Re-acclimated.....

 5:47 am - Tuesday - July 21st - LPG&RVR - 65° F, humidity 44%, cloud cover 77%, wind 6 mph out of the west by northwest.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 85° F. On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Cardston, Alberta....

....Cardston is right on the USA/Canada border.  We had been in Alberta since July 4th, and this was our last stop before reentering the USA at the east entrance to Glacier National Park.  I was composing my daily blog entry using the WIFI at the campground office.

After a four day weekend I am usually ready to go back to work, but this long weekend was only three days in duration, and I could have used another day off work, but it is what it is, right?  There were 6 golf carts awaiting their spa treatment when I arrived at the Cart Return area at 7:30 am.  There were no reserved tee times until 8:30 am, so I didn't need to rush around getting carts washed, and staged.  Nevertheless, by 8:10 am I had 10 carts staged, and all six dirty carts washed, and ready for duty.

Since Claude (course marshal) is off Monday to Wednesday each week, I made a round of the course to check on the status of he 4 sand bunkers, finding them all in good condition.  The geese have been gone for quite a few weeks now, so no goose leavings to worry about.  I emptied the trash can at the Hole #5 restroom, then continued on my way, stopping briefly at the 15th hole to take a few pictures....

.....I was back at the Clubhouse just in time to stage another 6 carts.  In all I think we rented 21 carts, which is not bad for a Monday in late July.  The park is about 70% empty right now, so we are getting a lot of offsite golfers (people who are not staying onsite).

Around 9:30 am I began clearing the range balls off the driving range.  Based on the almost full condition of the 55 gallon barrel where we store the range balls I thought I would only be picking 2-3 five gallon cans, but ended up with four 5 gallon cans of balls. It took me just shy of 2 hours to harvest those four cans.  I had them all soaking just before 12 pm, and then headed indoors to give TLE her lunch break.  I think I sent out 10 people to play golf, and stayed pretty busy the entire 90 minutes.

Once back outside I found 7 carts waiting to be cleaned, and stowed, but I turned my focus to the range balls, and had them all washed within 40 minutes.  By that time I had 11 carts to wash and stow, and had them all put away by 3:30 pm.  I'll have 11 carts to wash first thing Tuesday.  I am finding that my body has once again acclimated to temps in the 90's, so I tolerated the 93° F temps Monday better than I had expected.

The past few days TLE had noticed the refrigerator portion of our Dometic fridge/freezer was running over 40° F, which is a little high, but typical for absorption refrigerators during the summer.  We prefer the temp to be under 40°, so I turned on the chimney vent fan (pushes the hot air behind the fridge upward, and and out the top of the 'chimney') when we left for work, and by the time I returned at 3:30 pm it was down to 35° F....

....I installed the vent fan way back in 2012 during the first month of our fulltime travels, and it works quite well!  TLE was home by 5:10 pm, and with that day one of our four day work week was in the books.

Thanks for stopping by!

The trifecta.....

 5:55 am - Monday - July 20th - LPG&RVR - 65° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 3%, wind 13 mph out of the southwest....partly cloudy this morning with a forecast high of 91° F.  On this date in 2014 I was at Mammoth Mountain.....

....riding my mountain bike with friends from SoCal.

Sunday was the sporting trifecta of the summer....final round of 'The Open', Stage #15 of Le Tour de France, and the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and Spain.  Since 'The Open' is played in Britain, which is 8 hours ahead of west coast time, the final round began around 3:30 am our time, so when I woke up around 7 am I just turned on the bedroom TV and watched until TLE said it was time to get up and make coffee.  Of course, she is always right, so I did.....got up that is....TLE makes the coffee.

The final round of 'The Open' had 6, or 7 players (or more) within a couple of strokes of the lead so it was up for grabs.  As it turned out Ryan Fox (New Zealand) sank a birdie put on the 18th and final hole to go 10 under and win by one stroke over Cam Young who held the 'Clubhouse lead' at 9 under par for almost 3 hours.  

