We had an intruder in our van, so we were ready for action last night. We set a trap on the dash, and one behind the toilet, as these were the two places we had heard it.

As I was reading my book in bed, I hear rustle rustle. Isn’t it bad enough we have covid? Do we really need a mouse running over us in our sleep?

I got my torch out and saw the furry thing scuttle past. ‘Just hop in the trap and kill yourself,’ I screamed at it. It didn’t, but the rustling stopped soon after so I must have given it a fright and I was able to get some sleep.

Then, in the middle of the night, rustle rustle, snap, crash, scream (me) as the mousetrap tumbled off the dashboard. I daren’t get up to check in case there was blood. So I carried on sleeping.

In the morning, I was feeling okay apart from a headache. Mike was feeling pretty crappy though. I made him get up and check the mouse, and sure enough, there was a dead mouse on the step of Rodger. Phew, hope his family isn’t here.

Yesterday at Walmart I bought some toys so decided to use them. A thermometer and an oximeter. Mike had quite a high temperature so I gave him some paracetamol, and lay him down with a cold flannel on his head. My temperature was only slightly high.

Then I thought to check our oxygen levels with the oximeter. Mikes was at 90%. Usually anything below 90, they admit you to hospital and put you on oxygen. I checked my own, to make sure it wasn’t a faulty meter, and mine was 98.

So I took him to Urgent care, for just in case. Everyone here is very blaze about covid. When we arrived, I announced we had covid, expecting the people in the waiting room to scarper. But no-one even so much as reached for their masks. Nobody cared. The lady on reception just asked us to keep our masks on. She also said we were at altitude meaning that oxygen levels would be lower if we weren’t used to it.

When the nurse checked Mike, his oxygen was up to 94%. Maybe getting up and moving around had made the difference. The doctor said to focus more on difficulty breathing rather than a number on the oximeter. As Mike hadn’t been having trouble breathing it was no problem.

The doctor recommended antivirals if it was less than 5 days, but we thought it was borderline. I asked if we could get a prescription in case we got Covid again, and he was happy to do that. Then he mentioned the price of them and we politely declined. Actually it was more of a gasp, followed by a “yikes, that’s expensive!” And the doctor was confident he’d be better in a few days.

Another thing that happened while we were at the doctors is a woman came in with her boy who was suffering abdominal pain. She said something about a lockdown at his school as if it was a normal occurrence. I quickly googled it and there had been reports of a shooter at the university, and they shut down all schools in the area as a precaution. The USA seems so normal until you hear about these things.

Oh, I didn’t mention the cost of antivirals. Put your guesses of the cost in the morning chat. (Susan, no guesses as you know)

Hope there’s no rustling tonight!

Today I woke up feeling much better. Mike, not so much. We left our lovely campsite in the cathedral gorge and went to Cedar City, which is a nice town surrounded by snow capped mountains.

We dropped our starlink satellite at the UPS store to be returned. Apparently it will take 14 days before the refund us as it wasn’t cheap.

Rodger went to the spa. He needed a good hoovering. Not everything in America is expensive. It cost only $2 for unlimited vacuum time. So hopefully that will keep some of the dust out.

Sister Susan had recommended we get Covid tests, so we would know how much to rest. so we picked up a couple of these and stopped at an RV park in town much to Mike’s disgust. He wanted to find somewhere nicer, but we needed to do laundry and he needed rest.

We got our laundry on, then I got Mike to do a Covid test as he’s been achy as well. Pretty much straight away the pink and blue lines showed up. So I did one too. Took a bit longer but COVID positive too. Bummer. So we might see about staying here for few days to recover.

And as if having COVID isn’t enough, we have an intruder in our van!

We set traps in the hope of catching him.

Today we did nothing. Mike woke up congested and achy and I’m still snotty and headachy. So we rested. I had the heater set up to switch on in the morning and this helped with the minus temperatures.

It was stunning day, not a cloud in the sky. The temperature got to about 20 degrees but there was still a cool wind.

Mike has been trying to set up our starlink satellite internet for when we are out of range up north, but starlink won’t take our money. We’d ordered the satellite kit from best buys, and it should have been just a matter of paying for a monthly plan. But having done some research, it seems like many people are having the same problem. It might be because we don’t have a USA card, but it shouldn’t matter for a global company. And they don’t have any way of contacting them for support. So we’re going to send the satellite kit back tomorrow for a refund.

We both felt well enough tonight to watch the sun set and the colours change on the rocks, reminding on Uluṟu in Aussie.

We played some monopoly deal and went to bed at 8.30pm, a whole hour later than last night! Hopefully we’ll feel better tomorrow

We awoke to a cold and windy day. Our perfect campsite overlooking the lake was no longer perfect. So we packed up and moved on.

