Week 1026-1029 - Grandparents Day - 05-10-2026

Adapted from Dwight Yoakam's "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere"
"I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's one place I want to be"

Grandparents Day

Our mission this week was to get to Grandparents Day at Durham Elementary in Durham, California. GP Day has been a school tradition for 50 years. It is well attended and some grandparents come a long way. The Durham school is K to 12th grade on the same campus which is where Chad went to school. Today Emily and Chad are both teachers at Durham.

Here's the targets of the mission.

Our first stop was to visit Rosemary. We have known Rosemary at Palm Creek Resort for 15 years. She and Ellen shared happy hour almost everyday for 12 years until Rosemary sold her park model, to us! We have visited Rosemary in Eureka, California where she moved after leaving Palm Creek. Now she is closer and living in a beautiful community in Wickenburg, Arizona. Love you Rosemary!

1) Our site at Desert Cypress RV Park in Wickenburg, clean, large, level pull thru sites.
2) Heading from Wickenburg to Kingman on route 93. Last year this road was rough, today it is 95% smooth.

1) Kingman is on route 66, can you tell?
2) Fun sights along the way.

On highway 68 heading to the Colorado River. Pictured is Laughlin, Nevada where we have stayed a dozen times. This day we are staying in Bullhead City, Arizona at Colorado River Oasis RV Park.

1) Two days on the river was not enough, but we're heading to Grandparents Day.
2) Ellen strolls along the river to get photos.

Trains, plains and automobiles on the way to the Las Vegas RV Resort. Resort? To us, just an RV park. But, it did have some nice facilities: pool, spa, showers, lounge area, small fitness center and nice people. It was close to Black Mountain Recreation Center for pickleball where we played.

Making progress from Las Vegas, we headed to Tonopah.
"A thousand miles from nowhere", well, hundreds for sure. We planned to stay at Tonopah RV Park as we had twice before. But is was full! So, we boondocked at the new Loves Truck Center. It was nice!

Ahh, one of our favorite stops, Sportsman Beach Campground on Walker Lake. It has 33 sites and only a were few taken. Just $4 per night with peaceful views of the lake and mountains.

Over the years we passed by the lake many times. Then one day we stopped to rest. It is wonderfully pleasant. This is our fifth time staying. One year it was 100 degrees and completely empty. Though dry camping, we stayed three days all to ourselves.

Our next night was at Gold Ranch RV in Verdi, Nevada. It is right on the border of California. In fact, part of the resort is in California! Leaving there, the terrain changes from the Walker Lake desert to snow covered mountains near Truckee, California. Now, we are in California: freeways, green trees, cars, high fuel prices, lots of people and busyness. . .

. . . but soon we reach Emily and Chad's house in Butte Valley. A quiet little respite on 3 acres on the creek. We pull into the full-hookup site they created just for us and we're ready for the grandkids.

1) Here they come! The family has from oldest to youngest: Micah, Zeb, Coralyn, Hannie and Davie. Davie seems to enjoy being Hannie's seat cushion.
2) Davie took this photo of Grandpa who is ready to start a new travelogue.

1) Friday was Grandparents Day, our mission. It was for Coralyn, Hannie and Davie. We had such fun, we neglected to take many photos. We spent four hours in the classrooms seeing their work over the year and watching each grade sing in the choir. Each grade had all the kids singing three great and patriotic songs.
2) The next day was the May Day Parade. Like Grandparents Day the whole town shows up with half of them in the parade. Emily and Chad's clan are here. Emily, Chad, Coralyn, Hannie, Davie, Ellen, Chad's parents Steve and Esther and friends.

1) Micah on the clarinet in the high school band.
2) Ellen grabs a beer from the rolling vendor (story below).
3) Zeb behind the tuba in the junior high band.
What's with Ellen? The local pub float came by and a young lady was holding out beers for someone to take. But no one did. So normally shy Ellen feels bad for the vendor and runs out and takes the beer. Then she pawned it off on someone in our group.

The May Day continued with games and food in the park and at night fireworks. Chad said they were the best fireworks he has every seen. We have to agree, they were fantastic. They started on time, ran continuously and were launched just 200 feet away. Being that close, they are best photos of fireworks we have captured on our camera.

A palm tree?, fountain? and a butterfly? Very cool.

Mission accomplished!

Now we rest from our travels. Where are we going next? We'll let you know when we know!

With love, Pete and Ellen

Photos from May 2026