We traveled to Las Vegas in early February to attend the annual winter rally of the Leisure Travel Van Southwest Roadrunners Travel Club. This year around 80 Leisure Travel Vans (LTV) and their owners were in attendance.

It’s always an exciting experience to see so many LTV’s in the same place and to meet up with fellow owners. MaryAnn and I love traveling in our LTV, but even more than that, we love to fellowship with our LTV friends.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures on this trip for two reasons: one, I was driving for a change and two, we have traveled this road to Las Vegas many times and have many pictures of this route in other posts.

Unfortunately while ridding our electric bikes on a mountain trail at Lake Mead, MaryAnn hit some lose gravel causing the bike to go in one direction while she flew off in another direction. When she landed in the gravel, just missing several very large boulders by inches, the impact with the ground caused her left humerus to be jammed up into her shoulder.

MaryAnn also hit her head, but fortunately she was wearing a helmet and sustained no injuries to her head. However, she dislocated he shoulder and broke her humerus in six places.

Since we were out in the middle of nowhere on a trail in the national park, I called the park visitor center for help. Thankfully my cell phone had enough service available for me to make the call.

It took over an hour for the park rangers to find us since the trail we were on was so long. In fact the search party had to use the GPS coordinates from my phone to finally pin point our location. Fortunately we were not alone, our friends, Dick and Shirley who had been ridding with us were there helping and praying for MaryAnn while we waited for the park rangers to find us.

When the search party arrived in four SUV’s, there were four park rangers all packing firearms and wearing bulletproof vests. The rangers tried to reset MaryAnn’s dislocated shoulder unsuccessfully, not knowing her arm was also broken. They had called for an ambulance, however the ambulance was having trouble getting to us due to our remote location. By the time MaryAnn was placed in the ambulance the rangers had to administer Fentanyl for pain and it was now after dark.

I had to ride my bike back to our RV (about six miles) where one of the rangers met me with MaryAnn’s bike. After packing up the bikes in the RV, I followed our friends, Dick and Shirley 30 miles to the hospital.

After several hours in the emergency room she was released. The surgeon there in Las Vegas told us the arm was broken, but surgery wasn’t necessary. However, when we arrived home in Arizona a few days later and went to an orthopedic surgeon, we discovered surgery was an absolute must, since the arm was not only broken in six places and twisted, facing the wrong direction.

MaryAnn has a long road to recovery. But we hope to be ready for our summer road trip at the end of May. Please keep her in your prayers.

Some of our friends and family think we should sell our electric bikes because they seem to be a little dangerous. Right now MaryAnn intends on getting back on her bike as soon as she heals up. MaryAnn says she wants to keep ridding as long as she can and enjoy life to the utmost! Let the adventures continue! See you on the road for as long as we can afford it…