Thanksgiving dinner

This is our 7th year of meeting together for Thanksgiving.

Kathy Castro, Roberta Gaskill and me.

 

After a cocktail and some little snacks off to dinner

in the Venetian Hotel.

 

Roberta and John Gaskill

Kathy and John Castro

 

Eric and me

Our server made the Caesar Salad right at the table

 

ice berg salad with Wisconsin blue cheese and apple smoked bacon for me, gumbo for Eric

 

dinner was enjoyed by everyone: Turkey, Salmon, Fried Chicken and waffles and smoked pork chop

some people had dessert:

now time to walk off our food!  we walked back to the Tropicana, about 2 miles, the sidewalks were very crowded.

 

what a wonderful Thanksgiving 2013!  Good friends, good food, good fun. 

 

Pic’s from the past:

2009 cruise out of San Diego

2010 Disney World, Orlando

2011 New Orleans

2012 Palm Springs Ca

Thanksgiving in Las Vegas

It took us about 2.5 hours to go 95 miles, mostly up hill! We have a leaky kitchen faucet so thought it would be better to get up here and get it fixed.  well although it was a great idea, everyone is closed for the holiday weekend or too booked..  so we will wait until we get to Palm Springs.

We are at a 21 and older RV Resort near Sam’s Town.

The sites are small but not too bad, we have an end site, nice pool, spa and laundry facilities.  Very good TV, Computer and phone. They also have very good security at this park.  Not sure if we need it but it is nice to know.

 

the puppies wanted to stop and smell the roses!  TD JR (the brown one) got a bit too close!

got to love Palm Trees!

after making all the phone calls and getting shut out we decided to go birding.  they have wonderful wetlands here in the county park.

It was such a beautiful walk and mostly on concrete walkways.

we had to cut our time short as it was nearing lunch and bellies were mumbling.

we were here a long time ago for drinks but not for food.  the food was fabulous.  and so was the beer

took a stroll down the Strip, we had read about this observation wheel and was hoping it was open..  but not yet.

 

Well another Thanksgiving and we are so lucky to be spending the holiday with friends, Roberta and John from Orland Park, Illinois and Kathy and John from Santa Rosa, California. This is our 8th year of meeting up for Thanksgiving.

We are so thankful for our health, wonderful friends, great family, our beautiful Wisconsin home, our little house on wheels, our ability to get away from the snow, ice and cold weather and most of all for each other.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

Laughlin, Nevada

Our drive from Winslow was a bit wet…  both rain and snow fell on us.

these two pictures are from the windshield in Flagstaff at 7300 feet above sea level.

this is in Kingman AZ, at about 400 ft above sea level, no snow but plenty of clouds.

We got to the Big Bend of the Colorado River State Park in Laughlin NV in about 6 hours. lots of hills, rain, snow and a little wind kept us going very slow.  but not too much traffic.  We are now on Pacific Time for the next 4 months!  We really like central time TV etc.. so it will take some time to get use to the new time zone.

We have a big beautiful site and within walking distance to the Colorado River.

 

Saturday Nov 23:  misty morning did not stop us from taking a walk through the conservation area.  We did see lots of birds and we got two new ones! Albert’s Towhee and Phainopepla! Since we are so close to Needles, Ca (about 25 miles) we thought we would take a ride to see our site for Jan-Mar.  We lucked out and the current volunteers were outside.  We stopped for a few minutes to talk with them.  They seemed to like the area and the work well enough, but not enough to stay another 3 months.  Right  now we will be the only volunteers at this location.  Needles is a bit depressed, like most of the old route 66 cities we have been through.  We did not explore the entire city but did find homes with flags outside that advertised Tamales!  we will definitely have to check them out next year!

I was having popcorn withdrawals and the weather was not so great ….so it was time to go to the movies.  Seen “Last Vegas”.  very funny and pretty good popcorn with a free refill for home! Eric found some large chunks of wood for an all night campfire. beautiful night in spite of the clouds but no rain or wind.

Sunday Nov 24:  Sun is out this morning.  we took a hike to the conservation area again.  Did not see any new birds, or I should say we did not identify any new birds. We were following these big prints..  do not think it was a dog..

Off to Bullhead city to get a few things.  Gas in Needles was more than $1 more than in Nevada and Arizona!  we found a few places to walk/hike along the Colorado river. We seen a motorcycle with a side car driving down the road, the side car had a large dog with a seat belt!  about an hour later we seen a personal watercraft going down the river with a dog standing on the side.  not sure if it was the same dog and man but….

we then hit a few of the local casinos in Laughlin and found a brewery!  but did not get the growler filled.  the beer was good but not good enough to fill the growler!

Monday Nov 25:

another beautiful morning, sun was shining, temps in the mid 60’s. We decided to stay here in Laughlin for another day. More hiking, birding and just enjoying the sunshine.

beautiful cactus:

 

another unidentified hawk:

Heading to Las Vegas tomorrow, we need to get settled in before our friends come into town for our annual Thanksgiving gathering.

Arizona

we headed out on Wed Nov 20 at about 8:45 for Homolovi Ruins State Park near Winslow AZ.  Our GPS said 123 miles and less than 2 hours.  Well..  we ended up with 150 miles and just under 6 hours. We got distracted at:

it was an overcast and rainy day, but still so beautiful

 

ancient towns

petroglyphs:

some beautiful petrified trees:

 

We finally arrived at the state park:

Our site is very nice, with clean warm showers and bathrooms.

took a quick hike to one of the ruin sites.  we have seen signs about mountain lions etc but never Quicksand!

there are thousands of pottery shards in the ruins, you can touch but do not take..

quiet evening with a campfire! 

Thursday Nov 21:

another hike to another ruin site

we have been looking for Golden Eagles.  finally found 2 of them!

we found a Green Bay Packer Fan from Arizona!  the inside of his vehicle was all decked out with GB stuff!

we headed to the Meteor impact site about 30 miles from our campground.

to us it was worth the $16 per person

 

we had a great tour guide but it started to rain so our tour was cut short.

Time to go into Winslow for lunch, we ended up at Falcon Family Restaurant, I had the chicken fried steak (the best ever), Eric had a patty melt that was wonderful with real fresh homemade french fries.

Standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona

Well, I'm a standing on a corner
in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin' down to take a look at me!

next onto see the one of the Giants of the Trail of the Whispering Giants

 

Whispering Giants are a series of public art sculptures depicting Native Americans and Canadian First People by Peter Wolf Toth. He has donated a sculpture to each U.S. state and Canadian Province with a few donated outside North America.  there is actually one in Hayward Wi and Two Harbors Mn.    we never heard of them before we got to Winslow.  we need to find all 74 now…

we are heading to Laughlin this rainy and maybe snowy Friday morning.  We are hoping to get past Flagstaff early this morning.  Our trip to Laughlin is suppose to be 250 miles…  who knows how long it will take us?