We left Reno this morning heading east towards Fernley and then south past Fallon, beside Walker Lake with a 20 mile beach and the Paiute Reservation
 
and arrived at Whiskey Flats RV Park in Hawthorne, Nevada, America's Patriotic Home. Who knew.

Turns out it's the home of what was once the largest Army depot in the US of A. We stopped by an Ordinance Museum - no, I stand corrected - Ordnance Museum which housed a collection of mines, bombs, missiles, shells and everything else that can blow up.




This park is a nice place to stay. Easy in and out, quiet (not much traffic here) but sure filled up fast with other rvers in the late afternoon as it's on the main drag (95) from Reno to Las Vegas. Nevada is starkly beautiful and mostly uninhabited and uninhabitable.

This morning Dick really had problems with his back seizing up on him. We hooked up - with our new Jayco it is so easy to do, for which I'm really thankful, but delayed leaving until he could relax. Finally we left and prayed our way through Reno. His back finally relaxed about an hour down the road somewhere south of Fernley. I'm really just documenting this to see if we can get an idea of what causes the back problems. It wasn't cold this morning - in the fifties. Just wondering if it is tension and stress related. The last time he had problems was when we left Wilsonville. Oh, well. Felt fortunate after meeting a couple who pulled in across from us. His wife has some signs of short term memory loss and he was talking about dementia and Alzheimer's. That's not for us. We're challenging traditional ideas about aging.

Change is good and it's good for me!

 ... to paraphrase one of our favorite pastors. We've made so many changes in the past few months that Change has become the new normal!

In addition to big changes like selling our home, ridding ourselves of the accumulation of almost 44 years of marital bliss, and moving into our 5th wheel trailer, we've been living with little changes like a new computer and a new home page, two new televisions and how to program them for where we are currently, two new phones, address corrections, changes, & considerations like mailing address (Lisa's in Vancouver), Oregon address so we don't have to reregister the truck (brother John's in Maupin) as well as where did we put the _________ (fill in the blank). We need a vacation!

We've been staying at Gold Ranch RV Park in Verdi, Nevada on the Nevada/California border for about a week, visiting our son Michael. We took yet one more donation trip to the Goodwill yesterday and are finally feeling like we have given away about everything we need to, but now we have to replace that we shouldn't have gotten rid of, like the cheese grater and the microwave bowls.

We've planned our itinerary, for the third and possibly final time.

We'll leave Reno on Wednesday because we have to wait for a birthday present from Joyce Taylor to be delivered to Michael's on Tuesday and head for
   Whiskey Flats RV Park in Hawthorne NV  http://whiskeyflats.net/

   Bailey Hot Springs RV Park in Beatty NV http://baileyshotsprings.com/Home_Page.html (check out the Mudder pictures and the buffalo)
   Blake Ranch east of Kingman AZ http://www.blakeranchrv.com/
   and
   Ramblin' Roads RV Park in Hope AZ http://www.ramblinroads.com/

We hope to stay in Hope for a couple of months. We'll keep you posted. The park in Hope adjoins BLM land with lots of places to ride quads so Dick really has his hopes up!