Finally got back to Vegas and my Westy after limping into town a couple months earlier. The Beetle Barn took care of the oil leak, caused by an auxiliary oil cooler mounted behind the fan housing, and replaced it with a new, thermostatically controlled oil cooler. They also took out the 356 oil filter and replaced that with an easier to screw on/off model mounted beneath / behind the engine, but accessible from below. This did not affect ground clearance and should be a good long-term solution.

Couple this with a few other repairs and full clean up while the engine was out of the bus and it was ready to hit the road!

Sent an email to 24/7 Storage a couple days before my arrival to charge up the batteries and within minutes of arriving, I was off and running. Here’s hoping.

Linda was arriving a couple days later as I had business first and then we were heading down to the shores of Lake Havasu for the annual Busses By The Bridge event in the shadow of the London Bridge. In 1968, some American tycoon bought the bridge and took it apart brick by brick and put it on Lake Havasu – why? Not sure, but it looks good there 🙂The gates open for this event on Thursday, but I saw posts on social media of busses lining up at the gate days in advance of that. When Linda and I arrived on Saturday afternoon, we were the 753rd bus registered!

Of course, all the campsites were taken shortly after the gates opened, so once we registered, we had to park adjacent to the campground. Not sure we would have stayed with 752 of my closest friends as they were really squished together on the grounds and running water was not very close by.Tons of split window busses in every configuration!

And, lots of late model Westy’s in every 2 and 4-wheel drive configuration.Everybody was super nice and friendly. Many selling bus odds and ends and parts from their campsites.Love this sun shade! Found it online and will be ordering one for my bus 😉 Even though we have front curtains, it just seems to fit the narrative!

Another photo that really fit the narrative of driving a bus…Linda liked this one.

The bus below is just like the first one I bought when I was 16 (minus the roof rack). Lots of trips up and down the coast in my blue and white baby!

After a few hours with our friends, it was time to go a couple miles down the lake to our campground and have a completely different experience.

First question from the guard at the gate was…’why did they let YOU stay here? You’re not a self contained motor home.’ And thus began a long conversation about honoring our reservation and getting into this lovely RV park. You will see by the photos that we not only didn’t fit in, we stuck out like a sore thumb in a place that was completely devoid of personality and any chance of life.

We got wedged between two mobile homes, in what appears to be somebody’s driveway.

We met some full-time couples that couldn’t believe we didn’t want to buy one of the homes here and settle down in such a wonderful community. BTW, the bathrooms were in the ‘clubhouse’, but we couldn’t use them as the place was reserved for a ‘Celebration of Life’ event. We had to use the bathrooms at the pool, but they close at 10PM. Hoped the celebration would end by then and we could have access to the can in the evenings!

Side note, in these communities, we were pretty sure the Celebration of Life events were pretty common!

Just like the evening we arrived in Malta after traveling for what felt like an eternity, we immediately went online and started looking for somewhere else to stay. Decided the next day, we’d move north to the Laughlin, Nevada area and still stay near the Colorado River and Lake Mohave.

Made a reservation for the next day 100 miles north at the KOA in Laughlin, which after arriving in Laughlin from the Arizona side, we learned was another 18 miles south on the Nevada side of Laughlin. Hmmm maybe listen to Linda and ‘use the google’.

A highlight was traveling on old Route 66 for quite some time and found the landscape simply beautiful in a strikingly desolate sort of way.

The RV campground was on Mohave Indian lands, along with a casino 👍🏼 and most folks were very friendly. Some conversations turned a little dark with rants about Antifa, 2nd Amendment and commies taking over cities like New York and Minneapolis 😳 We simply ignored them and moved on to other conversations.

Lots of folks living full time in their motor homes and, one next to us was a pretty spendy unit…thinking upwards of $900k. Guess which one it was.

We thought all was well and calm, then the RV park Soup Nazi came by and said – ‘Hey, you connected to the sewer system?’ Well, no we aren’t, we replied. ‘Well, you can’t stay here if you’re not self contained’. We told her that wasn’t asked when we checked in and we plan on staying until we leave a day later. 🤬

So here we are in a campground on the Nevada side of the Colorado River in the Pacific Time Zone. The other side of the river is Arizona and of course, in the Mountain Time Zone for part of the year.

Now, here’s where the fun begins…check out this photo. Even though the Mohave Tribe runs this place, the casino must run on Nevada time, as are all Nevada state run casinos. But, the tribe draws most of their employees from the Arizona side (city of Fort Mohave) and they want to be on Arizona time. So, if you walk from the casino to the gas station and convenience store across the parking lot, you change time zones.

So – it was a great trip seeing parts of Nevada within a 150 mile radius and the bus ran really well. Next up, we’re thinking the Hoover Dam recreation area, Valley of Fire or Red Rock Canyon. And, now that the bus is running and in fine shape, we can certainly camp in campgrounds that do not require us to be tethered to AC or water. It will greatly improve our options in regards to the quality of our campsites.

Final note – spent this weekend in Arizona golfing with some family and friends and found the perfect addition to my Westy life!