We then tuned into Stage 15 of Le Tour and watched until 12 pm when the FIFA World Cup final began.  The score remained 0-0 at the end of regulation time (90 minutes) so they went to two 15 minute overtime periods, played in full.  At the end of the first 15 minute period it was still 0-0, then Spain, who was clearly the better team on this day, scored a goal 50 seconds into the 2nd overtime period, holding on to win 1-0 over Argentina.  It was a messy, foul plagued game which even saw a red card given late in regulation to a star player for Argentina.  The foul was 100% a 'serious foul play' offense, and 100% deserved a red card, so no controversy there.  At any rate Argentina had to play one man short the rest of the game.  I think they would have lost anyway as Spain controlled the game most of the time, and played most of the game in Argentina's defensive third.  The Argentinian goalie saved a record 11, or 12 shots directly on goal to set a record.  Without him they would have lost 6, or 7 to nothing.

Then is was back to watch the final 60 miles of Stage 15 of Le Tour during which the 2nd place rider, Jonas Vingegaard, had a very bad crash just before the final climb of the day and had to abandon the race due to serious injuries.  This will be the first time in 7 years that he will not be on the podium in Paris as either the first, or second place finisher.  It has be he and Tadej in first, or second the past 6 years.  Tadej went on to finish second in Stage 15, and now holds a 5 minute lead over the new second place rider, Remco Evenepoel of Belgium, who won the Stage.

It was a very busy day in the sports world, and how best to end such a day?  Well, we had two filet mignons in the fridge, so I lit the Sea-B-Que around 5 pm and grilled them to a perfect medium rare.  TLE added a side salad, and our day was complete.

Thanks for stopping by!

A nice day to be off work....

 7:44 am - Sunday - July 19th - LPG&RVR - 67° F, humidity 21%, cloud cover 66%, wind 11 mph out of the west by northwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in West Yellowstone.....

......visiting with good friends Richard and Rhonda Entrekin and their 1999 Newell.

Saturday....what a nice day to be off work!  We began the day watching 'The Open', 

transitioning to Le Tour de France until 12 pm when the FIFA World Cup 3rd place match began between England and France began.  As you will recall, England lost a heartbreaker 2-1 to Argentina a few days ago, but got off to an impressive start against France ending the first half up 4-0.  France came back in the 2nd half scoring 3 unanswered goals to pull within one goal of England, but then England stiffened their resolve scoring two more goals to finish in 3rd place 6-4.  Sunday will be the final between Argentina and Spain.

TLE and I headed over to the Clubhouse just before 4 pm for the weekly putting contest.  I hadn't putted in almost 3 weeks, and had no idea how I would do.  I hadn't even hit a practice putt during that time until Saturday morning.  I was pleased with my practice putting, but still wasn't sure how that would translate into actual competition.  Well, on this day the translation was pretty smooth.  I made it through 7 rounds before succumbing to DeWayne Matthews 2-1, but that was good enough for 4th place out of 24 golfers; my best performance this summer....

Greg and Bernard putting on the 5th hole

.....upon return to the Newell I fired up the Sea-B-Que to grill a salmon steak we had purchased at Grocery Outlet on Friday.  It was the first time I've grilled on the Sea-B-Que since I installed the new stainless steel grill plates.  TLE had me grill 3 ears of corn at the same time.  She also added some white rice.....

....the salmon came out perfecto, and so did the corn, so my inaugural work on the new grill plates was a success.

After dinner I finished watching Stage #14 of Le Tour de France in which Tadej Pogacar attacked with 8 miles to go adding another 54 seconds to his lead over Jonas Vingegaard to now lead him by 4 minutes 30 seconds with 7 remaining Stages.  So, like I said it was a nice day to be off work.

Thanks for stopping by!

The simple things first.....

 7:46 am - Saturday - July 18th - LPG&RVR - 62° F, humidity 16%, cloud cover 15%, wind 12 mph out of the southwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were in Northwest Harbor, Maine.....

....having lunch art the Asticou Inn, one of our favorite restaurants on Mount Desert Island.

Friday began benignly enough.  We slept in, had our coffees, I composed and published my latest blogosphere offering, then I headed outside to dump our black tank.  Once that was done I settled in to watch the second round of 'The Open'.  While I watched 'The Open' TLE started her first load of wash in our Splendide washer/dryer combo.  A typical first day of our extended weekend (3 days this week).

