Still hanging out in Pahrump…

It’s been nearly a month since my last post…and I’m still here enjoying the mild weather in Pahrump. I got both my Covid shots at the VA clinic, and I traveled over to the VA Hospital in Las Vegas to have my kidneys imaged…a CT scan. Haven’t gotten any results back yet.

These pictures are from mid-February when I was still trying to sell my ’01 Saturn. And I did! Got $2100 for it. I’d asked a bit more than book because of the tow plate that’s already installed that should appeal to one of the many RV’ers in Pahrump. After all there are 22 RV parks in this town. But the gal that bought it, didn’t need it for towing.

Sold it to a young lady who needed a reliable car for work. Pretty pleased that it’s gone now and I don’t need to worry about storing it if I do any traveling in the RV.

And recently I went on the local FB ‘I need help in Pahrump’ page and advertised for someone to install the wiring bundle into my car so I can tow it but only 2 indicated they could do the job, but both flaked out on me. I’ve since found someone else and have IM’d him so I’ll know soon if he’ll do it or if I need to do it myself. I’m willing to pay because of my painful knees. I don’t want to be climbing under the dash trying to route the wires. I’ll know soon if this new guy is interested enough in the job and makes it over here.

But, back to adventures.

So one day I needed to visit the VA clinic and on the way there, passed the Pahrump Emporium. And it was open. So decided to visit on my way back.

They had some really nice stuff. Looks like this group of businesses is favored as the local ‘estate’ buyers. [Note: You can click on any of these photos to enlarge them.]

And of course spent some time just wandering around…like over to LV to visit the VA hospital for an Ultrasound which I thought was about my prostate and the urine retention I’d had last T-day. It was during that visit the the tech spent an inordinate amount of time imaging my kidneys when she was supposed to be checking out my bladder for urine retention. Eventually she called in a specialist Dr. to look. A couple days later, the hospital called because they found an ‘anomaly’ on my right kidney. GAH! I want my prostate fixed not my kidney. If you look it up, you’ll see that 60% of ultrasounds of kidneys in my age group show an anomaly. Nearly always just a cyst and seldom needs treatment. But anyway, because of that, my prostate, which put me into the hospital ER back in November, was put on the back burner. I’m kinda pissed about that.

So now I have to wait while they fiddle fart around with the kidney. Meanwhile, I called Dr. Hutton’s office up in Walla Walla, he’s the urologist that suggested laser surgery when I had the ‘issue’ with urine retention back in November, and turns out it’s $17,000 for the surgery. Unlikely the VA would pay any of that because that Dr. and the hospital are out-of-system. So I sit here and wait for the VA to come up with a plan.

While waiting, wanted to make a visit to China Date Ranch for a date shake. It’s approximately 1 hour drive from Pahrump. And Shoshone is right in the middle of that trip. Shoshone is where this interesting hole in the dirt cliff/mound is located. Has several keep out signs but I have seen several people stopping, climbing over the fence and exploring the place. There’s a log door that seems to be an entrance to, what?, in the side of the dirt mound there on the left. And that dark spot up on the wall is a cave. They were doing road work near here and lots of people were stopping and ignoring the keep out signs. Well, maybe someday I’ll stop and explore. Today, I wanted a date shake which is another 30 miles or so.

Soon enough I was at the turn off to the Date ranch.

Kind of interesting trip down into the small valley where the date farm is as the geology is interesting. It’s also very desert like, and then the road winds down into a broad and green valley. Not spectacular but close to it.

Eventually though, I was there and happy about it. And it seems that there’s a bunch of 4 wheelers that occasionally invade the local sand dunes and dirt trails that come here for a date shake too. I didn’t mind that, but it does annoy the hell out of me that there were several of the bikers flying giant flags indicating they are traitors still supporting the recent insurrection and tRumps bid to become a dictator. I’ll be happy when most of those that physically participated are in prison. Now if only Faux News could be shut down. The real fake news’ers.

Took a while with the crowd but eventually had my coconut date shake. YUM!

And soon enough, on my way back home. Didn’t feel like hobbling around the date ranch to explore as my knees were giving me problems that day. There are several interesting trails in that valley, there’s even the protected ‘puff fish’ that lives there.

Thanks for visiting!

Next time, we’ll visit part of Death Valley.