I am still suffering this crappy cold and am very congested. Today my ears completely blocked up as well as my nose.

It was solar eclipse day today and even though we are a little bit over from it I thought there might be a dimming effect. But there was nothing.

We drove about an hour to the cathedral state park where they have electric hookups so we can run our heater. The temperature will be dropping to Minus 2 degrees overnight, and this isn’t helping our colds. And they have showers.

Cathedral gorge is amazing with intricate designs in the rocks like gothic cathedrals . Except it’s all naturally formed. We explored a couple of slot canyons and these were really neat, some going for miles! I was a bit worried about snakes and scorpions in the narrow bits.

There is so much to explore here but my cold is getting worse, not better. So we opted for an early night. Mike is now a bit snotty.

It got really cold overnight and we need to get more blankets. We woke up in our free desert campsite and it was such a beautiful spot.

We had a lazy morning, not really wanting to leave. I am all snotty with a full blown cold but I hope that’s all it is.

We visited the valley of fire state park today., It’s an incredible landscape of vibrant red sandstone formations sculpted by wind and water over millions of years.

It was the perfect weather for hiking as it’s not too hot, but I’m feeling pretty crappy with my cold. But there was plenty to see on the drive. A highlight were some well preserved petroglyphs. There were pictures of big horned sheep, snakes, wheels and other stuff I couldn’t make out.

We then continued heading north, stopping at a free campsite beside a lake. It’s amazing, with a table and chairs and fire pit, very private as the camp sites are really spaced out.

We might stay a couple of days to get over these colds. We had banana and peanut butter wrap for dinner and had an early night.

It got really cold overnight and we need to get more blankets. We woke up in our free desert campsite and it was such a beautiful spot. We had a lazy morning, not really wanting to leave. I am all snotty with a full blown cold but I hope that’s all it is.

We visited the valley of fire state park today., It’s an incredible landscape of vibrant red sandstone formations sculpted by wind and water over millions of years. It was the perfect weather for hiking as it’s not too hot, but I’m feeling pretty crappy with my cold. But there was plenty to see on the drive.

A highlight were some well preserved petroglyphs. There were pictures of big horned sheep, snakes, wheels and other stuff I couldn’t make out.

We then continued heading north, stopping at a free campsite beside a lake. It’s amazing, with a table and chairs and fire pit, very private as the camp sites are really spaced out. We might stay a couple of days to get over these colds.

We had banana and peanut butter wrap for dinner and had an early night.

We had a nice sleep at the truck stop but it was cold this morning. We got a takeaway coffee then headed to the lake mead visitor centre to ride our bikes along a historic rail trail to Hoover dam.

Mike pumped up the tyres on our bikes and we were off, cycling along a gravel path overlooking lake mead. It was 4 miles along the cycle path, which went through five tunnels through volcanic rock. and had signs to stop and read about the history of the railway.

The railway was built in the 1930s to transport all the material required to build the dam and equipment for the power plant. When they were building the dam, trains ran 24 hours a day.

We couldn’t cycle to the dam so we locked our bikes up and walked the rest of the way.

It was another 10mins walk down stairs to the dam. The water level was really low in the lake but we saw a couple of fishies.

Afterwards we continued in towards valley of fire but got sidetracked by a free camping site overlooking lake mead. We saw our first coyote sauntering along.

We are both still pretty tired so spent the afternoon sleeping and reading our books. Off to valley of fire tomorrow.

Today was a bit of a stressful day.

We woke early this morning and it was freezing! Yesterday’s 26 degrees was replaced by 7 degrees this morning. We had a nice nights sleep in Rodger though.

We headed towards Lake Mead today but didn’t get very far. Our tyres needed air but none of the pumps worked or didn’t pump our tyres enough. We needed 80psi and they only did to 60psi. So we went to an auto shop in Henderson to ask them to do it, as well as an oil change and a check our van. They said to come back at 2pm. it was currently 10.30am.

We were nervous wondering what they might find wrong with him. He had been creaking and groaning more than I remembered.

While we waited we headed to Walmart to get a SIM card for my phone. I bought a straight talk one the same as I had last year. But to set it up we needed wifi. Thankfully Walmart has free wifi, so we made a little makeshift office with the chilli bins and set about getting my internet working.

Three hours later and we still weren’t connected and feeling incredibly frustrated. We headed back to drop Rodger off for his spa treatment and headed to Starbucks for a much needed coffee.

Thankfully Starbucks had internet and I was able to finally get connected to internet with the help of straight talk agent online. I know have phone calls too, which is helpful for calling campgrounds for vacancies.

