Chaos Leaves Town

A few more weeks were spent at Parker, but then it came time to go. It was becoming annoying that the WiFi was completely off for days at a time, and like I mentioned before, the RV park does not take responsibility for it and only allows people to install their own. So, it had been out for a week this time and I decided it was time to leave. Screw it. Besides, it was warming up in Rosamond, and I had to start buying stuff for my trip to Europe. I’d bought the ticket to Rome (one way) back in January for April 13th departure and it was getting close.

Neat picture.

So, a few hours driving through the Mojave desert, brought me back to my brother’s house in Rosamond.

With a month and the better part of 2 weeks left before leaving for Rome, much of my time was spent on the computer trying to arrange for places to stay. The previous month, every once in a while I’d get online and cruise around the internet gathering info. My bookmarks for the trip were numbering in the hundreds. But I had found and reserved both a place in Rome, and a place in Pompeii. And I had some good leads on places to stay in my other destination cities too, but no reservations.

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Being close to a casino was fun…someplace to go every night if I wanted. I didn’t go every night, but 3-4 times a week I’d bike over there and wander around. The place also had a theater on the grounds so I caught up on my movie watching. In mid January, there was an exhibit from Italy in the main meeting hall. The da Vinci exhibit. Very interesting. Suggest you visit if it comes to your area.

Ooo, cool. Lookie there.

The exhibit was of both his artworks and his inventions. The artwork consisted of authorized reproductions of his famous works and the inventions were scale models and full sized models of his inventions. All created by Italian craftspeople. Exhibit has been traveling around the world for years. I got lucky that it was here in tiny Parker, Arizona.

Scale model of a lifting machine.

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My stay in Beatty was great, not only was the weather outstanding but the local company in the form of real people was more interesting than television. Can’t beat that. Maybe a Seahawks game could, but that’s about it.

One afternoon we were sitting around bs’ing and this burro and her little one wandered down out of the hills for a visit. The elder burro’s stomping ground is up in the hills and the entire town of Beatty. Everyone around me seemed to know her and her baby and as she wandered into the RV park it was obvious she was a regular in the park as she headed straight for us. The three of us were sitting outside the mini store at the picnic table just talking at the time. The guy that actually worked in the store jumped up, ran inside, and grabbed a sack of carrots.

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I was staying at Fallon RV Park, (they have no web site) and the Amazon warehouse was in Fernley. It’s around 30 miles away, and like I said last post, I did try to find somewhere to park my RV in Fernley with no luck. For the first time in many years, I had to get up at 5AM, dress, eat, check my em, make my lunch, then go to WORK. Gah! Not fun. The 10 hour work shifts weren’t all that fun either. Then the warehouse is sooo large that getting to break rooms, or lunch rooms, took such a long time that you’d end up with a shortened break. And you have to go through a metal detector whenever you leave so I soon found out that I’d have to get a plastic belt to avoid having to remove and replace my leather and metal belt 4 times per day. The kind of belt that holds up a guys pants. Turns out that the stores don’t carry all plastic belts any longer. They use to, but I couldn’t find any. Eventually, one of my co-workers mention I could find plastic knapsack clips and braided belts in the sports sections of WalMart. And, Walmart was just across the street from the Amazon facility. I could, I bought, and made my own plastic belt. That saved some time heading to break, lunch, and home.

The break room was nice and compfy, had plenty of refers to store your lunch, or you could buy the prepackaged crap that’s available. I prefer, and recommend you bring your own halfway healthy lunch. There’s also sugar and chemical infused ‘drinks’ available but I stuck to the free coffee.

