Monday, March 14, 2011 (Big Bend of Colorado State Recreation Area, Laughlin, NV)

I was up just before 6:30 this morning and opened the blinds so I could watch the sun come up over the mountains. When Steve got up, he took this picture...just beautiful!

After coffee, it was time for exercises, showers and breakfast...then we were off to check out Laughlin. But first, we needed to go to Walmart and pick up a new HDMI cables for the TV...somehow, the current ones managed to get squished when lowering the TV and has frayed. So we headed over the river into Bullhead City...that seems to be where the big stores are. On the way back, we filled up with diesel at $3.70/gallon...the lowest price in the area. That was fun...the diesel pump was so slow...it took us over a half hour!

A "Welcome to Bullhead City" sign with the casinos of Laughlin in the backgound...good picture, Di!

Unfortunately, the main street in Laughlin, Casino Drive, is undergoing some major road construction and traffic was backed up like crazy! By the look of the road, it certainly needs it! Although it took awhile to get through the traffic, we drove all along Casino Drive passed all the casinos to Harrah’s.

We turned around and drove back to the Colorado Belle Casino...it looked really cool and we wanted to check it out. It was 1:00 by this time so we thought we would have lunch in the Captain’s Buffet. It was okay but not as good as the buffet at the Quechan Casino in Yuma.

After wandering around the casino a bit, we headed down to Don Laughlin’s Riverside Casino...now that is a big complex! There is even a Classic Car Museum.

We each “donated” $10 to the slots and then decided to walk along the Riverwalk to the Aquarius Casino. We were both going to try our luck out on the slots there...another $10 each. Steve hit a lucky machine right away and his $10 was soon up to over $45...me...well, that’s another story. I only had a $20 bill so I was only going to play down to $10. Hmmm...that didn’t work so well...Steve was having such great luck, I just had to keep playing...so I was soon down the $20...that made my loss for the day $30...oh well...I had fun! Steve finally cashed out when he was at $19.25...that made his loss for the day 75 cents. He did much better that I did!

Okay, that was our fun for the day! We headed back to the truck and then home. It was sure a hot one today...85F...so we immediately grabbed a bottle of water each and headed for the shade of the cabana. We had had a big lunch so we weren’t very hungry...grilled cheese and tomato soup for Steve and salad and soup for me. But not for a little while yet...it was cooling off quite nicely outside, so we sat out enjoying it. I had the laptop and Steve had the road atlas as we discussed our route home and the stops along the way. We have a number of things we want to do in Oregon...shopping mainly...bikes, mattress and Steve wants to get some work done on the front-end of the truck—to soften the ride.

So we are hitting the road tomorrow...heading west towards Bakersfield, California...then north.