years, was down considerably from past years. In years past, there would often be 5,000 to 7,000 motorhomes attending. This year there were a bit more than 2,300. Pat did two craft seminars and I did my safety seminar. Her attendance was great, mine was OK.

This was our best show. We had reasonably good sales and booked three of our systems for future delivery (confirmed sales). We also had great interest and one person is having a special handicapped motorhome built and is going to have the factory install the system (the factory engineer came to the booth to get information on the system). If this works out, it could lead to working with OEMs to offer the system as an option.

On this trip we also sold four systems via phone and Estore ( including one to the military). Maybe we are beginning to see the light (headlight?) in the tunnel.

Friday night we tried to be sneaky and stay at the fairgrounds, but the security folks came by and made us move (at 9:30 PM). We moved to a Wal Mart in San Dimas. Yesterday, we got a bunch of critical errands done and moved into a great “campground”:
East Shore RV Park. You will see from the satellite map that we overlook a lake. We have a very panoramic view of the colorful hills, valleys, and distant snow capped mountains. We also overlook Brackett Field, a small airport. We have been watching planes take off as I write this.

I have included one photo that I took yesterday when we moved in. It was foggy and the photo does not show the views. It is clearing today and I will post another picture and some more travelogue in a day or two.

That is all of now.

Hello from Shoshone, CA.

Saturday evening; February 9, 2008 (Third travelogue of this trip)

Our current location is here (you should be able to click on the word “here” and it will direct you to the map). You can change the map from a normal view to a satellite view and can increase or decrease the viewing area to better understand where we are.

We sadly left Yuma on Wednesday and traveled about 130 miles to Parker, AZ where we stayed at the Blue Water Casino. It was a very picturesque setting, right on the Colorado River. Pat said the casino was not that great, but it was a good place to stop.

On Thursday we traveled to Shoshone. On the way we stopped in Lake Havasu, AZ to spend some time looking at the London Bridge. Background on this bridge is pasted in the next paragraph.

London Bridge in Lake Havasu

In 1962, London Bridge was falling down. Built in 1831, the bridge couldn't handle the ever-increasing flow of traffic across the Thames River. The British government decided to put the bridge up for sale, and Robert McCulloch, Founder of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and Chairman of McCulloch Oil Corporation, submitted the winning bid of $2,460,000. The bridge was dismantled, and each stone was numbered. Everything was shipped 10,000 miles to Long Beach, California, and then trucked to Lake Havasu City. Reconstruction began on September 23, 1968, with a ceremony including the Lord Mayor of London, who laid the cornerstone. On October 10, 1971, the bridge was dedicated.

We drove the bus over the bridge and then parked it a few blocks away and walked along the river under the bridge so that we could see it from all sides. I have attached a picture of the bridge.

We have talked about Shoshone in previous travelogues. It is a tiny town of 100 people. The campground is very basic, bordering on primitive. We like that. It has a great spring fed pool that is about 90 degrees. We found this place in Pat's Hot Springs Book. We first stayed here in March of 2006 on our maiden voyage. The weather is warming a bit. Last week the lows were in the 30s, but the forecast for next week is 70s in the daytime and 40s at night.

As most of you know, we have almost no cell phone signal here. I did buy an amplifier prior to this trip and we can get out once in a while on Pat's phone. I have a new phone and have ordered the adapter cable for the amplifier. I should have it next Tuesday.

I cracked out for a new Palm 680 “smart phone”. It is a PDA and a phone. I can get internet and email as well as phone. I also have my Palm database of contacts, memos (basic data items) and calendar that I have developed over the past several years. At the same time, I switched back to AT&T since they have the same phone technology as that used in Europe. The plan is to be able to use the phone in Europe for both voice calls and checking my business email. I will also take my laptop, but this will allow me to keep up on business items much easier. Besides, it is a GREAT TOY. I used my saved up Christmas and Birthday money to buy a Garmin GPS system for this phone. Can you say GEEK/TECHNO JUNKIE .

Yesterday we went to Pahrump, NV (about 30 miles each way) to do some shopping, check cell messages and let Pat get even with the machines (about $300 worth). She had been having terrible luck at several casinos on this trip and was sure glad to see a turn of events.

Today we did some catching up on projects and went swimming. It really felt great! Tomorrow we will probably do the same things.

In the last travelogue we talked about Dexter the beagle. What a work he is!! After his dinner (exactly at 5:00 PM) he gets a ride in the golf car (see photo of him waiting).

