Somewhere on a desert highway

Leggy and I went to Death Valley and around the Mojave and Yosemite area last weekend. Pictures and narration are in the works, but for now...here are a few of our adventures in motion. It's a little long, but I couldn't resist the 360 panoramas. We went to the flattest place on the planet, The Racetrack (home of sailing stones); we found old miner's clothing and eating utensils and went in half a dozen mines (tailing wheels and stamp mills included!); we spotted coyotes, tarantulas, and rabbits; we ate cold supper, and we saw Ubehebe crater. We also dabbled in Darwin and Cerro Gordo...both of which deserve a return trip. Varney rarely leads us astray, but this time we found stuff that I'm sure Varney doesn't even know about.



This trip only increased my obsession with buying waterless property to call my own. I even have the Cerro Gordo caretaker's number programmed into my phone.

I call it "Banjindia"

These pictures are a mix of both Madeline's and mine from our travels in India. The banjo of course is yours truly.

Garbagefish and other dirty things

On the way to Rough and Ready many things happened (read more here and here about R and R, Bridgeport and French Corral). First Leggy and w.d. and I couldn't figure out how to get a camp site...and we ran into a nessie-infested yet beautiful reservoir near Dark Day Campground. Then we meandered out an around a huge dam that I didn't even know existed. My truck hung out with other trucks
and then we booked our campsite with some lady on a floating-campsite-booking-office out on the water. Said lady told us we could feed the fish.

Me: "What kind of fish are they, there's some big ones."
Lady: "Oh, those are just garbagefish....they are really loud."




Then, as if that wasn't enough, we had trouble finding firewood, we ate luke warm chili, and it rained on all of us...soaking the tent corners and dripping through the truck onto my head. Don't get me wrong though...we had a great time. The best was the Fruit Jar Pickers, Rough and Ready's one and only weekly concert. Oh yes.

I put some gratuitous ukulele from the ukefest at the end.

Garbagefish on their way / NOPD

So, I've heard that people are sick of my prehistoric palm movie and that they want to hear about garbagefish and see garbagefish footage. Okay okay...coming soon.

I was just in New Orleans for the National Coalition of STD Directors annual conference (hail Kelly), and contrary to popular belief, I didn't just talk about chlamydia the whole time. In between sipping coolaid-lace drinks and feeling full of beignets I went on an informal tour of the ninth ward and south ninth ward. Louisiana's STD director drove us through and told us all about the rebuilding efforts as she's experienced them from the health department stand point.

Many folks down there call the hurricane "Hurricane NOPD" because the police basically took over the main STD clinic in New Orleans, looted it, and denied doing so. Booooo.

What left a lasting impression on me was the way that many gutted homes were being literally eaten by weeds and covered over with green. Homes that still had their facades were marked by a familiar spray painted X with four quadrants. One quadrant specified the date the home was searched, one said who searched it, one said how many people were found and the other specified the number of animals found. Often next to these Xs were sprayed statements like "John and Brenda are okay," or "young dog under house."