Sometime after 12 pm TLE announced that the washer did not drain after the spin cycle.  She tried he spin cycle again, and once again the washer drum did not drain.....doh!  I just wrote a few days ago how well our Splendide has run since we bought it back in July of 2020.  After she removed the soggy clothes from the washer I set about mopping out the water in the drum, then opened the inspection port to see if anything was clogging the drain, or pump; no clogs.  I was hoping for a clog, so I could clear it and get back to watching 'The Open', but no such luck.

Removing the Splendide from its cubbyhole is not for the faint of heart.  First TLE has to remove EVERTHING from the three pantry shelves, which takes about 30 minutes, then I remove the shelves, and the door structure so I can begin to slowly remove the Splendide, which takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

I want to stop here and talk about the fundamentals of TROUBLESHOOTING.  When troubleshooting (such a long word, with such simple advice) one should always begin with the simplest cause of the problem, in this case a clog somewhere in the drain line, and work your way up to the most complicated cause.  Do we all agree on that principle?  I have written about this on many occasions, but for some reason I had a brain freeze, and started with the most complicated thing first....removing the Splendide from the pantry.  I should have started at the point where the the drain hose enters the gray water tank.

Okay, back to the troubleshooting.  Once I had checked the inspection port and found no clog, I should have stopped right there, and thought about what to do next, but I didn't.  Once the Splendide was out of the pantry, right in the middle of the kitchen, I removed the back to get a look at the water pump, and drain hose.  Nothing looked out of the ordinary.  I spent too much time trying to figure out how to disconnect the drain hose from the water pump, before deciding it was impossible.  

It was at this point that I did do some thinking; always a good thing to do when facing an unfamiliar problem.  By this time I was pretty sure the Splendide drain hose was not clogged, so I disconnected it from the Newell drain hose, and blew air back through the hose to the pump, and found it was not obstructed.  I then blew air the other direction through the Newell drain hose and found it was clogged, and would not allow the air to pass through.  Okay, at least we know what is clogged now, and it wasn't the Splendide, so almost two hours of our time was blown doing something which didn't need doing.....removing the Splendide from the Pantry.

I went out side to the driver side of the water bay where the drain hose from the pantry area is connected to the gray water tank....

....the plumbing fitting Newell used 44 years ago narrows significantly where the red hose connects to the PVC fitting, and I suspected that was where the clog was.....

....I had to cut the red hose off the galvanized steel connector, and when I did I found that a Band-Aid was stuck in the narrow tube, and that was the cause of the clog....a stupid BAND-AID!*#*!  To think if I had started my troubleshooting HERE, I would have detected, and fixed the problem in less that 30 minutes....double DOH!

By the time I had reinstalled the Splendide in its cubbyhole, reinstalled the shelving, the doors, and TLE had put away everything it was 5:45 pm....almost 5 hours since I began troubleshooting the 'clog'.  Some lessons are hard to learn....START WITH THE SIMPLE THINGS FIRST.

Thanks for stopping by!

Back to busy......

7:15 am - Friday - July 17th - LPG&RVR - 59° F, humidity 15%, cloud cover 1%, wind 13 mph out of the southwest....mostly clear skies today with a forecast high of 93° F.  On this date in 2015 I rode my bicycle to the top of Mt. Rubidoux......

.....in Riverside, CA.  We were in town for the wedding of my brother Philip's daughter, Danielle; she and Miguel have been married 11 years now and have two kids....man, I'm getting old!

After the very unbusy Wednesday (only four carts rented) we got back to normal Thursday renting 20 golf carts; that's more like it.  After staging the first 11 carts I headed back to the hedges which separate the parking lot from the Clubhouse/Cart Shack to finish trimming the final four.  The hedge trimmer we use is cordless, and the battery is only good for two hedges at a time, so I trimmed the first two (of the day), then put the battery back on the charger so I could finish the final two hedges before lunch.  While the battery was charging I hauled the clippings from the first two hedges to the burn pile.

Upon my return I staged more golf carts, then retrieved the now recharged battery to finish trimming the final two hedges.  They turned out quite well....

....after raking up the cuttings from the final two hedges I hauled them to the burn pile, then headed out to the driving range to clear what few balls had been hit since Monday.  In all I collected a little less than one 5 gallon bucket of balls in about 50 minutes....