We picked up Rodger and thankfully nothing is wrong with him. They rotated the tyres, brakes and tyres in good order. The steering and struts are old though and may need replacing at some point.

By the time the service was done it was 4.30pm. We wanted to stay at Lake mead but all campgrounds were full. So we stopped at a truck stop outside a casino for the night.

We slept in! We had the alarm set for 8am for just in case we didn’t wake up and just as well we did!

I kicked Mike out of bed and sent him to get coffee. He came back with two black ones, having forgotten we take milk. This is very typical jet lag. But he did bring croissants so all was forgiven.

We finished off our beef patties and bacon from the previous night, had showers, then looked at our mess. Our bags had somehow regurgitated all over the room. If I didn’t know different, I would swear someone had been rummaging through our stuff. And we have so much stuff! Have you seen our article on packing light? Well, we didn’t do any of that!

By the time we packed up, it was 9.30am and we were supposed to pick up Rodger at 10am, and there was a massive queue to check out. Seriously, why do we need to queue to check out! A man saw us in distress and was able to check us out on his mobile check out thingy. At least we hoped that’s what he did!

We caught a taxi to the storage unit, arriving only 10 minutes late. I don’t know why I was feeling nervous. Guess I was worried what condition we’d left him in, would he start, had he become a makeshift casino?

I needn’t have worried. There was no sign of slot machines or partying of any kind. There was no sign of mouse poo or creepy crawlers. Not yet anyway.

Then it was time to start the van. He started first time! He had been on trickle charge so all good.

Mike put our bikes on the back of the van and we were off! First stop was the CVS store where we had a parcel to pick up. But more about that later.

We had planned to go to Walmart and go shopping but decided to head to the Rv park instead. We are staying at the rv park next to Circus Circus casino on the Vegas Strip. It’s pretty good location, but the laundry here is closed which is why we chose this place! Oh well, we’ll just have to go to bed in smelly sheets that have been cooped up for 6 months.

We spent the day getting Rodger organised. We were quite excited that we still had coffee, and also some two minute noodles. And some muesli. So no need to go to Walmart in a hurry.

We went for a short walk down the strip, but neither of us could be bothered sightseeing. Or gambling. I tried to find a SIM card but no luck. And a lady coughed on me. Gross.

On our way back through the circus circus casino, a circus act was about to start so we stopped and watch some trapeze artists from Argentina. They were amazing. And a free show!

Things are so expensive in Vegas since covid. Last nights burgers were $20 ($35 nzd) but it was delicious. Today we saw a slice of pizza for $8.50 ($15). So when we went out for dinner we weren’t expecting much.

A steak restaurant caught my eye. I looked at the prices and baulked! The cheapest steak was $88! (Nz 150), and this was in the cheap hotel!

We continued on and I saw pizza for $20.

‘Is that for a whole pizza?’ I asked.

‘Yes’

‘How big?’ Mike asked, questioning the suspicious pricing, expecting a tiny pizza.

She pointed to a massive pizza box, bigger than anything I’d seen in nz. It was so delicious and we only ate half before we were full. So leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

When we got back to our van, a Canadian couple were parked next to us. They insisted we visit them in Canada and gave us their phone numbers and email address. People are so friendly here!

Almost time for our first nights sleep in Rodger. We’ll let you know how it goes.

As I mentioned in the last blog, we had a show to catch at 7pm. Our plane landed on time, got in a taxi at 5.30pm, made our hotel by 6pm and we were feeling good about making it to our show on time. That was until we saw the queue.

Now I understand why the backdrop to reception is a giant fish tank. It’s to calm people down. We queued for about 30 minutes to check in, so still plenty of time.

Our room was nice. We dumped our stuff and made it to the show with minutes to spare, as the show is in our hotel.

We saw cirque du Soleil Love which is a show set to music from the Beatles. It was incredible. High energy, people flying about in the air, kombi vans on stage. There was so much going on we didn’t have time to feel tired! I would definitely see it again.

After the show we headed out for a walk, but it was super busy. We were going to watch the bouncy water at the Bellagio but the crowds of people put me off. Besides, we’d seen them many times before!

By this time we were incredibly hungry. We found a burger place. Mike had a corned beef and sauerkraut toasted sandwich while I had the healthy option. A huge greasy burger! But oh it was delicious. Two giant beef patties, freshly made. (It wasn’t your mass produced all the same shape nonsense). There were 8 rashers of streaky bacon, melted cheese, and fried onions. It was the best burger I’ve ever eaten, even though I only ate a quarter of it. We took the rest to our room for breakfast.

Tomorrow we pick up our van!