We did SO MUCH STUFF on our recent trip to Pioche that I'm going to do this in parts.
First I'll cover the trip, then on future updates, I'll fill you in on each thing we did.
We left home i n Port Orchard on Friday, April 25, 2025 in our Dodge 3500 dually pulling the 23' travel trailer. We headed south, not knowing for sure what route we'd take but we knew we needed to end up in Winnemucca for the Gypsy Horse Fest. It was pretty cool to see a bunch of Gypsy's all in one place, all looking fabulous, but I sincerely thought there would be many more. I also think Ambleside would do really well there because shes got such nice movement compared to some of these horses. Judges asked for extended trot and all they did was speed up a bit while Amble puts on a show all her own.
They were fun to watch but we stayed only about an hour because we had time to make up since we'd had a blow out on the trailer and had to spend time changing it and going 60 moles out of our way to buy a new spare. Plus going to Winnemucca added about 500 miles onto our trip.
We did see wild horses this trip but I got no photos of them. There were 2 mares near one mine, 3 more not too far out of town and a LOT in the Steens Mountains of Oregon.
We went on Highway 50 again, known as the 'Loneliest road in America' and this time it truly was, there were times we'd drive an hour & only pass 1 car.
We boondocked overnight just west of Austin and it began to snow early in the morning. Not heavy, not unexpected but it weas 12 hours earlier than they said. We had a few mountain passes to go over and they were in the clouds.
Somewhere along the way we passed the 'Shoe Tree' and had to stop for photos. We'd seen one of our youtube channels stopping there so we did too, next time we'll each have a pair of shoes to add to the tree.
It was kinda gross seeing all those shoes.
Finally, we reached Pioche and got the trailer parked. It will be out place to stay whenever we go down there, a place to sleep, pee, cook and have A/C or heat if needed.
This was the first photo of the house, I always like to get one. It looks like a meth house with the reflective car window things in the windows.
Lan finished his Lego Mustang car model Andrea gave him for Christmas.
On our first morning I enjoyed the sunrise through the Lilacs. They are all over town and the whole place smells devine.
We got to see friends, this is Jon, he's one reason we bought in Pioche. He is 85, a grieving widower and inventor.
And this is Maynard who lives across the street but is now our Pioche pup.
We replaced this window
with this one.
Lan built this wall, reinforcing the wall that's an exterior wall but the kitchen is on the other side now.
He added 2 walls to form the bedroom. If you look closely you'll notice the spot we saved for the fridge so we can have the classic triangle of sink-stove-fridge.
More on walls later.
We also went into a few mines on our trip, more on those later.
We tried to take a hike somewhere every day, on this day we hiked around town then up to the Cross on top of the hill.
Here Lan is pointing to our house.
We also had to shower but not i n the teensy trailer bathroom so we'd go out to Cathedral Gorge state park and hike around and go into the slot canyons, then use the facilities there. That is one place we definitely want to take Soren.
I'll skil to coming home. We left Thursday afternoon, May 8th and drove all the way to Jackpot, right at the border of Idaho. Stayed at Cactus Jacks hotel. Left at 9am after a yummy breakfast in their buffet.
We drove to Twin Falls and watched Base Jumpers jump off this bridge, the only place its legal in the USA. Way fun.
Then as the day got hotter I started bitching about no a/c in the truck. We stopped in Mountain Home at the McDonalds for lunch and started staring at the new ford trucks.
And we bought this one:
Its in our backyard now, they let us drive it away without us paying a dime. We left the old truck there and felt a teensy bit bad because it took us a LOT of places but it never had A/C and I'm getting too old for that bullshit.
2025 F-350 4 door, 4x4, diesel with 20 miles on it.