....which I was able to wash, and pour back into the 55 gallon trash can in the Clubhouse closet before TLE's lunch break.  It was then time to give TLE her lunch 90 minute lunch break.  I sent out one twosome for 18 holes, and answered a bunch of phone calls before TLE returned.

Just a few of the 20 gold carts had been returned by 1:30 pm so I retrieved the 2 bag Husqvarna riding lawnmower and headed over to the four employee lawns to mow them.  Claude had, graciously, agreed to trim around all four sites before I mowed, so when I arrived I was able to mow all four of them without getting off the lawnmower one time....

....so our lawns are mowed, and looking great for the weekend, which will be a busy one sports wise.  'The Open' (British Open) began Thursday, there is the ongoing Le Tour de France, and the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday.  Looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend before returning to work on Monday.

By 2:45 pm only 12 of the 20 rented carts had returned, so I took off about 40 minutes, and returned around 3:25 pm to wash four more carts before calling it a day.  I don't like to leave carts for Steve to wash, but he will inherit the final four carts Friday morning.  By the time I headed home it was getting close to 4 pm, and with that the heat of the day.  Time for some air conditioning, a shower and a nap!

Thanks for stopping by!

The slowest.....

 5:59 am - Thursday - July 16th - LPG&RVR - 62° F, humidity 21%, cloud cover 11%, wind 13 out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 92° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were at the Vista Point near Conway Summit.....

......on US-395 just north of Lee Vining, CA on our way to SoCal from Lake Tahoe for a wedding.

Wednesday was the slowest day this season since May 1st (opening day).....we rented just 4 golf carts the entire day.  It was a good day to be on the golf course....now waiting....lol!  Wednesday was also the hottest day this week so far peaking at 90° F.  After staging the carts I hauled 12 five gallon buckets of gravel from our gravel pile down across the street from the bathrooms/showers/laundry to spread around the area where I stage carts each day.  The torrential rain Tuesday exposed numerous low spots in the gravel, into which I poured the 12 buckets of gravel, then raked it flat.

Next up I was tasked by Jose (General Manager) with trimming the 6 large bushes which separate the parking lot from the Cart Shack/Clubhouse.  We have a cordless trimmer we use for this task.  I managed to get 2 of the six bushes trimmed before needing to put the battery back on the charger, so I hope I'll get the other four done Thursday.

I hadn't done much mowing this week (just the tee boxes on Monday), so I hopped on the 2 bag Husqvarna then headed up the hill to mow the three residential lawns, then down the hill to the back in sites next to the meadow and mowed all 10 of them, plus the first three tent sites, then back up the hill to mow the large grass area next to site #30, then over to the parking lot grass to mow that grass before it was time to give TLE her lunch break.

During her 90 minute lunch break I watched the FIFA World Cup semi-final match between Argentina and England.  At the end of the first half it was tied 0-0, but in the 57th minute (2nd half) England scored a goal to go up 1-0.  They held on valiantly until the 85th minute when Argentina scored the tying goal, then in the 89th minute the go ahead goal.  The final score at full time was 2-1 in favor of Argentina who will now face Spain in the the final on Sunday.  Argentina is amazing!

I managed to wash three of the four carts we rented before 3:30 pm, then headed home to take a long, hot shower, take short nap, and watch the final 28 miles of Stage 11 of Le Tour de France before returning to the Clubhouse to give TLE a ride home.  Just one more day left in our rare 5 day work week, then three days off work before beginning another 4 day work week.

Thanks for stopping by!

I did not see that coming.....

 5:53 am - Wednesday - July 15th - LPG&RVR - 54° F, humidity 36%, cloud cover 24%, wind 10 mph out of the south.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Carlsbad, CA....

.....we were working at Ramona Oaks RV Resort that summer, and took a day trip to Carlsbad...one of our favorite Coastal California towns.

