ER

5 a.m. Saturday morning, Les wakes me.  "What? What's the matter?" I ask him.  "Don't panic, but I think we need to go to the ER" he tells me.  Immediately, I'm wide awake.  He's been in pain since about 1 a.m.  Lower right side.  This scenario is eerily familiar.  Some of you may remember that just over 4 years ago, Les had an intestinal blockage which required emergency surgery and a week in the hospital in Redding.  This is all we can think of as we prepare to find an emergency room.  I throw some clothes on and grab the GPS from the car (booting up the computer would take too long).  I look up hospitals on the Garmin and find 2 hospitals to choose from.  How to choose?  Both are fairly close, but distance seems the only answer. I pull up the number of the first one and dial.  "Your call cannot be completed as dialed."  Oh my, maybe that hospital is defunct.  I pull up the number of the other hospital and dial.  "Your call cannot be completed as dialed."  What the???  For a moment I'm frazzled.  Then I think to dial 411 and finally get connected to the hospital and tell them we're heading in.  Later I find out that the area code has been changed and they only kept the old one active for 6 months.

I'm a little distressed with the red lights and actually run one.  Then I blow through an intersection and lights flash!  Les tells me that I just got a ticket!  Oh well, an intestinal obstruction is a life threatening situation and all I can think of is getting him to the hospital.

More than 6 hours and a CT scan later, he's released to go and pass that nasty kidney stone!  We were both delighted!  This is so much better news than what we had been preparing for!  Woo Hoo!

Since the stone had moved to a location that wasn't causing him pain, after getting back to the RV and getting showers, we decide to go ahead and take our planned drive out to White Sands National Monument.

 He looks pretty good for a guy who was up all night and spent the morning in the ER!

The sand is actually gypsum and is very fine.

Sunday, and it's finally time to leave Las Cruces.  We were very busy here and had a wonderful experience, but we realize that there is a lot of sight-seeing that we didn't get to do.  I'm sure we'll be back.

As we're running down the I-10, Les asks if I'd like to get a little practice behind the wheel.  I'm thinking it's a good idea, since only yesterday I was wondering how we were going to get home if Les was laid up. I drove for a couple of hours and right after I pulled into a rest area near Willcox, who should pull in right next to us but Tommie & Sandra from the Las Cruces build.

He took both pictures because he wanted to make sure you could see vehicles running down the road.

We made it Catalina State Park, outside of Tucson and were rewarded with great views and an amazing sunset.  For you RV people, this is a very Big Rig friendly park.  It also happens to be almost across the street from our new friends that we met on our Alaska cruise back in August.  We had a great evening with them.

From Tucson, we headed up to the Phoenix area for a couple of nights and more great dinners with friends.

Las Vegas!!
Our favorite thing to do in Vegas is seeing shows and eating great meals.  We did both!  Got last minutes tickets to Cirque du Soleil "O" show at the Bellagio.  This was our second time to see it, but the last time was over 6 years ago, so we were not disappointed.  After show dinner at Olives in the Bellagio, yummy but took over an hour to get our entrée.  Breakfast the next morning at Encore; we both had our traditional Eggs Benedict.  I see serious gym time in our future.

Heading Home
And now we're on the last leg, running up I-5, heading home.  It's been a good trip, but we're ready to be home.  This coming week brings all the family together at our house for Thanksgiving.  And we have much to be thankful for.

I invite you all to learn more about Habitat here:  http://www.habitat.org/how/factsheet.aspx