Cars On Trips

Which car will we take?

The 2025 Ford F-350? 

It still smells new & has everything but diesel is more expensive than gas and this gets lower mileage.

If 20 mpg, it will use 125 gallons of gas with cost of $686.25

The 2009 Subaru Impreza?

It gets the best mileage at 30+ but needs new tires and isn't yet 100% reliable. This would save on fuel but tires will be a few hundred bucks. Lan can mount them himself and we'll need them anyway but getting them for the trip means trip money goes to tires.

If 30 mpg, it will use 83.3 gallons of gas with cost of $374.17

The 2010 Ford Escape?

It also has a few quirks but its only getting about 20 MPG anymore and isn't 100% reliable either. With this we could make a run into Cedar City, Utah and bring back more than we could fit into the Impreza, plus we can take it off road. 

If 20 mpg, it will use 125 gallons of gas with cost of $561.25

If we take the truck it would be a bit slower just because its bigger but we can haul anything in it and go off road if needed.

If we take the Subaru we'll 'save' on fuel overall but no fun stuff.

If we take the Escape it will cover all the bases.

 

 

Packing For Travel

We'll be leaving on another trip to Pioche in 9 days and let me tell you, I'm pretty stoked.

We'll first drive to Dugway Geode Beds in Utah, where we will dig for geodes and I thing we're guaranteed to find some. I'll be taking a shovel, bucket to carry them, spray water bottle, all sorts of things. 

They are in Simpson Springs, Utah

This is one area

This is what the area looks like. 

I've read that the BLM goes out & digs up more areas once in a while.

I hope to find a couple cool ones, I hope to find enough that I can share and give a few to Jeremy so he can cut me one.

Then we'll continue on to Pioche. There are several ways to go between the two places but the dark purple line is one we haven't taken before.

I've been planning the things I'll be doing when I'm there, one of which is painting the basement walls. Currently they are gray concrete and purple paint. I've read that you're supposed to use a certain kind of paint on concrete but I'm sure they didn't use that special stuff before so I'm going to paint over it with the paint I have, a light gray. It might brighten it up a little bit.

I'll be pulling weeds again, tumbleweeds. 

Lan will be working on the sewer lines and a bajillion things inside the house. We're ramping up for when we take down the bathroom, utility room and kitchen but there's so much to do before then; basement, clearing out the interior of the rooms, 

We also need to pay a few bills while there too, the garbage bills is $150 for the year, too bad we can't just pay for the time we're there, and the truck tabs are $741 (yikes) but I have called our local DMV and its half as much to get license and tabs in Washington than it is in Nevada.

We will utilize the town pool, its ALWAYS nice to go for a dip when its blasting hot.

We're leaving home on May 21 and heading to Utah but we'll need to sleep somewhere along the way so we got ourselves a free truck canopy and we'll build a bed in the back. The bed will need to be big enough for Lan to sleep on it, so at least 6'3" and that only gives him a couple inches leeway. 

Lan wanted to paint it but that's just one more thing to do and he's already too busy doing shit here and he did point out that it matches the SXS.

Yeah, we'll be taking the Can Am too, its why we bought the house down there in the first place.

Oh yeah, we've got the shed frame up, now just needs the roofing put back on and I'm hoping to find Costco garage sides for free that I can put on it. It has seven 12' corrugated green fiberglass panels for the roof but one is broken so I want a clear or opaque panel, for additional light.  We're going to store the new cart and Kenny inside this.

 

Another visit to our Pioche House

Here is our 'lovely' house in Pioche as we pulled up to it at almost midnight. 

We're both surprised that solar light is holding up. It's always on at night on a dim setting but as soon as it sees movement, it gets brighter.

Heres the front yard, growing a good bunch of tumbleweeds, there were about 50 bajillion of the dang things around the house. Lan said he's just spray them, but I wanted them gone as they are a terrible fire hazard. 

So, I pulled them by hand. 

We took at least 4 truckloads of them to the dump and that wasn't even all of them. I pulled them for a couple hours at least every other day, my hands were so sore.

Lan did work on the basement, installed LED lights, we got it cleaned up, he moved the freshwater line from the right side of this area to the left, attached some of the new PEX lines to it and has a distribution board set up and attached to the wall. We'll need a new water heater soon, even if we can't use it yet.

This is the old water heater and the pipes under the kitchen area of the house. This stuff is all going to be removed eventually.

This is going from the 'finished' part of the basement to the stairs that go to the house. The bright spots and open to the outside, so vermints can get in.

Since we're now making a truck payment, we don't have tons of cash to throw at this house, so we had plenty of time to explore. This was Condo or Condor Valley and it did not disappoint!

Brian Head in Utah was gorgeous with the fall colors.

I love Aspen trees

Another day we were trying to get back home before the storm came in but got a flat. Rain ended up getting us pretty wet.

This is inside the Jackrabbit Tunnel, last time we were there we only went to this deck area, we didn't go down the ladder. Down here there are SO MANY cool places to go.

Next time we plan on going much, much farther down that ladder, it goes about 50 feet farther before we couldn't see it anymore.

This isn't the best photo but here is a male tarantula I almost stepped on when I was entering a mine. I ended up screaming like a little girl and didn't go into that mine.

As we were getting packed up to come home, this happened. To the brand new truck, didn't even have 7600 miles on it yet. It was an accident.

Before we were 100 miles away from Pioche, Mora had found another tailgate for sale in Portland, Oregon so we went there on the way home & bought it for $300.  It's also from a brand new 2025 truck so matched perfectly.

Heres the leaving Pioche photo. I hope someday I'll have the opportunity to stay longer & not have a set date to leave.