It's Still Spring, Right?

The forecast is calling for triple-digit temperatures for the next few days. Summer is still, what, three weeks away? I think this means that August is going to be around 80 Kajillion degrees. At night. On the plus side, that means it won't be dusty. All the dust will have melted into glass. It'll look neat from space. Sure, there won't be any life here, so tourism will be tricky. Unless you count the Lava Men. And people won't even acknowledge they exist under the best of circumstances. Prejudice is an ugly thing.

Laughlin, Vegas, Valley of Fire

Our whirlwind vacation of gambling has come to a close. We didn't win big, but we didn't lose much. Especially considering that 85% of the time was spent in a casino. Well, apart from driving. With this trip, we have officially put 30,000 miles on our car. You know, the one we bought with nearly 9,000 miles on it. Five years ago. (We don't drive much, can you tell?)

The picture is from our day trip-within-a-trip to The Valley of Fire. It's the place that inspired us to move west. Our first visit to the park was on a tour. This time around, we got to drive through it ourselves and explore it more. I'd go there again in a minute. Fascinating rock formations, petroglyphs all over the place, and busloads of cranky Japanese tourists who only know the English word "shithole". (If you think you're in a shithole, honey, you need to just stay home.)

Apart from a bit of an inconvenience with the last night's check-in that wound up taking three hours, and also found me growling at an exceptionally snotty old bat who I then called "meat" (in the consumable, liver-and-a-nice-chianti sort of way), it was a good trip. I'm in no hurry to go gambling again, but that's really nothing new.

New Neighbor

Yet another perk of having actual trees right outside the front door. We've got hummingbirds, house finches, golden finches, doves, woodpeckers, and now this guy. He's pretty big, too. And loud. I think we're going to need a bigger bird bath. And chunks of raw meat.