Settled in Pahrump…

The road trip down from Wendell, Idaho was uneventful. Which I’m happy about…nice to have my RV run smoothly and the new tires gave me renewed confidence in the machine over long hauls. I shouldn’t have been all that worried back before I replaced the four 10 year old tires I’d had replaced in July in Walla Walla but before that it was a little nerve racking after reading about fellow RV’ers who had blow outs. Of course my rears blowing out wouldn’t have been as bad as a front tire blow out, but I replaced the fronts back in ’16 so had confidence in them. I did carry a 10 year old spare in the truck of my car for the last 3 years…but after I got the new rear tires, I left that with my son so now I don’t have one with me. But with all new and newer tires all around, less anxiety while on the road even without the spare. Anyway…

Stayed in Ely for one night, then the next day after four hours of driving, passed and stopped at the Death Valley Nut & Candy Co. there in Beatty, NV. I needed fuel too and that was an adventure as that place is always packed and not really designed for allowing an RV towing a car near the pump I needed to access and some bozo had parked his pickup truck, set the pump nozzle to fuel up automatically, then wandered into the nut store. Probably to use the bathroom. Leaving his truck sitting there blocking 2 pumps, and blocking access of my RV towing a car. I could not navigate around the pump island with his stupid truck parked there. I debated calling the cops because he’d left the highly flammable gas nozzle just hanging out of his filler hole. That’s a misdemeanor in many states. Just as I was getting ready to walk back in to have the idiot paged, he wanders out and I yell at him. Still took him 4-5 minutes to leave while I’m sitting there blocking traffic.

After carefully negotiating the RV wrecking type fuel islands and traffic there, I got a few gallons, left the station and parked across the highway where they have a giant overflow lot. I do not like that station because it was designed for cars and small trucks, not big RVs. I should have just gone up the road, there’s a better station a couple miles on. OK, next time I’ll do that. Anyway, after parking in the overflow lot, walked back over to the Death Valley Nut & Candy store, got myself a nice 2 scoop ice cream cone, and afterwards bought 3 bags of nuts and some sugar free candy.

Well, that was nice. Ice cream was good. After that pleasant interlude got back on the road headed towards Pahrump. Only two hours to go and around 4 pm, pulled into Preferred RV Resort, paid for a months stay and was soon settled in. Right at this point in my RV adventures, this park is one of my favorites and I always enjoy staying here. It’s not the park spaces really as they are just gravel with nose to tail parking, it’s the amenities, the relatively good wifi, the bike riding distance to so many good places to eat, the nearby casinos, one with a huge TV for game watching, the pleasant weather, and on and on. I just like it here. And after 16 years of full timing, I should know what I like. If I had made up a check list for my favorite things in and around a RV park, staying here would check nearly every item. Now there are times when I’m looking for a bit more solitude or adventure, and for those times I’ll plan a trip. When I’m just wandering N-S or S-N, this park is it.

After I arrived, my brother came over as we prepared to head over to Las Vegas to go to a rock concert. I don’t know what is wrong with his brain but he likes the most horrid music. I had listened to a couple cuts of the headliners, +LIVE+ & Bush on Youtube and didn’t think they sounded too bad, but jeese, in person, just awful. Show was held at the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown LV. Traffic wasn’t too bad but I really pissed of a few people for almost missing my turn and working (cutting) my way into line. Must have been the biggest social mistake of the area or the century and perhaps era based on all the honks and people yelling at me.

After arriving at the hotel, we had a couple hours to wander around, hotel is a big yawn to me. Had one great bar & restaurant with big floor to ceiling glass windows and doors to outside seating area. Had dinner there that was pretty good. After that headed into the venue there inside the hotel. And Lucky for me I had my Behind the Ear hearing aids with me and I could flip the switch Off so it wasn’t too loud. BTW, inside the venue one 16 oz beer – $15. So that’s all we had, just the one and we shared it. Whoa. Terrible bands but the venue was pretty cool, and we had pretty good seats though Dan spent the entire time standing while I sat…bum knee donchaknow. The music was a travesty, a crime against humanities hearing. Couldn’t wait for it to be over, afterwards drove back to Pahrump…like I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s an hour drive from LV. Not to close, not to far.

The next  day, decided on taking a little tour of the Pahrump area and I suggested visiting the Tecopa area. There’s the China Date Ranch and a brew pub there in that small town. It’s only around 35-40 miles from Pahrump so just a day trip. The date ranch is a working farm and doesn’t have an RV park but there’s one nearby in town, with a hot spring.

The trip there takes a back road that really doesn’t pass much in the way of development. It’s a desert near the end of Death Valley so you can imagine how hot and dry it is in summer. It’s not that bad near the end of October though. Shirt sleeve weather, but the AC was on.

Here’s my brother minding the road. Not something he does as a general rule. And here we are after passing through Tecopa and heading down a ravine to the ranch.

The road is kind of curious, I know that the Chinaman who developed this valley was getting away from the mines where he’d worked for a long time in the hills of Death Valley, and I know how badly the Chinese were treated on a day to day basis, but it would be interesting to know how he happened to stumble on this valley tucked below surrounding hillocks. You can’t really see anything down here unless you get right to the edge of the tops of the hills…which tend to be be flat nearly all around. Kind of interesting. Wish someone had interviewed him about it before he was chased off the land he’d developed.

After driving down into the valley on a gravel road, you eventually can see this green off in the distance. And that’s what attracted the Chinese guy. There’s a spring that feeds this valley. It was undeveloped when he got here, but within a few years he was producing fruits, vegetables, and meat here. Miners from miles around, along with pioneer families nearby, or even the rare wagon trains that passed by would stop in to rest, and buy food from him. Than in later years, after there was a regular travel route near here, everyday travelers would stop in and stay a while. One day a bully type white guy stopped by, liked the looks of the place and pulled a gun on the Chinese guy and told him to leave and go back to China. That’s the story he told when he was drunk. The rest of the time, when the sheriff came snooping around he’d just say he bought the place…without any deed or paper. Most thought he’d murdered the Chinaman as he was never heard from again. Years later some historians tried to trace him back to China to see if he’d actually made it back there like the bully said, but found nothing to link him to any families. The current owners bought the place recently so they have no connection to the story.

Here’s a little museum the owners have set up. And here is a look at the date farm.
Dan heads off evaluating the area as a hiking spot.
And went into the shop for a nice date milkshake.

Great cactus everywhere. No hugs!

So after that visit we headed over to the brew pub to try out their specialty brews. Got some more pictures of the area as we drove out of the oasis. It’s really desolate outside of this valley.

As I passed though this valley, I wondered why no one has settled here. It’s another 500 or so feet higher than Pahrump, so you’d expect it to have milder shoulder seasons and there’s mountains all around protecting it from harsh winds, or even harsh weather, so I found it curious the only human activity here was one small mine.

Oh, well, it’ll have to remain unknown to me.

So that’s the latest adventures, thanks for reading, hope you visit again next time!