Steve and Judy's Travels!

We’ve been time-zoned. Drove from mountain to pacific on Friday, fell back
on Saturday, our satellite dish is hooked into mountain time, no matter what
zone we’re in. All we have to do is turn it on at the right time for the
football game. Yeah, football. Maybe the game is not that stupid after
all. The Broncos play the Eagles. We’ll see. Then we’ll work on not waking up until it starts to get light, or being able
to stay awake after eight o’clock.

Judy is being great, visiting, and helping out. I’m staying out of the way.
Judy’s sister Sue has been taking care of everything here with their mom.
We just came to hang out and help out a little. Helen got moved out of her
apartment and into a full-time care facility. Sue and Judy finished sorting
everything out at the apartment. Judy can finish up a few things here while
Sue goes home to check on her husband.

A four state day. Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California. An early start. You
know how it is with these time zones. Dawn can vary by an hour within a
zone, and then you cross to the next one and it changes an hour all at once
the other way. I thought it was getting light so I woke Judy up, we got
ready, and left. An hour and a half later, after driving through deer
infested Utah mountains in the dark and the rain, dodging the carcasses of
the slower ones, it got light. It rained all the way to Nevada, then
cleared up at Mesquite for the rest of the way. The good news is, we made it. We meant to stop out in the California Desert
tonight, then drive the rest of the way to Temecula in a short day tomorrow.
But guess what! It’s Friday night! California desert camping is full! We
drove the rest of the way to Pachanga, where we’re staying for a few days.
Indian casino. Alpha rally. Dolphin rally. Decorate your motorhome for
Halloween contest. Busy place. So here we are in Southern California. White air, burning lungs, massive
traffic, and amazing driving tricks (theirs, not ours). Dangerous work, but
we do our best to be the steadiest, most boring, most predictable, moving
slalom gate marker in the middle lane. Twelve hours, six hundred miles. Got a run in the desert at lunch. What could be better than a run at eighty
degrees in the desert? A run at ninety degrees in the desert. I didn’t get
either, but I did get seventy degrees, and one very long perfectly straight,
slightly uphill road. The only turn was when I turned around to go back. We have more internet connection options than we can possibly use. The
satellite hookup and phone modem are both working, and a free WiFi signal
from the park. The GPS is not working on our satellite dish, but we always
know our latitude and longitude from the navigation software, so I type that
in for the satellite dish and up it goes. This afternoon’s crock-pot torture was flank steak with onions, potatoes,
and carrots.

You knew we were driving west. You knew we had to send this picture. Dillon.

Aren’t children something else? Sometimes they just fall asleep in your
arms while you’re holding them.