September 16, 2024
We started out from the Coachella Valley at about 10AM on our way to Henderson NV to visit and have dinner with our friends Doug and Cindy Nelson. The drive was uneventful and seemed to go very quickly. We arrived at our hotel around 4 PM, checked in and made our way to Cindy and Doug’s place in the subdivision of Las Vegas Lakes. The subdivision is lovely, and the landscaping is perfectly in keeping with the desert environment. Cindy and Doug have a beautiful Burmese Mountain Dog named Ruby and she and Eddie got along with no problem. After nibbles and wine on their serene back patio, we headed to a local restaurant called Echo and Rig. The atmosphere was upbeat and fun, and the food was fantastic. We so enjoyed visiting and catching up on our life events with each other. We’ve invited them to the Coachella Valley for a visit so hopefully we will not go as long without seeing each other as we did this time!
I like Ruby. She’s big but really friendly. I was, alas, jailed when the Moms went to dinner, but Ruby and I chatted through the bars. I kept asking for a file, but I don’t think she knew what I meant. Cindy and Doug were very nice to me. I did tricks. Everyone smiled. My job was done.
September 17, 2024
Today we traveled from Henderson to Salt Lake City. This drive also seemed to be relatively quick and uneventful. As we did last year, we noticed the incredible uplift and beautiful Virgin River as we cut through the northwest corner of Arizona and traveled into Utah. However, this year there was a lot less water in the river and surrounding areas. Driving through Utah is always interesting as you move from desert to more lush areas and back again to arid environments all the while watching the many cattle groupings and the numerous volcanic plains. We arrived in Salt Lake in the early evening, found a restaurant called The Brickyard that had an outdoor patio for our Eddie girl and had a decent meal. We got to bed reasonably early as we need to get on the road early to drop Eddie off at boarding by a certain time.
Just another day in the car. I liked the AirBnB we stayed at, but there were lots of very sharp rocks. I don’t know why the Moms didn’t plan better. As usual, it’s all about them.
September 18th, 2024
So, up to this point everything had gone to plan. For those of you who saw our post on Facebook, you saw our comment about having an interesting day (in the Chinese curse sort of way). The drive was fine, but a bit dicey as we were driving in a steady rain and poor visibility for much of the way. We finally drove out of the rain and started seeing white tailed deer and LOTS of signs for wildlife crossings. We arrived in Livingston a little after 3 PM and dropped Eddie off at Wags and Whiskers. She was NOT impressed and I’m sure we will hear from her at the end of this blog post. Things started to get “interesting” just after we dropped Eddie off. We headed to the hotel we booked through Choice Hotels. When we drove up to the address, Michelle was certain it was a mistake and didn’t even want to go inside. The parking lot was a mess with weeds growing everywhere, most of the “windows” had no glass in them and were covered in plastic and, it overall looked like a flop house. Sandy said we should at least go in and see if it was indeed our hotel, so we did. Inside it was completely under construction and had a very strong aroma of some powerful cleaning solvent. Apparently, the hotel was “in the process” of becoming a Comfort Inn. The elevators were not working and all the “finished” rooms were on the second floor (the project manager in Michelle, commented she would have done that a bit differently). The only way to the second floor, was a VERY steep and not terribly secure looking staircase. We went upstairs to see the room we would be staying in, and it was acceptable, but the hallway and surrounding areas looked like a war zone. But still, we were willing to give it a try. We went back down the staircase of death and tried to check in. We won’t bore you with the details, but after 25 minutes of the clerk trying to get us checked in, we cried ‘uncle’ and told them to cancel our reservation. We went next door to the Fairfield inn (thank heavens for the Marriott chain of hotels) and checked in to a very nice (and disturbingly expensive) room. Yikes.
Ryan, who was working the front desk, pointed us to a great restaurant named The Livingstone Bar and Grill where we had a wonderful meal. Rachel, our food server was great and made the meal even more fun. Back to our hotel and to sleep. Fortunately, Thursday we made it to Yellowstone with no problems. We’ll post on our Yellowstone adventure in a few days.
In the slammer again. What is with them? Cindy, my hostess, is very nice but, still, there are DOGs here! “Laid my head on a railroad track. Poor, poor pitiful me.” It’s MY vacation too! Where’s my room service? Where’s my massage? Just you wait.