Yesterday we left the campground a little after noon, to meet our friends Tom and Barb Westerfield for lunch at a Buffalo Wild Wings. We hadn’t seen Tom and Barb since our rally in Yuma in early March, where they were part of our advance crew, and handled a million and one large and small details for us to help make the rally run smoothly. Tom and Barb are apparently gluttons for punishment, because now they are in Boulder City, hosting a Golden Spike RV rally.
We spent a couple of hours visiting with Tom and Barb, and she turned me on to a couple of neat new apps for my Droid Incredible. One is a free app called gReader, which sends me updates on all of my favorite blogs, so I can read them quickly on my smart phone and not have to search through all of the blogs I read to see who has posted something new. The other app is called Truck Stops, and though it costs $3.99, it is worth every penny. It lists over 1500 truck stops in every state, searchable by state and highway, and each listing includes a map, directions, a list of services and restaurants offered at the truck stop, as well as current diesel prices. How cool is that?
After we parted company with Tom and Barb, we stopped at several RV parks along Boulder Highway, dropping off bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal, and then we went off in search of a Lowes store to buy a long flexible brush to clean a clog out of our dryer vent. Now, I’m the first to say that my buddy Greg White is one heck of a talented guy. If you need your computer’s hard drive reformatted, or are having a problem with your motorhome’s leveling jacks, or need somebody to collect door prizes for an RV rally, Greg’s your man. There’s not much he can’t do, and nothing he won’t try a least once.
However, yesterday proved that while Greg is a multifaceted guy, he’s absolutely worthless as a navigator. Greg looked up Lowes on his Blackberry, and said it was a couple of miles south of the Thousand Trails preserve, on Boulder Highway. So off we went. And went. And went. We drove for what seemed hours. We drove so far I had to show a passport. We drove through two time zones,. And all the while, Greg kept assuring me that it was just “a couple more miles.”
Well, we finally found the Lowes, but by then we had been on the road so long that none of us could remember what we originally set out to buy. When we finally got back to the Thousand Trails preserve, what did we discover less than a mile north of the campground? You guessed it. A Lowes! I’d have swatted Greg’s nose with a rolled up newspaper, but I gave him some slack, because he has been sick, and because I’m nothing if not a loving and benevolent friend.
About 8:30 p.m. we decided it would be fun to drive down the Strip and see all of the lights of the casinos. And since we know Greg can’t navigate, I let him drive and I rode the shotgun seat. After all, it was about a five mile trip, and I needed to be back by midnight to write my blog. If I depended on Greg to direct our route, who knows when you might get to read this?
Terry has been trying out her new camera, and got some neat shots of the bright lights of the casinos.
But everybody has seen these kind of pictures before. So check these out she took on Boulder Highway instead. In Las Vegas, even the RV parks have neon signs!
We had not eaten since our late lunch, so we stopped at a Blueberry Hill restaurant for a late dinner too. The food was good, though the service wasn’t the best I’ve ever had. We got back to the campground about 11 p.m., which was at least three hours past Jan’s bedtime.
Today we don’t have any plans, but I’m sure we can come up with something to do to get into mischief. But whatever it is, you can bet I won’t let Greg navigate!
Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic. – Dave Barry, humor columnist
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Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Remember when you ‘navigated’ today and I told you to turn left, and you went straight . . . into a deadend and you had to turn around and go back the way I told you to.
Is that the ‘navigating’ you’re talking about?
Now children, do we need to send you to your bedrooms to ‘get over it’?
What is the new camera? I must have missed it if you told us about it or do not remember.
When it is time for our new phones I believe at least on of us will have a Droid if not both of us. Gotta have toys besides toys that help pay for themselves are tools.
When Anne took the smart phone seminar at the Yuma rally they mentioned several apps that will more than offset the fees. Just the fuel location and cost app could be enough to make the change early.Tell Barb and Tom howdy from us. OR I could just say HI from here. HI guys.
LeRoy
I, too, am interested in Terry’s new camera. My night shots always stink!
Nick can you post a list of apps you have found good for the RV life??
Thanks
Terry’s camera is a Panasonic Lumix DMZ-FZ40.
The time I started a group of friends out going the wrong direction from our convention hotel to a restaurant we were walking! And walking. And walking. We did like you, though, and found a different place with the same name. Unfortunately, the other friend who was to meet us there went to the right one.
You can put all the blogs you read in Google Reader and you can see when they have new posts. The computer screen is bigger than the droid.