Six Hours From Las Vegas

When I worked on my Australian Job Application video, I looked at a lot of pictures before I picked the shots that made it into the video. Some of the pictures on this clip were shots I considered for my video, and some are just pictures I love. Every one of them is a place within a six-hour drive of Las Vegas. Take 30 seconds to enjoy a clip of Travels with T!

The Australian Job

No, The Australian Job is not the new Mark Wahlberg movie or a euphemism for activities that might take place in a Nye County establishment. It’s a six-month caretaker/blogger job on Hamilton Island, which sits on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. I just uploaded my video application to their website, but since the job posting closes on Saturday, I’m not sure when (or if) my video will be viewable.

To learn more about Hamilton Island and this incredible job, check out their website at:
http://www.islandreefjob.com/#/home

UPDATE: My application has been accepted! Please visit my page on the Tourism Queensland website--you can vote for my video: http://www.islandreefjob.com/#/applicants/watch/D8rOg45_hig

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Music in my video is courtesy of http://www.purple-planet.com/

Presidents’ Day Weekend at Dumont

My son and husband are getting ready for their end-of-the-season trip to the Dumont Sand Dunes, that place where ATV lovers of all types converge in the cooler months. The Presidents’ Day weekend is the last three-dayer between now and the blistering summer heat. After early spring, it will be October before the temperature cools enough for riding.

Last year I spent the day hiking in China Ranch before I met my men at the Dunes, but this year I’m staying home. I’m applying for a job in Australia, and I’ve got a book to finish editing. Besides, I prefer my sand dunes on the quiet side. Dumont is a lot of things, but quiet is not one of them.

(Hopefully, my hubby will take an occasional break from zooming over the dunes to snap a few pictures for the blog.)
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Photo information: my pictures last year (2008) from Presidents’ Day weekend at Dumont.

The Trees of Lorenzi Park

When my writing group moved from the Northwest Senior Center to Derfelt in Lorenzi Park, I noticed two things about our new home in historic Lorenzi: the trees and the construction. The large, old trees are rare finds in Las Vegas. People fish from the shore of a large pond and ducks beg for handouts. This area was purchased in 1911 by David Lorenzi and later developed into a resort; its waters originally came from a natural spring, although I'm not sure if that's true today. Despite its historic status, Lorenzi Park has been subjected to a lot of redevelopment recently. Many of the mature trees were destroyed to make way for tennis courts, although it looks like an effort was made to save some trees around the playground. I was appalled to find neon pink blazes all over the trees in the senior center’s courtyard, right outside the room where my group meets. According to my sources, no one will say exactly what the blazes are for, only that “desert landscaping” is being planned. Almost every tree in these pictures is marked for whatever it is they have in mind. I suspect it has something to do with a chain saw.
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Photo information: My pictures at Lorenzi Park, taken on Wednesday, February 4, 2009.

The Vegas Girl Ventures Back into the News

The Vegas Girl is not alone in her opinion of the daily news--namely, that it contributes to Prozac sales. But I like to be informed, at least somewhat, so I resolved to find a way to keep current on the news without becoming clinically depressed. Today, I bravely skimmed the Friday edition of the RJ/Sun as well as the weekly View, then I took a trip to Barnes and Noble (what a hardship, I know) to pick up some of the alternative/freebie magazines—Las Vegas Weekly, CityLife, Home News, BLVDS (clean, crisp, professional layout) and Las Vegas Woman. I’m happy to say that I feel informed, but not terrified of any impending apocalypses. Here are some of the stories I found:

From Las Vegas Weekly: “The Museum We Can’t Use.” The Springs Preserve, a project Las Vegans should be proud of, is home to the almost-complete new Nevada State Museum. All that stands between it and completion is about $7 million dollars. Wouldn’t this be a project that might benefit from some of the controversial programs in the current stimulus proposal? Like that NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) money everyone is so up in arms about?

