An Interesting Trip

Just a short trip to Reno to see my brother – or so we thought!  This has been in the works for several months and it was my bright idea – yup, guilty as charged.  We, along with my sister, Laila, and her hubby Brian were going to Reno to see brother David and then we were all going to caravan down to Bishop for a mini family reunion.  David was born in Bishop and it was always a favorite family vacation destination when we were kids.  What could possibly go wrong?

Our plan was to get on the road early Thursday morning.  We got the motorhome ready to roll and the car all hooked up Wednesday night.  We planned to take the van and go out for a quick breakfast before hitting the road.  Well here’s what came of that plan…this is what we found when we went out to get in the van:



It’s a good thing I had some cold cereal and milk as that was our breakfast while we waiting for Les Schwab to send out a truck to air up the tire.  Then Russ had to take the van to the shop only to find the tire had a hole in the sidewall and had to be replaced.    Two new tires on the van was a good way to spend our trip money…CHA-CHING!!  Got a late start but had a decent day for a drive.  Here’s the requisite picture of The Mountain as we head south on I-5.





We spent two nights at Dance Country RV Park in McCloud, CA – I may have to write one more blog just to talk about that.  Nice park but too many loose dogs.





We were walking the dogs when I felt a stinging on my ear.  I reached up to my ear and came away with a squished black bug of some kind, and about two gallons of my freshly ingested blood!!  Don’t know what it was but he sure liked to bite and suck blood…no, not a tick.  It was a very soft bug.  Okay, WARNING – this is an ugly picture, but I bet you can tell which ear it was that was bitten…


It still hurts although the swelling has gone down and I am left with a just a big knot on the back of my ear.

Our good luck continued as Russ checked his email and found an overdraft notice from the bank.  He has an automatic transfer from checking to savings set up and he thought he was making a change to the amount.  Instead he made an additional transfer and that caused the overdraft.  No problem, the bank just transferred back from savings to checking to cover his transfer from checking to savings and charged him $12.50 for the privilege.  Makes perfect sense.  Several other things have gone wrong too but I think you get the picture – not such a smooth trip!!

After two days of dodging loose dogs in McCloud we left for Reno.  Our good luck continued when we stopped at Jack in the Box in Susanville for lunch.  It’s right next to Wal-Mart and an empty building where we had boondocked a couple of years ago.  Plenty of parking for motorhomes and several already parked in the area.  We parked at the empty building and Russ walked the dogs while I got some grub at the restaurant.  We were just starting to eat when I heard someone yelling.  I looked out the door of the motorhome and saw this wild haired woman facing the rig and yelling at us at the top of her lungs.  I could only pick up a few words of what she said…something about helicopters, judgment, no respect, and getting an earful.  I started the camera in case she did anything really crazy.  It was when she opened her trunk and brought out what looked like a broken baseball bat that we began to get worried.   Russ doesn’t normally react to such situations, preferring to just ignore people and mind his own business.  But when she brought that club out we both got scared.  I had visions of busted windows or even busted heads.  I shut off the camera and he called the police.  I never did get a picture of her with her weapon but she was scary.  The police came and chased her off and then talked to us.  Seems this woman is the local nut case but normally she just stands on street corners and yells at anyone who passes by.  For some reason our being parked there in the motorhome set her off.  The officer told me she asked him if he heard the airplane and told him things were going to start happening now!  We gulped down our lunch as quickly as possible and got out of there as soon as we could get our adrenaline under control.  Here’s a couple of minutes of her rant…it went on a lot longer than this.



In retrospect, I feel sorry for this poor woman but at the time we didn’t know if she was a real threat or not.  So much craziness out there…seems you never know what might happen.  I didn’t know if the bat was the only weapon she had and we didn’t want to take any chances.

Driving through some fierce winds, we finally made it to Reno and our destination of the Sparks Marina RV Park.  We pulled in and our neighbor greeted us with, “Say, did you know your front tire is really low?”  No, we didn’t know that!!  We called AAA first – we have the RV Plus plan.  Since it was just a low tire we thought they could handle it and they assured us someone would be out who could either air up the tire or put the spare on.  More than a hour later, a guy showed up with a tow truck.  He didn’t have a compressor big enough to air up the tire, nor the equipment to change the tire!!  SHEESH, we told them it was a motorhome – you’d think they would have sent someone who could do the job.  So we called Coach Net.  They were knowledgeable and sent someone out who put the spare on for us and aired it up.  Now we have to wait until Monday when Les Schwab is open so we can get the tire fixed.  After that we are heading home.  With the way things have been going, we don’t want to go on to Bishop and risk more problems. 

The dogs have been real good but it has been hard on them too.  They are accustomed to having a very large yard to run around in and a doggy door to use whenever they want to.  Being on a leash all the time does not make them real happy.  Hopefully they can chase a few balls out at David’s place today.  I will write one more post about the Dance Country RV park.  Aside from the loose dogs and the blood thirsty bugs, it’s a beautiful park and worth staying in.  That’s all for now!!

And so ends just another adventure in travel.  Hopefully our trip home will be a lot less exciting than our trip here.