Last Stop Before Death Valley

 

With our Utah sightseeing done it's time to get to our campground where we will stage up before entering Death Valley for the winter.  The Clark County Shooting Complex RV Park in north Las Vegas is familiar to us and it works out great for getting service work and shopping done before getting remote.

We've signed up/paid for a couple weeks at this location.  Our proposed arrival date for our campground host position with the National Park is October 9th.  I say "proposed" because severe weather and threats of a government shutdown are always in the mix this time of year.  In fact, it was twelve years ago at this same time that we discovered this park.  We were just finishing up as campground hosts at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were about to transition to Big Bend National Park in Texas when the government shut down hard.  So the first of October 2013 we were cast adrift and were scrambling to find someplace that could accommodate us for the duration of the shutdown.  A fellow volunteer told us he was heading to a shooting complex in Las Vegas to be a volunteer range master for the winter and said they had an RV Park that could hold us.

With some trepidation we decided to give it a try.  Back then we had barely a fraction of the ability to do research via the web that exists today.  There was no Starlink, the nearest cell tower was 26 miles away on the opposite side of the Grand Canyon and the concessionaire's guest wi-fi was worse than the old dial-up.  We were going in on word of mouth, essentially blind.  But we are glad we did, it worked out great.

Our arrival this time is our fourth stay and we are finding it consistently well cared for and operated.  We're about to tap some repair services and do some serious shopping.

Our site is over 80' long and wide enough that we can park 
the vehicles and trailers side-by-side.
That's the shotgun firing line by the tree.

The view out our back is into the valley and the city.

Firing line and RV park to the south.

Firing line and RV park to our north.

The shooting complex and RV park are on the side of a mountain, literally where the road ends, in North Las Vegas.  It is a large operation with the shotgun range and RV park adjacent to the range being 0.8 mile long.  There are several hundred acres more of archery, a pistol challenge course and a rifle and pistol range.

First order of business is to get a satellite TV guy (we know one from previous visits) out to replace all the cabling between the base of the satellite dish and junction box through the roof.  We had been having signal problems for more than a year but no one had been able to find the source.  But through some sheer dumb luck I found it and now we know what to replace.

Another service person we need is somebody that can rebuild hydraulic jacks, as a mobile service.  But that is the nice thing about Vegas, it is big enough that you can find just about anything you need.  And we did.  We have appointments for both repairmen.

While we're waiting for repairs Cyndee found State Park that we were not previously aware of, Valley of Fire.

If you like desert environments like I do then this place should be on your list of 'must-see'.

Back at the RV park, we are getting reminded that two nights a week, Wednesday and Thursday, they have a shoot under the lights night.

Almost a mile of shotguns knocking down clay pigeons until 10:00pm

If one turns around from the range your view changes to the city.
The Strat is in the center and that's the beam of light coming out of the Excelsior 
on the far right.

The day came for the repair on our leveling jack.  The right rear had been leaving puddles of hydraulic fluid everywhere we stopped from Devils Tower to Las Vegas.  How it kept working I'll never know.

Rebuilt jack bolted up and ready for new hoses.

New hydraulic hoses being made on-site.

At thirteen years old I, and the repairman, expected the jack to be a real bear getting it off the rig and tore down for repair.  But to both our surprise there was no corrosion and everything came off, no fuss.  The jack was taken back to the repairman's shop to be rebuilt.  He was expecting it to be very difficult based on the way it was leaking.  But like removing the jack from the rig, disassembly of the jack was easy.  Actually, scary easy.  As soon as he removed the ram endcap everything fell out in pieces.  How this thing was working is a miracle.

Anyway, what he thought would take until the next day was completed all in the same day.  He returned in the middle of the afternoon, reinstalled the jack and made all new hoses.  I worked with him for about an hour purging the system and then we were good to go.  Except for the big hole in the budget this was a good experience.

And then the government partially shut down.  We had been getting communications from our volunteer coordinator about arrival dates, training and work schedules.  Now it is radio silence.  If we try to call, the phone is not answered and there is no voice mail option.  If we try to email we get an automated response that they are furloughed and would not be communicating with anyone.  Okay, here we go again.  We're in limbo until something shakes loose.

In the meantime the satellite guy made it out for his appointment and in no time I had a solid fix to my satellite signal woes.  The whole system is back to working like the day it was installed.

A nice surprise is that our son, who just finished up a seasonal job with a resort outfit on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, showed up in the campsite next to us.  I understood that he was going to do some serious off-grid camping before transitioning back to his winter job in Death Valley.  He did do some boondocking but decided to spend some time with the old folks just running errands and watching movies.  We're loving it.

And now, just 48 hours before our scheduled report date, we still don't know if we will be able to get into the campground if we show up.  So on a whim I called our volunteer coordinator's mobile phone and to my surprise she answered.  Turns out that she is officially employed two days a week and I just happened to call on one of those days.  And it just so happened that she was in the middle of crafting and email to all us volunteers to tell us to report in as scheduled.  However, nothing else was going to be as scheduled.  Training and field trips are postponed indefinitely and campground openings are still a question mark.  For now, everything that was closed for the summer will stay closed.  So that means that the only campground that will be open is about half of the Furnace Creek Campground.  So that means that at least four and a half campgrounds that won't open but have volunteers in the park.  That's a bunch of volunteers that they are going to have to find someplace to put them.

As we spend the 8th prepping for the next day's move weather forecasts begin popping up on our phones.  It seems that there is a significant storm moving up from the Baja and threatening significant rainfall with widespread flash flooding.  Knowing how easily roads get washed away leading into and in Death Valley we decide to delay our departure by at least one day.  Sure enough by mid-day on the 9th there were storms all around us and reports of flooding in Furnace Creek.  Glad we waited.

But bright and early on the 10th we started disconnecting, pulling in the slides and hitching up the truck.  We had an easy two-and-half hour drive and literally coasted the last 10 miles (yes, it is downhill for that far) into Furnace Creek.  We were greeted by a familiar face at the campground entrance station.  She too was on a two-day-a-week work schedule.

As soon as we got the trailer unhitched and power to the A/C's (it was in the mid-90's and the sun was scorching hot) we got over to the post office to pick up mail that had arrived ahead of us and to officially secure our PO Box.  We had called ahead a couple of weeks ago to arrange for a general delivery and to reserve a box.  The box that we had last season was available so our mailing address is unchanged from a year ago.

We're back in our spot from last year.
Furnace Creek Campground, Camp Host Site 2

Even though we are in our campground host position there is still an air of being in limbo because we have no immediate direction and nothing of real concern as long as the government is shut down.  We're in wait and see mode.