Reunited

Monday, December 31, my brother texted me to let me know “my” room number (19-309) while Jonathan and I were at Walmart picking up supplies to carry us between the sporadic meals with my family. While we were heading over to the Monte Carlo, my grandma texted me to let me know as well and said she was going to get breakfast at McDonald’s. When we arrived, Jonathan carried the box of water bottles my sister had requested. We got into the elevator and I pushed floor 13 without consulting my phone, and then headed to room 309. We knocked on door, but no one answered. Figuring they weren’t back from breakfast yet, I wanted to try the second room. I didn’t know what the other room number was, though. I texted my brother, but that reply was slow in coming and we really needed to go to the restroom, so I decided to leave the water outside the door to 309 and go find a restroom. Since the cleaning staff was working on 307, I thought I would mention to them to not throw out the water. When I did, they wanted to know why I didn’t put it in the room, and I explained I didn’t have a key, so they kindly opened the door and put the water inside for me.

While we went to the bathroom, Chester (my brother) sent me the response to which room he was in. When I asked where everyone was since they weren’t in their rooms, he called me to find out where I was. He started giving me instructions back up to the room, and I realized my error of going to floor 13 instead of 19. Whew! Now to figure out how to get the water back. So, we returned to floor 13 and asked housekeeping to retrieve the water for us. It was a different person this time, though, and she wasn’t a native English speaker, so explaining the situation to her was interesting. At first, she refused saying she couldn’t let us inside, but then Jonathan explained we didn’t need inside, we just needed the water that was slid in before, then she agreed. Woo, saved!

From there, we proceeded to the proper floor and met my Grandma and brother in the hall. Yay! Then there were hugs and greetings all around. In addition to my siblings, parents, and maternal grandparents, my sister’s boyfriend, Mitchell arrived from California. So we got to meet him for the first time. And, shortly after, since everyone except Jonathan and I had not yet had breakfast, we went out to eat. We ended up going to a sports bar at New York New York. And, I guess I am someone that everyone wants to share with, as everyone was offering me a taste of their drink, although every one of them contained things I don’t like in a drink (caffeine, alcohol, carbonated water, etc.). My sister finally broke the cycle by ironically offering me a taste of her water.



Afterwards, everyone wanted to gamble and peruse New York New York’s casino area, but as Jonathan and I don’t like to gamble and the smoke-filled air is too much for me, we parted ways for the afternoon. We did meet up with everyone for dinner. We walked down to Excalibur, but found nothing enticing there. Then proceeded back down the road and found Hard Rock Cafe. I started off badly with the dinner. They had a blondie that sounded heavenly that I wanted. But they were out. So, we substituted the crème brûlée, but they 86ed that as well. Unhappy jen. My brother and father had good fajitas, though, that they shared with me.


Afterward, Jonathan and I went to bed. But, at about 11:30, he woke up and went to the van to grab our pillows. The ones at the hotel were really thick and uncomfortable. So, we were awake for the fireworks show at midnight for the New Year’s celebration.  They were shot off the tops of the hotels and went on for about 15 minutes. They were loud enough that I don’t think I would have slept through it anyway. They were gorgeous, though.

Delayed

Sunday, December 30, woke as a nice day. We had planned on meeting my family at the airport that night at 10pm, so we were not in any hurry. I jogged, Jonathan read, then we went and took showers before heading down the road. After our showers, however, the van was really acting up. Jonathan pulled over and turned off the vehicle for a moment to check something out, and then it didn’t even want to start. Jonathan eventually got it turned over and we pulled off into an empty lot at the campground to check out the problem.

After two hours under the vehicle in the chill morning, Jonathan discovered the ignition coil was at fault and swapped it for the spare. Yes, we did have a spare as we carry several parts and tools in our trailer. Some people think we are crazy, for a) planning for a vehicle to break down and need parts and/or b) traveling in a vehicle that would need spare parts. But, if you think about it, after travelling thousands of miles in any vehicle, it will need maintenance of some type anyway. We just carry that stuff around with us, as we don’t have a garage to put it in and sometimes a store is a hundred miles away. It saves us time, money, and frustrations.