I initially staged 10 golf carts to begin Tuesday....4 Club Car electrics and 6 EZ-GO's....why only 4 of the 5 Club Car Electrics?  Well, #5 would not move.  It would try to move, but then stop....HMMM?  After staging the 10 carts I opened up the seat of the Club Car electric to see if anything obvious was wrong.  I had just topped off the distilled water in its six 6 volt batteries the day prior, and it had been charging all night, so it should move.  The tops of the 6 batteries were quite dirty, so I decided to clean all the terminals with a solution of water and baking soda.  In doing so I discovered a connector on one of the wires connecting two of the batteries looking a little sketchy, and when I attempted to wiggle it to see if is was solid, it broke off in my hand.  Okay, that must be the problem, right.....

.....I then removed all of the defective connector from the wire.  I then retrieved a new copper connector from the 'Caddy Shack', trimmed back the end of the wire, then crimped on the new connector....

....once it was reinstalled I attempted to move the cart, and it moved!  I love it when the problem is so obvious, and can be fixed quickly.

Around 10:45 am I hopped on the 2 bag Husqvarna and headed out to mow around those tee boxes for which I am responsible, returning back to the Clubhouse around 11:50 am to put away the Husqvarna, and give TLE her lunch break.  I rented one cart to a couple for 18 holes, and answered a few phone calls while watching the semi final FIFA World Cup match between France and Spain.  France was the heavy favorite to win and advance to the final on Sunday, but that is why they play the games.  Spain dominated the game defensively, while scoring 2 goals to win 2-0 in regulation....I did not see that coming.

After lunch many of the 15 carts we rented began to return, and then I heard thunder in the distance, and then a few minutes later it began to rain quite hard....

.....the torrential rain hitting the metal roof of the cart shack was deafening.  Another thing I did not see happening Tuesday.  The rain stopped in time for me to wash all 14 carts, dry them, and put them away before 3:30 pm.

Thanks for stopping by!

The post 4th of July slowdown.....

 5:51 am - Tuesday - July 14th - LPG&RVR - 63° F, humidity 49%, cloud cover 59%, wind 6 mph out of the south by southwest.....heavy clover this morning with a forecast high today of 83° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Harlowton, MT.....

.....with Claude and Gail at a city campground during our summer of the  Wuhan Flu travels through rural America.

Monday was the first truly slow day in quite a while.  I initially staged 6 carts based on the 'tee sheet', and by the end of the day we had rented just 7 carts, all of which returned before 3:30 pm....perfect.  After staging those first 6 carts I spent over an hour going through the five electric carts checking the distilled water levels in all 30 batteries, which is a low process.  As as we now in the 'heat' of the summer I'll need to check them more frequently.  I think this was the 3rd time I've checked them since May 1st.

By that time it was 10 am and time for me to begin clearing the driving range for the first of two mowing this week.  We clear the range on Mondays and Thursdays.  It took me until 11:40 am to finish, then fill the three 5 gallon buckets with soap and water so they could soak during TLE's lunch break.  As might be expected the 90 minutes was pretty slow....just a couple of phone calls, and one couple going out for 9 holes.  It rained for a few minutes during that 90 minutes, and later around 3 pm it rained quite hard for about 30 minutes.  We were not expecting that rain.  It rained on an off most Monday night into Tuesday morning.

After lunch I washed and dried the golf balls, and washed the 7 golf carts we had rented, then headed for home.  There were no FIFA World Cup matches Monday, and no Tour de France as Monday was a rare rest day.  The temperatures in France have been averaging around 100° F the first 9 stages, so a rest day was a welcome relief to the riders.

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Back to the 'grind'.....

 5:59 am - Monday - July 13th - LPG&RVR - 59° F, humidity 35%, cloud cover 71%, wind 9 mph out of the south by southwest.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 85° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Sheridan, WY.....

......overnighting at the local Walmart Supercenter.

After 5 days off work it was time to begin another 'work week', and this work week would be 5 days in length this time.  Steve took my work day this past Tuesday, and I am taking his this Thursday.  We'll only have a 3 day weekend this time around.  After several days of 90°+ temperatures while we were gone the temp dipped into the mid 80's with heavy cloud cover.  We believed it was going to rain several times during the day, but only got a few sprinkles here and there.

To begin the day I staged 10 carts, and by the end of the day we had rented 21.  During the day I irrigated the trees along sites 21-30, and 1-10.  We're probably getting to the point where it is no longer necessary to irrigate these trees as they are pretty well established now, but for near future we continue to irrigate them every 10 days, or so during the summer.  While the drip lines were running I took time to cut all the 'suckers' off the bases of each tree, which hasn't been done since last summer.  By the time I finished cutting the 'suckers' it was time for TLE's lunch break.

