Would you take your friend's last Milk Dud???

Here we are - back in Vegas again.  Sometimes I think that all roads lead to Vegas - cause everytime I tried to get out of here - I am back again...This time - it is to see Liz off back to England.  Her 2 weeks here have come to a close - we made it back (limping almost; with no rear visibility for the motor home is missing both the rear view camera to a blown fuse and the passenger side mirror). We are staying again in Sam's Town.  This time - with a NASCAR race being held this weekend - the RV site is full - so we have had to settle for their other site - which is across Flamingo Blvd - slightly older and with less personality, but it is a site to rest our weary bones - so we take it. 

Monday night - Liz's last one here - we went to the Mirage - to see 'Love' with the Cirque de Soleil - fabulous show.  I thought that once you had seen one show like this (I had seen the Cirque de Soleil in London) - they were pretty much the same - but no - not the case.  I think since the music was all original Beatles songs - remastered and pumped through an amazing sound system that it simply made the night for me.  I could have closed my eyes and just listened to the music without the spectacular visuals - but glad that I didn't.  Putting both together was great.



Tuesday - we puttered around the site - did some laundry and then Liz and I took off for some ice cream from the Bellagio - before dropping her off at the airport. Karen has been  feeling ill, so we left her to rest..  With Liz's departure - Karen and I are now left to our own devices - except that before we can go anywhere we  need to fix the mirror and camera - so I contact a local Winnebago dealer - find out that they will have to order the mirror from the factory - so we won't be going anywhere for at least a week.  After much discussion - we decide that we can't possibly stay in Vegas for another week without going crazy - so we come up with a cunning plan.  We will rent a car for a week - drop the motor home off at the dealers - and go explore places we weren't able to explore the first time around like Yosemite and the Sequoia National Park.  We even manage to get a fairly good deal on an SUV for the week - so that is what we decide to do.  We need to organise a few things - but by Friday - we will be ready to go explore -



A Joshua Tree in the desert to the west of Las Vegas



Friday morning comes, we have packed and cleaned the motor home (don't want the mechanics to think badly of us for being messy so we even clean the mirrors!) and got ready to dropped it off at the dealership.  Karen follows me in the Jeep - and off we go - first to the RV service shop which is only a few hundred yards down the road.  How more convenient can they be - right?  WRONG - in order to get there you have to do a U turn or a 3 pt turn on a 3 lane busy highway.  I don't know about the rest of the world - but I know that the motor homes turning radius won't allow the U-turn to occur and I have never been very good at doing a 3 pt turn in a 34 foot motor home (usually works out to a 15 pt turn instead of the 3) so instead we took a 15 minute detour, found another casino parking lot to turn around in and then backtracked upon ourselves (with the rising cost of gas and 6 mpg with the home - that felt like another 2 or 3 gallons just to get there).  Driving out of Vegas - going west when your travel home is left behind is a very weird feeling.  I almost began missing it - although that said - there is no way that we could have taken it to the places that we wanted to see - so this is the best plan.  Much as I love driving it - motor homes and mountain passes don't go together well. 



For Friday night we have booked a hotel in Visalia (which actually turned out to be about 400+ miles from Vegas).  We didn't get on the road until after 12pm, decided to take the scenic route on the way out (not realising how far Visalia was) and definitely began regretting our decision to go that far the first night.  I bought a box of milk duds to tamper the hunger pangs I was experiencing.   Karen has never had a milk dud before and said she only wanted to taste them - so I gave her a dud to try.  She liked it well enough but allowed me to eat the majority of them - which I did over the course of the next hour or so.  Finally - I was down to the last of the milk duds when Karen asks for another one.  I look down and see that we have two left - so I hand her one and say - 'this is your last milk dud.'  Being the polite Brit - she says 'no - I can't take your last Milk Dud...'  I normally would have allowed her to sacrifice - but this time I decided to do the right thing and explain that no - this wasn't THE last milk dud - just HER last milk dud - as I had one last one for me as well.  I was kind of hoping that she would still stick by her British upbringing and offer me her last one - but I guess hunger changes a person's normal reactions -  cause she took it and ate it...who would have guessed!  More on our adventures in our next installment...