Captain’s Entry:
Starship
Arrowstar once again is on the move. We left Starbase Del Monte at a leisurely
9:30 a.m., a full two hours earlier than we had planned. Making our way to the
outskirts of Kingman, we landed at Blake Ranch RV Park and Horse Motel in the
early afternoon.
The First
Officer has been installing our new Dish Network TV set-up, while I’ve been
reading North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I read it the
first time several years ago, and today I read once again about the Lindbergh’s
preparations to fly to China in their small Sirius airplane during the summer
of 1931. Loading the RV doesn’t even come close to what Anne and Charles went
through to ready their “rig” for flight.
I had to
chuckle when I read a quote in Lindbergh’s preface because it somehow fits into
our space-traveling theme we’ve adopted, dubbing the RV “Starship Arrowstar.” Written
in the Victorian era by Master George Best in Hakluyt’s Voyages, he ruminates
on the dangers of exploration:
“How
dangerous it is to attempt new Discoveries, either for the length of the
voyage, or the ignorance of the language, the want of Interpretors, new and
unaccustomed Elements and ayres, strange and unsavoury meates, danger of theves
and robbers, fiercenesse of wilde beastes and fishes, hugeness of woods,
dangerousnesse of Seas, dread of tempests, feare of hidden rockes, steepnesse
of mountains, darkenesse of sudden falling fogges, continuall paines taking
without any rest, and infinite others.”
Best’s
description of Martin Frobisher’s 1576 search for a Northwest Passage very
handily puts our RV misadventures into the proper perspective. While we hardly
consider ourselves explorers, we intend to regale you with stories of our travels
and discoveries until you tell us to “Stop It!”
End
Captain’s Entry
First Officer’s Entry:
So here we
are on the outskirts of Kingman, AZ. Our
next stop is Beatty, NV, then Fallon, NV, and then to the rally site in Quincy,
CA for a week. After that
we are going to explore Northern California for a while or possibly
Oregon. We plan to be out for another
three or four weeks one way or another.
As the
captain said, we are in the Blake RV Park and Horse Motel. I never realized, until a horsey friend of
ours told me, that folks who travel with horses stay at horse motels so the
horses can move around, exercise, and frankly, take a comfortable poop. I had just never thought about it! But it does make a lot of sense. Another whole industry I knew nothing about!
Wow! A horse trailer/RV combo just drove past us
heading down to the horse area. That rig
must be 60 feet long! Our rig is 40 feet
and he dwarfed us!
Anyway, our
coach has an antenna in a dome on the roof capable of locking on to the
appropriate satellite even while we in motion.
The Dish receiver/DVD can even record while we are traveling. (Once I get it all set up, of course.)
I spent some
time on the phone with Dish Tech Support and it seems that there are dip
switches in the dome that have to be set in a specific code for the antenna to
work. So I get to climb up on the roof
tomorrow morning to check and/or set the dips.
One last
note for those of you who know about the 20’ by 20’ sun shade I built to
protect the front of the coach. I built it
with the center support removable so the Smart car trailer would fit under it
when taking it in or out of the back yard.
Well, IT WORKED PERFECTLY!
I took out the center support and the trailer just slipped right under
the sunshade. Gee, it’s neat when plans
work as planned!
 |
| Just for fun from recent Tombstone trip |
No comments:
Post a Comment