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.

 

Our Next Vacation

We'll be heading to Pioche but taking a little longer route than straight down. Last year we went through Winnemucca to see the Gypsy Horse Fest show and it was very nice to see the horses but I was disappointed that there were only about 50 horses, max, at the 'west coast' show. I liked that they had it at all and that I got to go but it was a long way out of our way to see so few horses. It was an extra 500 miles and a day of driving to see the show.

This is the realtors photo of our house in Pioche, the one online for the sales photos, May 2024.

Our 1st visit, May 2024. 

I didn't think about taking a front yard photo on this trip.

June 2024,  our 1st trip as owners. 

When we arrived the front door was wide open.

September 2024, 2nd trip

December 12, 2024, no photo!! but I had just turned 62 & we flew down, went to Zion & got my America The Beautiful pass and went to Pioche.

April 2025, 3rd trip

September 2025

We had taken the trailer down in spring.

The yard was FULL of tumbleweeds, took me days to get them all pulled up.

I have full trips of photos missing or in other folders, lost for now. Dang. 

Its 5 weeks till we leave again to head down, we're planning on heading thru Utah & visiting the Dugway Geode state park where we will dig for our own geodes. I will definitely take an arrival photo this time, and every trip after this one.

I'm going to be looking for the perfect house numbers/sign for the front.

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.

 

Rear Wall Rebuild

This was the houses back wall when it was listed for sale.

The previous owners were going to flip it and we're saving the old pink insulation to use again. We hauled all of it to the dump.

You can see all the old wires hanging and dangling, everything original to how we bought it.

On previous trips we had rebuilt the worst walls, the front and left side walls in the lower photo.

This wall was an exterior wall before and was difficult to tackle and repair correctly, or, as best we could.

The vertical boards are the same as using plywood now. He had to remove all the 2x2s and broken boards, a lot of nails and wiring.

Lan built this wall in a few hours, since he knows how to do it now.

That table is made of particle board and saw horses, we've had to move it a few times already and man its been handy. At least once a day I'll go through the house and put away all the tools so we have room for others as we need them.

In the photo below is the entire 20' wide wall, its about 9.5 feet tall.

The closet door on the right will be framed for a window and that closet will be gone. 

The door in the middle will ramain and will eventually go into a new bathroom & utility room, with another door out the back to a deck area.

This is the doorway, where you can see the original exterior siding. We *MIGHT* try to save the siding by using linseed oil on it. This wall though is going to be turned into a proper interior wall and IF we can save this siding, it could possibly be used on other exterior walls IF we go that route. I had wanted metal siding but Lan is not interested in that, he wants Hardi board but I think that would look ugly. This siding has a LOT of nails in it but those holes could be filled and with linseed oil it could be beautiful again.

This is the closet that's to be removed. We store all the tools and equipment in it and when we leave its covered by the sheet of particle board that's our table, so it looks like a wall. 

It already had the shelving and it handy for all our needs. I try to put all the similar items together so they're easier to find but Lan just throws things in there sometimes. 

Don't get me wrong, he's always been this way but this project has been frustrating to him in ways he's never experienced before. 

Here he is beginning with some wiring. There had been a useless light switch there before so he removed it and put in a 4 plug outlet. Then he built a small shelf beside it that holds all 4 chargers and the batteries for the tools. The trash can fits below & is easy to throw stuff into, with the shop vac beside it.

It the 2 weeks we were just there, it was only warm enough to use the fan once. Without any insulation its gets very warm very fast, and same with the cold.

The yellow ladder was gifted to us from Jon. We need to take another, taller, one as well so we can reach that high roof.

Our neighbor Tom has lived here most of his life, he worked in the mines when he was much younger. A few years ago he was able to go to one of them and he found the time books, found his name in some of them and he said he found the name of the guy who lived in our house at the time. He can't remember that guys name now, but I'd REALLY like to know who he was. I'd love to know the history of our home.

Thats it for now on the back wall. I hope you've enjoyed our rebuilding as much as we have.

 

I've Been Waiting

 I've been waiting months, since we got back in December, to go back to Pioche. We purchased the

travel trailer to live in while we're there, We've cleaned, painted

Sewn

and built

as much stuff as we could to make it comfortable to use. 

The truck is ready to go, minus the hay. Fresh oil & fluids, bearings greased and brakes checked. A new console cup holder, 3 more power sources, and the new air bags he put on after the September trip, for comfort. Its freshly vacuumed and cleaned out with clean windows.

We just can't find the silly neck pillows, anywhere. I've searched our bedroom including inside the luggage and closets, I've searched the sewing room, the buffet (that's where I thought I'd seen them last week), I've searched all the other cars and the other camper. My goal today is to get EVERYTHING remaining on the list into the truck or trailer so we can be ready to go at 9am tomorrow.

I've got my older travel journal and the new tiny one I purchased at Zion National Park in December, I've got the house journal for house things and I've got plain paper for notes or shopping lists.

Some of the cargo going down will be the electrical sockets, switches, new wire and fixtures. We're taking our bikes so we can get in a few short rides on those; there's a mountain bike ride in Caliente during the first weekend of May and it looks like fun to go watch.  We're taking a telescope with a few attachments so we can look at the stars. This morning was the 'Smiley Face' with the 2 planets and the moon, I saw the moon through the trees but couldn't see the planets and that's OK because media hyped it up to be this great thing but it wouldn't have been like that at all.

Anyway, it's high time I get my shit together, we'll be on the road in 24 hours.