The 90 minute lunch break was pretty uneventful....just a few phone calls, and one couple going out to play 9 holes.  By the time TLE returned I already had 8 carts to clean, and by 3:30 pm all but 3 of the 21 carts had returned.  Many of our Sunday golfers came from offsite, because the RV park is less than 50% occupied right now.

Thanks for stopping by!

England is through to the semi finals.....

 5:52 am - Sunday - July 12th - LPG&RVR - 58° F, humidity 29%, cloud cover 83%, wind 13 mph out of the south.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 85° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Spearfish, SD in the parking lot of....

.....Campingworld taking delivery of our new Splendide (pronounced Splendeed) washer/dryer combo.  Our old one had given up the ghost a while back.  The store manager agreed to use their forklift to remove our old one, and insert the new through our door.  From beginning to end it took an hour  and forty-five minutes to remove the old one, and install the new one.  It is still working great 6 years later.

We are so glad we had Saturday to sort of recover from our 4 day trip to SoCal.  By the time we hit the sack Friday night it was midnight, and we didn't stir from our sleep until after 8 am Saturday morning.  Prior to leaving on our trip I had scheduled a haircut at Kaleidescope at 1:30 pm so we had the whole morning to relax further.

We were on the road into Alturas by 11:50 am, and making a quick stop at ACE Hardware at 12:20 pm before continuing on to Holiday Market to do our weekly grocery shopping before my appointment.  It didn't take as long as we thought to do our shopping, and as we put our groceries into the hatch of the Beetle realized we still had 50 minutes before my haircut, so we headed over to 'Wild Mustard' where I bought a Mocha Frappuccino to pass the time.

We arrived at Kaleidescope just before 1:30 pm, and were back on the road by 1:50 pm back to LPG&RVR.  At 2 pm the FIFA World Cup match between England and Norway began, but we were recording it, so we didn't miss a second of the match.  We expected a good match, and that is what we got.  At the end of regulation the match was tied 1-1, so they headed to two 15 minute overtime periods to be played in full regardless of score.  England managed to score their second goal in the 1st overtime period, and held on to win by that score over Norway, so for the first time in years England had made it to the final four teams, and will play Argentina in one of the semi final matches attempting to get to the final next Sunday.  Argentina, obviously, won their quarterfinal match over Switzerland, again, 2-1 in the double overtime periods.  So, it will be Spain and France in one semi final (Tuesday), and England vs. Argentina on Wednesday to see who plays in the final....

Harry Kane and Erling Haaland

....thanks for stopping by!

Another 12 hour marathon......

 8:47 am - Saturday - July 11th - LPG&RVR - 75° F, humidity 16%, cloud cover 34%, wind 14 mph out of the southwest.....partially cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 94° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were enjoying a 'spa day' at Chico Hot Springs....

....which is north of Gardiner, MT where we lived during the summer of 2017 whilst working at the General Store at Mammoth Hot Springs near the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

We awoke Friday, departure day, sometime after 7 am.  There was no rush as our first flight of the day did not depart until 3:40 pm from Ontario International.  We went downstairs initially to get our morning coffees, and then returned later to have a late breakfast.  There are no coffee makers in the rooms at the Holiday Inn Express where we stayed three nights, but I think that is a good idea, at least for us.  The coffee they give you to brew in those tiny coffee makers is NEVER very good, so what is the point, right?  On the other hand the coffee makers in the breakfast room downstairs grind the beans on the spot, and then make the coffee, and it was wonderful every single day.  The Continental Breakfast they offer at this location is one of the beast we have ever had in all our years of travel.  We were staying on the second floor of the hotel, so we could run downstairs, get our coffees, and be back in the room in less than 5 minutes.

After breakfast I took almost an hour nap knowing we would be in travel mode for another 12 hours once we left the hotel at 11 am, which is checkout time.  We were in the car a little before 11 am, and at Fox Car Rentals (an offsite car rental operation which serves Ontario International Airport) around 11:45 am dropping off our 2026 Nissan Sentra, then after a short shuttle ride back to the airport going through TSA around 12 pm.  Now only 3 hours and 40 minutes before our flight leaves....lol!  What to do?  Well, there was another FIFA World Cup match between Belgium and Spain.  There was a large flat screen TV at our gate, so we spent the next two hours watching the game....

