Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The baby needs new shoes...


Yes, we left the Phoenix area, heading to Laughlin, Nevada. No, the title of this has nothing to do with gambling... although I have no doubt that we'll work some of that into our totally free schedule here.

We had an appointment at Discount Tires to have them check and rotate our tires; we are having uneven wear on a couple of them. It's a good thing we did that: the guy who looked our tires over said, "You have one tire that has separated. It needs to be replaced." Of course, I considered that he was going for the up-sale, until he pointed out where the tread was raised. We wound up replacing two tires. It looked like an NASCAR pit crew - they literally did the entire job (replaced two tires, rotated two others) in 20 minutes!


The best part of that whole experience: when the crew (there were 4 guys working on our tires - I guess our timing was good, since they weren't full at every bay) was done, the supervisor brought out our paperwork, shook my hand, thanked me for doing business with them, and we were on our way. Yep, no waiting for the paperwork after the job was done - a first. Truly, it was one of the best service experiences we've had.

That was two good things that happened today - the first: when I pressed the button to raise the landing gear jacks, they ran like crazy. I had no idea that this is how the landing gear jacks should run, since ours have always been much slower.

There is a national Good Sam Rally in the Phoenix area, at the Phoenix International Raceway, this week... we passed hundreds of motorhomes, 5th wheels, and travel trailers heading towards Phoenix as we drove west. As much as I enjoy RV shows, I guess I wasn't aware of this one until we had already made our plans for going to Laughlin.

With the nasty weather northern Arizona has been getting (27+ inches of snow in the Flagstaff area!!), we took the western route to Laughlin, making it a three-state day: Arizona, California, Arizona, and Nevada. The routing took us through Needles, CA... it's been about 15 years since we've been through there... that should hold me for another 15 or 30 years. Bleak. To add to the fun of passing through Needles, we did see diesel for $4.99 per gallon there. Who knew that $4.09 for diesel in Phoenix was a hot deal??

When we arrived at the Riverside Casino RV Park, it was apparent that not all the RVers had gone to the Good Sam Rally - the place is packed. I had requested a site with a view of the casinos, but wound up with a "partial" view... still better than being back-to-back or a dumpster view. When the place isn't full, they fill every other site (as in: 247 left or right), but they are nearly all full right now. It makes me appreciate the size of the site we had in Phoenix. On the other hand, the people at the front desk here couldn't be nicer. ;-)

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