The job I was assigned to be doing is ‘Picking’. In the morning, you’d walk in the plant, put your stuff into your assigned locker (anything metal, and your cell phone because cameras are not allowed – you can get fired for taking a picture inside the plant), put on your vest, grab your box cutter and gloves (provided free), walk inside and pick up a UPC bar code scanner. The scanners have the old Microsoft CE software in them so they were always giving us trouble and would just stop working or would go nuts. So you’d have to walk all the way back to one of several scanner kiosks and pick up another one. Then you’d assemble in your area for any announcements. Anyway, after that meeting and recommended stretching before work (which was fine, I enjoyed that), you’d turn on the scanner, enter your employee info so they could keep track of your picks per hour, and it would check via WiFi where you were to go for that session. Then you’d walk over to the area and start picking product (go to Amazon dot com to see what kind of products), and loading it in tote bins. Which when full would be placed on conveyors. Super boring work. Sometimes, well, many times, the picking area would be up 2-4 floors. You would pick there for 30-45 minutes then the scanner would send you half the way across the plant to another area. And usually up 3 flights of stairs. The facility is so…behind the times. First off, they are still using Microsoft CE UPC scanners. Gah! Then, they don’t even have CD/DVD automatic picking carousels. Such an easy product to handle automatically…but here instead, we humans were trying to sort through randomly placed CDs in a shelf bin looking for the right one out of 5 or 10. Nor do they have automatic pallet wrappers, which are an industry norm…they’re still having 2 to 3 people wrap them with clear plastic by hand. I was not impressed in the least with Amazon’s seemingly antiquated warehousing techniques.

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After arriving at my brother’s place in Rosamond, I met the neighbor Brennen when he wandered up to say hello to my brother. We all enjoyed a sit down with beer by the pool and he offered to let me park my RV in his front yard! Nice, reasonably flat area to park. No more parking on a dangerously steep hill. A spot from where I could run a cord up to Dan’s house and plug in and run my battery chargers. Too long of a cable run for much of anything else, like the refer, but I could go down there in the mornings for some computer time and TV time during prime time (my brother doesn’t have a TV in his house). So, we struck a bargain and I gained a new friend. He and I liked the same bar too so we’d go down there quite often to relax.

While there at Dan’s, I finally broke down and bought my first brand new computer. For years, I’d been given past-their-prime computers by clients when I’d sell them a new one so I was always on the back side of the technology curve. Mainly to save money. My new one is a Quad core AMD with an ASUS mobo, 500gb HDD, DVD/CD, etc., and a top of the line PSU. Nice. Really screams. Does HD movies and such without a hitch.

Bennen invited me to join him one Sunday at a golf course at Tehachapi (Tah-hatch-a-pee is how we pronounce it here in the area). He has a friend that lives in the gated community nearby with it’s own golf course. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want a gated community clear out here in the boondocks. There probably wasn’t any more crime near here than inside the gates. Tehachapi only has a 3600 population. Who they were trying to keep out is unknown. The farmers nearby maybe?

Anyway, here’s some pictures of our trip there and the golfing.

Mostly desert on the way to Tehachapi.

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As I mentioned last time, Silverton is a really neat town. The RV parks have all the normal services you would want, the view all around the valley the town is in is spectacular, and there are many services you might need for a visit. Including hotel rooms, restaurants, bars and the like. I really enjoyed it here. But the reason for my visit was to take the Durango & Silverton Railroad trip down to Durango. It’s a narrow gauge RR. You can catch the train in Durango but it seemed like it would be more interesting for me to do the trip the other way around. I’d stumbled onto this train trip on-line when using my mapping program to look for places to go after visiting Aztec. My mapping program showed it and since it was so close…

During my wanders around Silverton, I’d stopped at the RR station and asked the nice lady about the various offerings for a ride. Everything could be arranged on-line but I just could not figure out there what I wanted to do. Go visit their web site and click on ‘Book Now’ and you’ll see that they have soooo many options that you kind of need to talk to someone. Anyway, with her help, I figured it out and bought a one way train ticket to Durango, (bus return to Silverton). She told me that Presidential class was sold out so I ordered a 1st class ticket ($175 vs. $189 for the Presidential class). The trip was for the next day. When the time came, around 11:00am, went back to the train station and got my ticket, then walked to downtown where the train had already arrived but was allowing passengers time to wander the town. I talked to the conductor and indicated I’d like to upgrade my ticket should someone decided to stay overnight in Silverton. He didn’t think that would happen but an hour later, he lets me know that it was looking good. When all aboard was called, I was ushered into an empty car. Comfortable, nice seats, with the added advantage that I could open any of the windows for a breeze if I wanted to. Guess he felt that it wouldn’t be much fun for me sitting all by myself in an empty car so after the train had completed boarding, and left the station, he moved me back into the Presidential car. There were only 1 or 2 empty seats back there so I considered myself lucky to have one. I offered more money, but he said it wasn’t necessary.

