Chris and Cherie's vintage bus needed some rubber hinges replaced. You could probably call the process a productive comedy act.

This week was spent in Hurricane, Utah, which is about 30 minutes from St. George. The past two months have been pretty hectic so we really needed a place to chill for a week and get some work done. Our friends Chris and Cherie, of Technomadia, were invited to stay and speak at a nice RV Park here in Hurricane and we decided to join them and be neighbors for a week. Chris and Cherie recently bought a vintage bus (their last rig was a small trailer) and have been doing a lot of work on it, so there has been a lot of bus nut geekery going on. It's fun to compare notes since I have my own vintage bus project in the works.

It turns out, the St George RV Resort was just what we needed. It's pretty far from any big town, so it's easy to get work done without being distracted, but they have a nice pool, hot tub and club house for when we need to pry our eyes off the computer screen for a bit. (The hot tub is especially nice!)

We also got to meet with a company called Powerful Signal, which is located here in Hurricane. They make small antennas that boost the power of cellular signals. Since we are stuck with using little mobile broadband devices for internet, and we're often out in the middle of nowhere, we might end up getting one of these for the bus. Karen also updated her mobile broadband service this week to something much more ideal for bus life. Before, she was using a Verizon card with a 5 gig/month limit. Not only was it slow, but 5 gig really isn't enough for our needs. Now, she just got a mobile 3G/4G hotspot from Millenicom that can talk to up to five different devices. 4G promises to deliver up to 17 times the speed of our normal 3G connection, but is only available in major cities at this time. The limit is now 20gig (10gig of 4G and 10gig of 3G) and there's NO contract. The device is tiny too, smaller than an iPhone.

Karen's new 3G/4G hotspot. It's so small! We're looking forward to testing out the speed once we get into a 4G area (mostly big cities).

This week, I got some new lights and gadgets for light painting. We tested them out after dark one night.

Overall, it's been a productive and relaxing week. On Tuesday, we're moving on, bound for Albuquerque and the annual Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. On the way, we'll most likely stop in the Page, AZ area for at least a night. (It's hard to drive right through Page without stopping!) More to come…