Anyways, by the time we got everything put back together and a lunch eaten, it was 2pm and we still had 3 hours to travel. We were already tired, so we decided that we would not meet my family on Sunday at the airport and instead would meet them on Monday at the hotel. As it was, we would be pushing it to find a place before sundown. We had planned on staying at Seward’s Point, a free BLM site on Lake Mead, but it was an hour around the lake. We figured that the money saved in gas could pay for a site at a closer campground so we stopped at the one nearest Hoover Dam.

Found out later that it was probably a good thing we didn’t meet my family at the airport. Their plane was delayed quite a bit. So we would have been waiting for an hour or more at the airport for them to arrive. So, we let them sleep in and contact us at their leisure the next morning.

Crossing Borders

The night before we crossed the US-Mexico border, we stayed at Rancho Surdo Mudo, a campground built for the volunteers of the Deaf-Mute Ranch, a school for deaf kids. This is a cute little campground off of Highway 3 with orange trees. According to our guide book, there is no fee, but donations are taken. We had planned on giving the rest of our pesos to them for the donation, but nobody ever came by to collect (nor was there a donation box). It worked out, however, as we decided to top off our gas as we went through Tecate. At this point, I had forgotten that I didn’t have many pesos left, though. Fortunately, I had just enough remaining pesos to cover the cost of the gas and the customary small tip for the attendant.

We managed to navigate to the US crossing, which despite being right next door to the Mexico crossing, is accessed halfway across town. The line was already ridiculously long despite being only mid-morning, but we were able to turn off our vehicle and roll down the hill most of the wait. Unfortunately, when we finally reached customs, they sent us off to a secondary inspection area. We spent another five minutes letting them go through our van, during which time they confiscated our potatoes that we would have used in our chicken soup we had planned to make that night. Other than that, everything was fine.



Now, our guidebook told us that we needed to turn in our tourist cards when we left the country, but they didn’t say where we should turn them in at. We assumed that there would be someone collecting them on the US crossing. However, when we asked about it, they said that we should have turned them in at the place we got them in Mexico. So, we had to find a place to park on the US side and then walk across the border, which is super easy going into Mexico, you just walk through a rotating pedestrian gate. Then we entered the Immigration office and made sure that we got our stamp on our tourists cards and submitted them. No troubles there.

We did have troubles trying to find the US pedestrian crossing. I thought it might be near where the vehicles crossed, but it wasn’t. We ended up going back to the Mexico crossing area and then we spotted the small, nondescript sign for pedestrians way up the road toward the US where the cars cross into Mexico. The pedestrian crossing was less crowded and more easily passed, however the customs lady and I had issues hearing each other.  And, I answered questions like I had for the vehicle crossing, which probably didn’t make any sense since I didn’t have any luggage with me when walking across. She and Jonathan had a better go at it, he says it was because he said he was with me, but I think it was because she liked him. ;)

So, after crossing the border twice in one day, we started heading off in the direction of Las Vegas. But, as we started the engine and gave Chuck some power, we noticed the van was acting up a bit more. Jonathan decided to pull off on the side of the road and scope it out. He didn’t find anything besides a loose cable, which only slightly helped. By now it was lunchtime (or later), and we were hungry. I convinced Jonathan to eat at IHOP for lunch and I got some delicious sweet potato pancakes. I hadn’t had pancakes in forever, and I had missed them. Sadly, the waiter ignored us and didn’t bring any butter or warm syrup to go with the pancakes. I didn’t leave him a good tip.

Finding a cheap place for that night proved surprisingly difficult. Eventually, we did find an OHV land that allowed overnight camping. Next day, we left California. We thought we had left military checkpoints behind we left Mexico. As we crossed the border, however, there was a border patrol checkpoint. We eased through the questions and process, though, as we had plenty of practice in Mexico.

Before we met my family in Las Vegas on Sunday, we decided we needed showers. So, we decided to stay at an RV park in Parker, AZ.