A New Format

As you may or may not know, Apple's for-fee, dot-me services are going away to be replaced with iCloud, a free service for Mac owners. It's actually a good deal. It does everything dot-me does except the two features I use the most: the iDisk public folder and the gallery. So my large(ish) file transfers will have to go by FTP or as email attachments. And so it's also time to move to blogger for sending you my thoughts and images. I think this will be an improvement.


It's been a while since I've sent anything so there are a few things to tell. In January my dear, kind, once mother-in-law died. So I drove from Slab City to Las Vegas where I left my camper at my friends Joel and Deann's house. From there I flew (urk!) back to Maryland to go to the funeral in Willow Grove, PA. I'm really glad I went, for my kids, and for me too. I stayed in Silver Spring for 10 days so I got to spend time with my kids, see some friends and I even got to play some music. There was also an Occupy event at the Supreme Court decrying the Citizens United decision. So I went. 

I went back to Las Vegas and stayed for a couple of weeks. LV has some good thrift shops and wide, relatively flat streets, many with bike lanes so I rode my bike a lot there. For me the best things about Vegas are the landscape around it: Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire, Lake Mead, Mt. Charleston, etc. The best Vegas-y thing is Freemont Street on a Saturday night. Free live bands, tacky souvenir shops, zip lines, buskers and lots of crazy people. 

After leaving Vegas, I headed north through Pahrump (is a speed bump there a Pahrump-bump?) to the north end of Death Valley. 

Death Valley is kind of like what Las Vegas would be like without Las Vegas. Here's Badwater Basin, The lowest elevation in the United States, 282 feet below sea level. In the picture of cars parked at the bottom of the rock wall you can see a sign near the top marking sea level. 

Zabriskie Point is beautiful and accessible to hike around in.

A few random shots from Mojave National Preserve: