Fairwell Uncle Mike

On July 4th Uncle Mike passed away…

He will be cremated as per his wishes and his ashes spread over Lake Erie in Ohio along with the ashes of his wife and parents.

The Church Group he was a member of in Pennsylvania will be holding a memorial service for him at some point once COVID-19 restrictions are removed for those who knew him from the 1980s-2019 before he moved. His steel models and railroad models will be on display.

The National Museum of Industrial History (https://www.nmih.org) will be accepting the remainder of Uncle Mike’s historical artifacts and research and putting them on display in the appropriate departments.

We will be donating his belongings to the local charities so that they may live on to help people here in the community he called home.

Thank you for your continued support.

Dementia Sucks…

We’ve been in Franklin, Massachusetts taking care of Uncle Mike and his property since April 23rd. We departed our home in Nevada on the evening of the 16th of April and drove the 2,812 mile trip to assist Uncle Mike. On day five of our six and a quarter day journey he tested positive for COVID-19 and was institutionalized for six weeks. Nobody told us how long he would be in the medical facility and until the red tape was cut we could not get him out.

It’s been just about two weeks since he returned home and …

…it’s not pretty. Dementia sucks. Short term/Long term care facilities aren’t pretty. COVID-19 sucks.

I know getting old and passing away is part of life, but watching it in slow motion isn’t fun…

2020 Travel So Far and Plans for the Year

We’re back on the road again – actually we never left. Since January 1, 2020 we have been to The Grand Canyon and Flagstaff in Arizona. We’ve visited Caliente, Ely, Elko, Winnemucca, Reno, Carson City, Tonopah, Hawthorne, Las Vegas, and other points in Nevada. We’ve traveled to San Diego, Buena Park, and Palm Springs California.

Later this week we will be heading north to San Francisco, Sacramento, and other points Northern California before heading back to Las Vegas to restock.

While we don’t expect the Coronavirus to impact our traveling, we are taking precautions and self isolating as much as we can. We’re eating in for every meal as most, if not all, sit down restaurants are closed in the areas we are visiting. We’ve got a well stocked camper.

Just a short update today.

Back on the road … Flagstaff

Feeling the itch to travel we decided to pop out to Flagstaff for the long weekend. Our first stop was in Kingman for an overnight, no great shakes there.

Our journey to Flagstaff on the other hand was a little more interesting as the weather turned colder and snow started to fall…

According to Sean driving in the snow wasn’t bad, but I’m sure glad he was the one behind the wheel at the time…

Once the weather cleared we headed to Sedona for a day trip and visited Slide Rock National Park.

Seeing as it was again cold, we enjoyed a fire before turning in for the night. Monday we make the trip back to Vegas.

Wind…

Today we have been fighting 27 mile per hour winds on Interstate 5 in California. Lots of cross winds on the highway means we’re taking it slowly and carefully.

We’re expecting to be at the campground around four this afternoon.

No Bars in More Places – AT&T vs. Verizon

With all of this digital nomadity so far, one thing remains constant: the need for internet. And one of the weirdnesses of my day job is that I can’t have my own personal phone and their cell phone plan (wat), which means reimbursement and picking my own plan and all the “fun” of discovering what is best in an area.

AT&T Pros and Cons:
Pro: With the Mofi hotspot and a SIM from an iPad on my unlimited data plan, I haven’t experienced any sort of data caps yet.
Con: But, when the signal is low…. it’s a horror show. Case in point – Mesa, AZ. Yes, one of the largest and newest metropolitan areas in the country, the greater Phoenix region, seemed to have the absolute worst AT&T coverage I’ve seen yet, and that includes driving across the middle of nowhere truckstops.

Verizon Pros and Cons:
Pro: Didn’t need to go to the store at all to get set up. The eSIM in the iPhone 11 Pro Max Super Giga Bonker, or whatever the marketing department came up with, allowed me to almost instantly switch from AT&T to Verizon on my personal plan. And since Andy’s got another AT&T phone, we can have some balance to the force; if one doesn’t have service, the other has to…
Con: HOLY COW EXPENSIVE. Not only do you get a data cap (though how hard that cap is, I haven’t experienced yet), but $100 a month gets you A Single Line with 35 GB of data hotspot.

T-Mobile – An incomplete review:
I had a T-Mobile SIM as a second line in the iPhone, and voice/text only. Can’t go wrong with $20 for a phone line, though. The downfall is when you want them as a backup data plan; again, back up to $70 for a single line with only 10 GB of data through hotspot.

Beats the Alternative – Satellite:
I’ve not been able to get some decent information on the net about this, but Viasat seems to do RV plans, but on the high end of $150 a month plus equipment. RVDataSat seems to have real unlimited plans, but the cost of the equipment is upwards of $15k!

Week in review…

We departed Vegas a week ago for Mesa, AZ to attend a book selling event.

Arizona was nice, it was good to hang out with Damian and Apple as well as see people at the convention – but the convention itself was a bit lackluster compared to prior years…

Green Acres RV Park was nice, but tight. Every available space was filled.

We’re now in a lovely RV Park in Palm Springs, California bringing our trip to twenty-eight states visited so far.

Back on the road…

We’ve been back in Vegas for nine days and have cleaned and refilled the Airstream for travel again. Today we depart for Phoenix to attend a convention and hopefully sell some books. After that we’re heading up the pacific coast for my day job, then back to Vegas.

Once back in Vegas for a few days the travel continues, but by plane. While Sean will be heading to Minnesota, I’ll be heading to Boston. Then we both meet up for two weeks in Vegas as friends come to visit before heading out to Chicago in December.

It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks.