Old Friends – New Friends

I'm going to market
Jacob's Tails
directly
If you are interested, please let me know
Website:
http://www.firstepbooks.com/

Click on the pictures to enlarge them

The best thing about revisiting places you been to before is often revisiting with folks you have shared time with before. The dry-camping area at the Tropicana Express in Laughlin, NV is one such meeting place.

Mya – that gal we met at Avi eight or nine years ago who traded me a book for a Tin Man last year – was there and had phoned to see when we would be arriving; the two sisters – Julie (from Alaska) and Nellie (from Georgia) and their spouses (Bill and Joe) were already there; George and Gay from Ontario were there and Chuck and Sheila would be arriving any time. It was good to see everyone again and find out how the summer had gone.

Unfortunately (for us) the Casinos have tightened up considerably – no more Comp rooms; penny machines that take a minimum of 45 cents for each spin and watching $20.00 go poof in five minutes. It wasn’t quite the fun time it has been other years.

As someone said, “Parking isn’t free; you spend twice as much in the Casinos.”

But the food is good and you can still get a Prime Rib dinner for $7.99 (up a dollar from last year).

But there are usually new friends and when Don and Jan moved in beside us, it didn’t take long for Jan to whoosh me off to the mall to find a new jacket and Fred and Don to solve all the problems of the RV world.

Sallee and John came up from Yuma for a couple of days and we all went off to see what progress had been made on the Hoover Dam Bypass. The Dam was both the world's largest hydroelectric power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure when it was completed in 1936 more than two years ahead of schedule and supposedly under budget.
After 9-11 traffic over the Dam was severely restricted and construction on the Bypass was started in January 2005.

The Colorado River Bridge, nearly 2,000 feet long, is the central portion of the Hoover Dam Bypass. It will span the Black Canyon (about 1,600 feet south of the Hoover Dam), connecting the Arizona and Nevada approach highways nearly 900-feet above the Colorado River.
Needless to say, it is impressive and they expect to have it completed by 2011.










As we travelled along, we happened to notice this strange array of something off to the west so we went off to investigate. What we discovered was a complete field of solar panels and a few more being worked on. It turns out that what we saw is called Nevada Solar One. It is a 64 MW commercial-scale solar energy plant. They expect it will eventually have 19,000 receivers (panels) that cover 350 square acres. Unlike the solar panels we are used to, these are curved. Two panels face each other to create a trough that seems to extend for miles. There were hundreds of troughs in this one field.
This system collects the powerful desert sunlight and converts it into 750-degree F thermal energy, which can then be used to create steam for electrical power generation. The receivers are filled with a special synthetic oil that can withstand the intensity of the daytime heat as well as the much lower temperatures at night and still protect the sensitive glass/metal seals of the receivers.









They say the power produced is a little more expensive than wind power but is more reliable and can be built closer to where it is needed. Interesting, eh?!



Well, that’s our stay in Laughlin. We usually stay longer than the two weeks we stayed this year but it just doesn’t seem to be as much fun as it used to.