National Park Deprived!

We awoke to a new America - one in which all national parks were closed! This will only be temporary until the children in Washington stop their bickering and decide to do their jobs! In the meantime, we, like lots of other folks I'm sure, are caught in the middle of this squabble. So we decided we'd take advantage of the disruption of our plan to head to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  We decided to get to a Camping World to have them look at our main air conditioning unit which has started vibrating like there's a bad bearing in the fan or something. There are two Camping World locations in the Las Vegas area, one in South Las Vegas and one in Henderson. The Henderson store was marginally closer to Valley of Fire so Lee decided to head there.

But before we left Valley of Fire, we drove over to the Visitor Center again to visit the Gift Shop. Mary wanted to get some postcards to send to the grandkids. The remaining stock in the gift shop was a little disappointing but we found a couple postcards and a park decal for the truck back window. We said a last goodbye to the Visitor Center (for this trip anyway) and went back to the campsite to hook up and head out.

The Camping World wasn't real busy although their service department was booked until Friday so we made an appointment for 11AM and drove up Boulder Highway to the Roadrunner RV Park. It's not a bad park though we're right on the inside of the wall along Boulder Highway which is a pretty busy six-lane boulevard so it's a little noisy especially during the day and early evening. But the price is good ($16/day plus tax) and we need to be somewhere in the area for our appointment with Camping World on Friday.

Las Vegas is not our favorite desert location - it's a big city in the middle of the desert and it's HOT. It encompasses two of our least favorite attributes of a location: big city and HOT. I think this place is built on the sun. Oh well, we'll be able to survive until Friday and maybe by then the situation with respect to the national parks will be clearer. We can only hope.