Sunday, March 15, through Sunday, March 22, 2015: The Week Of The Trailer:

This week we will rent a trailer to carry to our house in Arizona some of the extraneous stuff we carry in the rig, plus the stuff from Bill Shelton's house that we are taking.  That will involve leaving Pahrump on Wednesday, spending two nights in Pasadena while loading the trailer, then taking a two-day trip to Williams (spending Friday night in Needles), emptying the trailer, spending Saturday night in Williams, and returning to Pahrump on Sunday.  We prepared a little on Sunday, taking the hitch out of the truck, reorganizing the bed, and otherwise starting to get ready to leave for several days. 

Becky took Ramsey and Kelsey on a walk in the desert outside our RV park on Sunday---letting both of them off-leash for a while.  She started that with Ramsey just recently.  Kelsey has always been very good off-leash and Ramsey is beginning to understand---and cooperate. 

Sunday night we splurged on Filets Mignon and a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for dinner.  I sautéed onions to add to the mix.  Quite tasty.  Becky continued her pickleball playing on Monday while, as usual, I tended to the dogs and read.    

The Monday night redbox movie was The Theory of Everything, an absolutely terrific film with an astonishing performance by Edward Redmayne.

Tuesday morning, we started off with a breakfast of very nice French Toast in the lodge after which I finished The Fourth K, which was too long and not that interesting.  We then proceeded to get ready in earnest for our trailer adventure---sorting stuff and packing what we could in the truck bed, and setting up the rest in our living room to put in the trailer Wednesday morning.
 
Wednesday morning at 8:00 I was at the U-Haul place to pick up the trailer.  It might have been the oldest trailer in the world, but it was just fine.

We loaded the trailer and headed out about 10:30, arriving in at Becky's dad's house in Pasadena, 254 miles away, in mid-afternoon after an uneventful trip.  We loaded the trailer with the stuff we're taking from the house, but left the trailer parked in the driveway. 

We then headed for Le Reve, the hotel in Pasadena where we were to spend the next two nights.  We were tired from the trip so we ordered a pizza from the nearest Papa John's.  It was very good.  Wednesday morning, I dropped Becky off in downtown LA for a facial at her favorite salon, then spent the next 1 1/2 hours killing time.  I first stopped by Becky's grandparents' former home at 340 N. Beachwood Drive in the Hancock Park area to take pictures for the family's enjoyment,

then drove by my old house on Las Palmas Avenue which looked the same as it did when I sold it to the current owner in 1984, then did a drive-by look at a house that had been rehabbed by my friend Mark Brown and his inamorata, Pat Thomas, that is across the street from Mark's house (about two miles from Becky's grandparents' house).  I then picked up Becky and we returned to Bill Shelton's house to finish looking through the hundreds of books for anything stuck in there that might be interesting. 

We found a few items, including Becky's sister Carrie's first bible, but nothing that was earth-shaking.  We then used our truck to help Becky's sister Wendy move some stuff from the house to her house---only 1/2-mile away.  On the second of three trips, we got a call from Becky to the effect that Ramsey had escaped from the yard heading for who-knows-where.  We joined in the search.  Becky finally located him in the yard of the house just below Bill's house, but had quite a time getting him out because the gates were locked.  But all was well.

We then went to Becky's brother Peter's home in San Gabriel for a meeting of the trustees of the family trust created by Bill and Nancy Shelton several years ago.  The current trustees---Becky, Peter, and Wendy---held their meeting while Kai Kuwata, Terry Shelton, and I watched, and tossed in a few words of course. 

After the meeting, Wendy, Becky, and I went to Nikki C's restaurant in Pasadena for dinner.  I had Cioppino, while Becky and Wendy shared Fish Tacos and a Kale salad.  The food was pretty good, but otherwise we weren't terribly impressed with the place.

We packed up Friday morning and headed to Bill's house to hook up the trailer and start out on the first leg of our trip to Williams.  On the way to the house, we stopped at a nearby park to give the dogs one last chance to "prepare" for the trip.  At one point, Becky looked up at a couple passing on the sidewalk just outside the park and recognized Al Nicol, a long-time co-worker from her Union Bank days.  We had a nice chat with Al and his wife. 

Our first overnight stop was Needles, California, 250 easy miles away.  We stayed at the Best Western Colorado River Inn. 



We were too tired to go out for dinner so we ordered take-out from the restaurant next door---Juicy's Famous River Café.  It was a "party platter" of deep-fried stuff that was actually pretty good though terrible for our diets.  The next morning we had a free breakfast of scrambled eggs at Juicy's (as part of the stay at the Best Western) and headed out for the 175-mile leg to Williams.  Again, the trip was easy.  We arrived in the early afternoon, deposited the trailer's contents at the house, mostly in the garage,

and said hello to Danielle Worthington, our broker and new friend, who stopped by.  We walked around the house and congratulated ourselves on having bought such a nice place.  Then, while Becky walked Ramsey and Kelsey around the nearby Cataract Lake County Park, I dropped off the trailer at one of the local U-Haul establishments.  We then checked in at the Travelodge for the night.  We were exhausted so I went to the Safeway to pick up cheese and crackers for dinner.  After stuffing ourselves, we crashed for the night.

Williams had an anonymous donor who gave the town a large number of solar lampposts to adorn both Route 66 streets, the eastbound one-way Main street and the westbound one-way Railroad Street.  It turned out that many of them don't work so their solar panels have been removed for repair.

After waffles for breakfast at the Travelodge on Sunday morning we left early for the 265-mile trip back to Pahrump.  Without the trailer we were able to make better time.  We stopped at a Lenscrafters in Las Vegas so Becky could see whether it was worthwhile getting her glasses fixed (she suffered a slight chip while rescuing Ramsey from his great escape on Thursday) which turned out to be not worthwhile, then proceeded on to Pahrump.  It was nice getting back.  For dinner, we finished up the cheese and crackers from Saturday night, then I watched a couple of Red Eye episodes on the DVR, and we hit the sack.  It was the end of a nearly 1,000-mile roundtrip, and we were tired but had a good feeling of accomplishment.