Movin' to the desert!

We had reservations at the Las Vegas Thousand Trails through tonight (Friday), but we wanted to arrive for the Christian Fellowship Birds of a Feather group by Saturday and we weren't sure that we wanted to make the whole drive from Las Vegas to Quartzsite in one day, so we elected to leave a day early from Las Vegas.

We wanted to get the lug nuts re-torqued once again. Dwayne had stopped by a place that was very near the entrance of the Thousand Trails and checked to see if they could do the re-torquing. They said that they could, but when we arrived this morning, they said that they did not have a torque wrench that would go as high as 450-500 foot-pounds, which is what we needed... so we decided to go on down the road. Note: this shows the rusted lug nut (we called master mechanic Jimmy about it earlier today!).

We drove through some beautiful, albeit desolate, areas! This was getting onto I-40 west of Needles, CA - heading east toward Arizona.

We decided to go to a Pilot station just off I-40 on Arizona 95, that would put us on the path to go through Parker towards Quartzsite. The mobile repair guy there directed us to park in the truck stop and then he re-torqued the nuts on the tag axle wheel that we wanted to get done. He also offered to re-torque the front wheels too. I asked how hard it was to use the torque wrench, and he let me try using it... I did not have the strength to push down on it until it "broke", indicating it had achieved 475 ft-lbs, even when I put my full weight on it! Dwayne was able to do it though, and then Dwayne helped by placing the head onto the nuts for the two front wheels while the mechanic did the torquing.

Driving down Arizona-95, we went through Lake Havasu City. We were stopped at a stoplight near London Bridge.

From what I read on Wikipedia, it sounds as if it was brought over to attract people to Lake Havasu City, and it seems it did the job - Lake Havasu City looked like a nice town that we might want to return to visit!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_%28Lake_Havasu_City%29

Our plan was to get to Parker today, Friday, as there was supposed to be a package for us at the post office. Through last week, though, it seemed to get a later and later delivery date; yesterday when I checked, the delivery information said it wouldn't get to Parker until end of day Wednesday, so we figured we'd have to return to Parker sometime in the next few days. But... when I checked about noon today, the shipping information indicated that it had been delivered to the post office in Parker! So, we stopped at Walmart in Parker and left the bus there, drove the Jeep to the post office, got the package, and then came back to the bus and went shopping at Walmart. We had thought we would spend the night at Walmart, but we had gotten done early enough that we decided to head on down to Quartzsite. The Walmart parking lot was pretty crowded and busy (lots coming and going) and there wasn't much room for a big bus to park!

So, we've settled in on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land near Quartzsite for the night! More pictures tomorrow of our location here!