A Serious Game of P-I-G

Today we woke up and got the trailer ready to go into the shop to get its alignment checked. We got out on time (yes, I'm patting us on the back since it isn't easy) and drove the couple of miles to the shop. Brock got out and talked to one of the guys and he agreed the tire did look like the alignment was off. We walked to a little park across the street from the shop and the kids played, Brock worked, until we watched them pull the trailer back out of the bay and we headed back over to the shop. They aligned all four wheels so we should be good to roll now. Will probably double our gas mileage too. ;o) LOL

We drove back to our RV site and got set up again. Brock got back to work and the kids and I went over and worked on our school work in a parklike setting by the office, enjoying the sunshine while Sky played on the playground here.

We broke for lunch and then finished up school and work.

While I made dinner, Brock took Spence and Sky over to the basketball courts for a serious game of
 P-I-G. I snuck over and took some pics while the enchiladas were baking.

White Sands Community

I really like this park. It is well kept and clean. This morning, I got us all registered and paid up and was happy to see the clean, state of the art laundry facilities on-site. I made a haircut appointment at one of the two salons that are also on-site. We have 4-5 bars of 4G Verizon coverage! Woohoo! The free park wifi with our booster antennae is actually very good too, even though they told us we wouldn't be able to get it except in the office building. There is a playground which we haven't checked out yet and there is a beautiful sparkling clean pool, but it turns out that it hasn't opened for the season yet. There is a little dog run area (really little actually), but it's nice to be able to let Heidi off leash to go to the bathroom and there doesn't appear to be any of the terrible goathead burrs that we struggled with at the last couple of places.

We did SEVEN loads of laundry in the huge laundry room, all at once and still didn't hog all the machines. I loved that they had a debit machine for running the loads as well rather than having to get quarters. It's so much easier. I really felt like the clothes got clean and every load dried with one cycle on the dryers. So nice! It wasn't the cheapest laundry I've ever done, but sometimes you get what you pay for and it definitely wasn't the most expensive either. (Came to about 3 bucks a load)

Brock had his meeting this afternoon so we needed to clear out. I thought we were going to go swimming, but that was kibashed by the closed pool. We needed groceries so I took Bryn, Spence and Sky and headed to Walmart which is literally about a block away. The park's boundary is actually at the back parking lot of Walmart's property, but it's separated by a big fence and a construction area, otherwise we could've walked. Brighton decided to stay home and experiment with some game-making software that he's excited about using.

We had a good time putzing around the store, looking at clearance stuff. We found some great deals for each of us including some new t-shirts for the boys for only $2.50 each.

I love these little muscle men!

Change of Venue

After trying to work today with the poor Verizon coverage and really spotty wifi at our campground in Carlsbad, we made the decision to pull out early even though we forfeit one night's space rent. We were able to get a refund for one of the two remaining nights that we'd reserved so that was good.

We looked carefully at Verizon's coverage map and found that in order to get good cell service we'd have to get on the other side of the mountains. Brock really needed that good service because he had an all company meeting that he needed to facilitate on Tuesday afternoon. We had planned on detouring south and then coming up north to get our trailer tires looked at (Brock has noticed one tire is wearing funny so he wants to get the alignment checked) at a Jayco authorized service center, but decided to just head straight from Carlsbad to Alamogordo which is where we would've been in three or four days anyway.

We got as much school done as we could and I worked on tax information gathering so that I could send stuff off to our CPA so he can prepare our return. I think we are getting later and later every year. I also called ahead to be sure that the spot that I'd hoped we could stay at in Alamogordo would have a vacancy and that we could pull in late. Yes on both.

Mondays Brock always has a lot of meetings and the last one ended at 3:30 so we decided to get the trailer as ready as we could without him and then at 3:30 we'd finish hooking up and hit the road for the 3 hour and 47 minute drive. :O) While he was on that last call, I took Bryn, Spence and Sky down to the indoor pool and let them swim for the last 40 minutes or so. They had a blast! Skylar is growing up so fast. He decided he didn't need his water wings anymore and was swimming all over the pool by himself, even in the 8 feet deep. He still looks a little thrashy and requires close supervision, but he was very excited to be a swimmer!

We ended up leaving Carlsbad by 4 pm with one stop to get a propane tank filled.

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon with a high of about 88 degrees as we drove. There really wasn't a lot to see along the highway we were taking... A few oil pumps and big storage cylinders... Some really stinky cows in very high concentrations.

But then, guess where we stopped for dinner?

That's right "The Dairy Capital of the Southwest". Huh?

More hints...

Aliens welcome at Arby's

You wouldn't believe how excited I felt to see that they had a Wienerschnitzel. It's not as cute as the one in Corvallis when I was a kid, but still...

We read about a Chinese restaurant that got great reviews on google so we parked in a large parking lot and walked over and had dinner. The food was slow to come out, but it was hot. We didn't really agree with the reviewers about just how GREAT the food was, but the server was happy and kind and the prices were ok. I'm not sure a sit down dinner was the best idea though because it was after 7:30 when we got back on the road and we still had more than two hours to go!

We ended up driving through a mountain pass in the dark. The road (I-70) was really nice, recently redone I think, for which we were thankful. From what we could tell, it might've been a really pretty drive. Our gps has a feature that can tell you what elevation you are at and Brock turned that on, so we watched ourselves climb and climb. Would you believe that in the middle of the desert, we topped 7500 feet? The Yukon performed beautifully and we made it up and down the mountains no problem. We pulled into our rv park, which is right in the middle of town and yet feels pretty quiet, between 9:30 and 10 pm. We got out our headlamps and got set up and everyone was really ready for bed.