Pretty nice there in the Presidential car. Free drinks, snacks, comfy seats, all in the last car of the train so you could sit out in back and watch the scenery go by. It was too early for alcohol but later maybe. Plus there were a couple free gifts; a very nice coffee mug and a heavy fabric tote bag. I figured that all the free stuff I got (that hadn’t come with the ticket I’d bought) was worth around $50. Thanks to the staff of the railroad. By the way, everyone associated with the RR was very nice, accommodating, and helpful.

Here’s the conductor that let me upgrade my ticket.

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The day after arriving in Silverton, click here for the story, I untethered my bike and rode around town. Pretty cool place. In talking to the locals, I found that until the Durango to Silverton train started to become a tourist attraction, this town was dead. Nothing but a few old miners, hangers on, and floozies frequenting the bars. The town was swiftly dying after the mines petered out.

Then a miraculous thing happened. The train got popular. And Silverton was the destination. Pretty soon, there were 2 trains a day stopping here. The town had a revival and is now looking kind of spiffy. Still has dirt and gravel roads all over but the buildings are looking pretty nice. A few blocks from where my RV is parked is the train station and I stopped there as the train just happened to be coming along at that time. The station is partially a museum too.

Here comes the train!

My RV park is off in the direction the train came from. I’d ridden my bike here and it can’t be more than 1-2 miles. That road over there on the left of the above pic heading up the side of the hill is a popular trail for both hikers and jeep people. There are jeeps for rent at my RV park. In the far distant background, you can see the main highway that winds it’s way down that mountain into town – Durango. Quite steep in places. And no guardrails.

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Aztec was fun, but it was time to move on. The plan was to head straight to Silverton, passing through Durango. It’s only a two hour trip so I hung around the RV park in Aztec as long as I could before hitting the road. Stopped for some shopping as I left town too. Then stopped again in Durango at a big box store. That all helped to kill some time. Have to do that so I wouldn’t arrive at Silverton to early. Some RV parks, (not many), are strict about check in time. Actually want to charge you an extra night if you get there too early. Doesn’t happen often, but travelers like me just plan to arrive at our next RV park after 1pm.

Just outside Durango

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After Flagstaff, I traveled north then east to visit some of the country in that area that I’ve missed over the years. I’ve been to Shiprock and such, but lately I’ve traveled North/South in this area and this time I was going West/East. Since I was on a ‘this is the year of the train’ kick, my ultimate destination was Silverton, Colorado where they have a interesting train trip from/to Durango that I wanted to take. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR has been running passengers up to Silverton for 131 years in cars behind a steam engine and I wanted to take that trip…but also, I wanted to visit Silverton. Seemed, from the internet, like an interesting town. And it appeared it had a nice RV park.

But first, I planned on visiting Aztec, New Mexico, because of the ruins of the ancient pueblo peoples village there that had a large restored kiva. And since it was almost exactly on the route to Durango, which led to Silverton, it wasn’t a hard decision to decide to stay there a few days while the weather improved in Silverton. It was fairly cold there at the time as it is up in the mountains and all.

On the way to Aztec (just 5 hours from Flagstaff), I passed a couple of places along the road that I vaguely recognized. The area seemed familiar so when I got to Ruins Road RV Park and set up, checked my stored photo albums, I found some pictures Nephew Paul had sent me just a couple weeks before that were taken at some of the tourist stops on this very road. Hah. It had been so long ago, I’d kind of forgotten about taking this route. It was kind of funny that, unsolicited, just a week before I made the trip, Paul would have sent me all those photos of a trip the family had all taken decades before in the same area where I was now enjoying a second visit. Maybe I mentioned the trip on Facebook or something.

We, (my son and me, brother Dan and his son Paul, sister Terri and her son Bruce, and our much loved family friend Maria) had made this tour in 1984 or so, stopping at the White House ruins, and the dinosaur track place. Here are a couple pictures:

The White House Ruins

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