Dexter waiting for his ride

I also need to catch up on a couple of events from Yuma. Ed, Stevi, and Pat stopped at an orchard and picked three five gallon buckets of tangerines ($4.00 per bucket!). They juiced several of them and you can not believe how good the juice is!!!

As we were getting ready to leave, we planned to be sneaky and leave a gift for them without them knowing about it. Our plans worked. Later Ed, called us to thank us and mentioned that they could be sneaky as well. That evening we found two large wood burned decorated spoons that Stevi had made for Pat. They were in a plastic bag the Ed had sneaked into the bus. These are similar to the ones we gave the girls at Christmas. They are gorgeous and Pat loves them. Stevi did them from some Stampin' Up! Artwork. We laughed our tails off (censored for the grandkid's eyes). We could not believe that they got the last laugh! They sure are great folks and we really enjoyed our stay at their “lot”.

Guess that is all of now.

Hello from Quartzsite, AZ

Note: This is the first post on our new blog.

I have been writing travelogues for many years. The main purpose was to document our travels for future enjoyment by Pat and I. We have delivered these posts, via email, to our daughters, a few family members and some friends.

We have followed a great blog that some friends write as they travel around the country in the very unique and beautiful converted bus (see: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/). We recently met with them and they encouraged me to post our travelogues to a blog so that others could follow us as we travel.

I will start building this blog by posting the first two travelogues I wrote for this trip.

Jim

Now to the first post:

Wednesday Morning; January 23, 2008 (First travelogue of this trip)

Well, as been the case with the last few travelogues, I am very late in writing this one.

I have added a new feature to this travelogue. I am adding a link to Google Satellite Maps to show you where we are. Our current location is here.

We left Evergreen on Saturday 1/5/08 around noon. We had planned to leave on 12/27, but I had the bus torn apart in several locations as I tried to finish some projects. I did get some front cabinets done, relocated all of the heat exchangers and several other projects.

Leaving that late really put us in a bind. We had to be in Indio, CA by 1/8. That is a trip of almost 1,300 miles. We got off to a bad start, as we ran into terrible cross winds almost from the start. We saw several truck/trailers rolled over and the highway signs said that any RV would be ticketed if they were on the road. We pulled off at the Walsenberg exit and stayed the night. From there we traveled to Demming, NM (over 500 miles) and stayed in a Walmart. Next stop was a parking lot in Tonopah, AZ (slightly less than 500 miles). On both of those legs, we were severely buffeted by winds and a few severe rain storms. That part of the trip was NOT fun!

We made it to Indio at mid-day on Tuesday (1/8) and got settled in at the Expocenter Fairgrounds. This was the site of a large regional FMCA (Family Motorcoach Association) rally. Most regional rallies have around 500-700 motorhomes and this one had 1250 (down from about 1500 last year). Tuesday I scoped out the vendor area and did some unloading. Wednesday, I started to set up in the morning and then drove Pat over to Palm Springs (about 30 miles) to the Hilton where her Stampin' Up! Leadership Conference was held. As is always the case, she had a great conference.

The rally was open three days. It was very busy for me since Pat was not there to help as the “traffic cop”/partner. Our sales were low, but there were many folks very interested in my system (hopefully that will translate to future sales).

I was too tired to go to the first two evening entertainment events, but I did get the booth torn down on Saturday in time to go the Diamonds concert. They are a group out of the '50s and they put on a GREAT concert.

I picked Pat up on Sunday morning. We moved the bus from the parking field to a great place with water and power under some beautiful Palm trees (I will post some pictures later, after I catch up on some projects). The weather was great during the day but got a bit cool in the evening (not like Denver). We decided to stay another couple of nights and then left for Quartzsite on Wednesday (1/16).

As the map will show, we are east of Quartzsite just off I10. This is where the Eagle Bus Rally was held. The official dates of the rally were 1/18-20/08. Several folks came early like we did and a few are staying over.

The Eagle rally was well attended and fun. There were almost 40 Eagle buses and several other kinds of recreational vehicles that folks drove because their bus was not done. One couple drove a beautiful fully self-contained semi-truck.

While I do not hang out my “shingle” at these rallies, I sold over $1,000 worth of product!

We are staying over for a few days to go to the huge flea markets and the very large RV parts tent (open one week each year). Our plans are to leave here Friday and go south to Yuma and stay a couple of days with a fellow bus nut.

I have a lot more that I would like to document, but I am out of time since we are headed to town in a few minutes.

Jim