....our flight on Frontier Airlines to Las Vegas departed slightly ahead of schedule, and was surprisingly empty....

TLE had a row to herself....

.....and so did I

These are the smallest tables I have ever seen in a modern jetliner!

.....in the past we have paid to pick our seats, but this time around we chose to let American and Frontier assign our seats on flight day, and it worked out just fine.  We probably saved close to $200 on all four flights.  Additionally, we used back packs for the first time, which are considered 'personal items' by both American and Frontier, so no charge, and no waiting for checked baggage which would have cost an extra $200 with Frontier.  In fact, Frontier differentiates between personal items, and carry on items.....carry one items are charged at $79/bag by Frontier if you do it in advance, but $99 on the day of the flight...yikes!

We arrived in Las Vegas at McCarron International Airport about an hour before boarding was to begin on our flight back to Reno/Tahoe International, so we had plenty of time to walk the short distance to our gate.  Each flight was just over 1 hour in duration, which is about the time I begin to get antsy, and want off the plane.....

Descending into Reno/Tahoe International just before 8 pm

.....we landed at Reno/Tahoe International a couple of minutes before 8 pm, and after a very short 10 minute walk were in the VW Beetle heading back north on US-395 to LPG&RVR arriving home just a couple of minutes before 11 pm.  We were understandably tired, but happy to be home in our own bed after three nights of sleeping in someone else's bed. To be fair, the large California King bed we had at the Holiday Inn Express was pillowed, and very comfortable, but we prefer our bed...who doesn't, right?

Thanks for stopping by!

Rock stars.....

 6:59 am - Friday - July 10th - Beaumont, CA - 70° F, humidity 39%, cloud cover 27%, wind 12 mph out of the west.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 96° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were in Bozeman, MT.....

....having brews and lunch.  We were working at the General Store in Mammoth Hot Springs  (Yellowstone NP) that summer.

Tim and his kids (Crosby and Bowie) were scheduled to fly back to Georgia Thursday at noon out of Ontario International, so TLE and I drove over to Kate's home around 7:30 am to have breakfast with everyone, and say our 'until next times'....

Bowie

Crosby

.....we hung out until Tim and the kids left for the airport, and then headed back to the hotel to rest up before our marathon travel day back to Likely on Friday....it will be another long travel day getting home.  Nice to have an extra day to rest before the travel day.

On a side note, you might have wondered where Tim got those names for his kids.  Well, Tim is a fan of 60's music, so named his kids after two famous rock stars from the 60's.  Crosby is named after David Crosby of 'Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young' fame, and Bowie is named after David Bowie.

We watched the FIFA World Cup match between France and Morocco won easily by France 2-0, who is favored to win the 2026 edition of the World Cup.  Around 5 pm we drove to the local In 'N Out Burger to meet Nick, Kate, Jolene and Levy for dinner.  We haven't had an In 'N Out Burger fix in a long time....

.....TLE and I always order their #2 Combo (cheeseburger, drink, and fries).  I neglected to take pictures of everyone else, but they were there.  Around 6 pm we bid adieu to Nick, Kate and the kids until next time, then headed back to the hotel.  While we were still at In 'N Out Burger Kate got a text from Tim advising they had arrived home safely.

I was able to watch the replay of Stage #6 of Le Tour de France, and what a stage it was!  Tadej Pogočar (Tădā Pogatcha), the winner the last four years, began the day 7 minutes and 53 seconds behind the leader, usually considered an insurmountable lead.  At the 36 mile mark (36 miles left in the Stage) he began an 'attack', and with a performance for the ages not only overcame that almost 8 minute lead, won the 6th Stage, but ended up back in the lead by over 2 minutes and 30 seconds!  A performance for the ages.  I have never seen anything like it in Le Tour de France....never.

We were headed off to 'slumberland' a little after 10 pm.  Our flight out of Ontario International departs at 3 pm, so we will be getting back to Likely around 11 pm Friday night....thanks for stopping by!