Focht Family Blog

Yesterday we hit the slopes at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe. I had a hard time finding lessons for the kids that wasn’t a day care. I now understand why people leave their kids in ski school for the day. We signed the kids up for the mid-day session and Nathan and I made 3-4 runs down the slopes before Samantha had to be picked up. Because Samantha didn’t have any other kids in her age and ability group she had a one hour private lesson instead of the two hour session. I was very proud of myself. Although we only did beginner slopes I made it down without falling each time. When we first arrived we took the kids to the ski school and got all of their equipment. Unfortunately we didn’t know they were going to require eye-wear so my mom had to make a run to the gift shop to get sunglasses for all.

The ski school staff helped them with everything including getting their ski bibs on around the boots. Here is Timmy and Josh and Samantha as they were starting their lessons.

After the kid’s lessons were done we had lunch and then went back to the kiddie slope. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen. It has a conveyor belt that you stand on that takes you to the top instead of a lift or tow rope…

Here is Nathan helping Josh down the slope…

It was the first time Nathan had skied backward. However, Josh made a run later backward himself. I think he actually did better going backward then forward because he tries to do his wedge the wrong way. :) Nathan got more practice later when he took Samantha down the beginner slope. He said she would get scared and fall so he ended up skiing backward down the hill with her holding on to him. Here is Timmy, Samantha, and Josh while they were on the kiddie slope.

The last few runs down the kiddie slope I figured out a good way to help Josh that was a lot of fun for both of us. I crossed my poles in front of him and put my skis on the outside of his skis and we went down as fast as the small slope would allow. I meant to have my mom get a picture but she was helping Timmy get to the lodge to take off his skis and boots because the slopes were closing. Oh well… another day without me in the pictures. We had a lot of fun so we have decided we may have to look for more slopes on our travels. :)

Today is Joshua’s 4th birthday. It is hard for me to let go and realize that my kids are not babies anymore. Here is a picture of Josh’s cake. We decided that we hadn’t watched Wall-E since we bought it so we were going to watch Wall-E and have a Wall-E cake.

Here is Josh’s birthday present…

After dinner, the cake with the candles was served. Here is Joshua blowing out his candles and opening his present…

The present was an outdoor adventure set that came with a watch, a compass, a telescope, a camera, and binoculars. What we didn’t realize was that there was also a small tent. The kids decided to try to put together the tent…

The results were not pretty…

Tomorrow we are taking the kids skiing at Lake Tahoe. This will be the first time for all of them so they are getting lessons. Nathan has not been skiing in about 20 years and it has been about 15 years for me so hopefully it is like riding a bike. :)

Yesterday was a LONG day on the road driving from Las Vegas to Reno. This was made worse because the Putnam hitch on our RV is cracked. Spartan knew that some of them were cracking. We just didn’t think we were one of the ones affected. Unfortunately Nathan discovered a crack while we were at Lake Mead. It looks like it has been there for awhile but Spartan said they did not recommend towing anything with it. This meant that both the RV and truck had to be driven separately. Nathan drove the truck and I drove the RV. There is NOTHING between Las Vegas and Reno. There really wasn’t even a break down lane. There was one town right in the middle called Tonopah that we stopped at to get more gas in the truck and eat lunch, bathroom breaks and such. Then it was back on the road. We left Las Vegas at 8:00 in the morning. We stopped for lunch and also stopped right before Reno at a Walmart so we could buy Josh a birthday gift and we didn’t arrive at the campground until 7:00 at night. I think I am still tired, even after 10 hours of sleep. Spartan is trying to figure out what hitch to replace ours with but it won’t be fixed until San Francisco at least and maybe not until Bakersfield so until then we will both be driving.

This is the campground that we stayed at while visiting in Las Vegas. This is another park that is within a National Park. This is a picture of sites 15 & 16 which are river view sites.

Things I like: Again, this park has 50amp, water, sewer and cable. It has beautiful views of Lake Mead. I will let the pictures below talk for the view.

Things I don’t like: They do not allow you to take truck campers off of the truck. We went to Las Vegas the first night but we were greeted in the morning with the camp host telling us that the camper needed to be back on the truck. :(

After leaving the Grand Canyon we headed towards Las Vegas. We had planned to go to the Hoover Dam during our time there but decided if we could find a parking spot we would take a tour of Hoover Dam while driving through. Here is a picture of the parking spot we found…

So it was a little walk to the tour. :) Here is a picture that I took from the RV.

This picture shows how low the water level is right now. The white areas are usually under water.

We decided to take the power plant tour because the Hoover Dam tour doesn’t allow kids under 8. While waiting for the elevator to take us down to the bottom (very fast), I took a picture of the Dam from the window.

The tour takes you down into one of the bypass tunnels that were built to divert the Colorado River while the dam was being built. Here is a picture of one of the tunnels that the water still flows through at 80,000 gallons a minute. You could feel and hear the water rushing under your feet.

This is a diagram that shows where we were.

Then they take you to the room that has the power generation turbines. Here is a picture of them.

Here is one last picture that I took while we were driving away…