If you want the inside Vegas scoop, don't miss the Knappster (aka George Knapp) in CityLife. This week his column discusses the monorail and the Nevada Water Authority's revisionist memory about its stance on global warming and drought. Seems that 1,000-foot bathtub ring is impossible for even bureaucrats to ignore.

Every Friday the RJ runs an automotive section, Drive. Today, I read that the Mint 400 is back in town, and Tech Inspection will take place on Fremont Street March 27. My son and husband are marking their calendars. They love the smell of high octane racing fuel in the morning.

The proposed cuts to Nevada's educational system have enraged and shocked many residents. I thought it was interesting to read Geoff Schumacher's commentary, "Schools blame game" in today's RJ. How are we ever supposed to attract a more diverse economic base if our school system can't do its job? And it was so. . . interesting to read that Higher Education Chancellor Jim Rogers feels that rotten parents are to blame for our failing students.

The Summerlin Home News reports that the Summerlin Art Festival has been cancelled this year due to the poor economy. This is truly a loss for festival season; the sidewalk-chart art of La Strada dell'Art sets it apart from other Las Vegas festivals. They plan on resuming in 2010.

Years ago, when my husband and I climbed to the peak of Mt. Charleston, near the summit we passed the site of a 1950s plane crash. I had no idea at the time that the passengers onboard were working on the U2 spy plane. Now a local group would like to commemorate the victims of the crash. Summerlin South View carried a story on the crash and the effort to memorialize the passengers and crew in "Honoring silent heroes."

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Photo information: My picture of the 2008 La Strada dell'Arte (September). See my post from October 2, 2008, for more photos and information about the festival.

Las Vegas Recommended Reading

If you want to understand Las Vegas a little better, plenty of authors have written books to enlighten you. I’ve been working on a reading list of books about Las Vegas, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

Many things may affect our future as a city. A strained educational system. Sinking gaming revenues. A precarious economy. A devastated construction industry. Virtually non-existent social services. The elephant in the room, however, is water, and that’s a good place to begin. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is an well-written examination of water issues throughout the Southwest, not just Las Vegas, and it's incredibly readable. (The book inspired a companion documentary series.) Take a look at that 1,000-foot bathtub ring around Lake Mead, and you should see exactly why this is an important issue for all of us.

The late Hal K. Rothman wrote and spoke about Las Vegas with a depth and insight that is still missed. Get a copy of his book Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century to read his observations about Las Vegas and what’s in store for her.

Las Vegas can be a city of tremendous opportunity, but she’s cold-hearted when you’re down on your luck. Matt O’Brien writes about the people who are currently living under the City of Neon in our flood channel system in Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas.

Are you for or against the Mob Museum? Organized crime has spawned a whole sub-genre of Las Vegas books to go along with the public's fascination with La Cosa Nostra. You probably know about Ben Siegel, but do you know who Dave Berman was? Susan Berman, his daughter, grew up in a young Las Vegas when the Mob truly did run things. She later wrote Easy Street, the True Story of a Gangster's Daughter, and became well-known as an expert on Las Vegas. Years later, Berman was the victim of a murder (still unsolved), which Las Vegas author Cathy Scott wrote about in Murder of a Mafia Daughter (Also see Scott's books on the Ted Binion murder and the Tupac Shakur murder.)

What about you? What's your nomination for the Vegas Girl's Recommended Reading List?
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Photo courtesy of Tijmen van Dobbenburgh at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/384772

Man Bites Dog

As I was sorting old Vegas Girl posts from 2008 into categories (known in Blogger-speak as labels), I noticed that the News category was pretty slim last year. In previous years, News would have been as full of posts as Travel, but in 2008 I decided I couldn’t take the daily news anymore.

Last year, I switched to the weekend-only edition of the Las Vegas Review Journal/Sun, and cancelled my subscriptions to USA Today and The New York Times. The old newspaper adage that “If a dog bites a man, that’s no story; but if a man bites a dog, that’s a story,” just wasn’t working for me anymore. I shudder to think what I paid each year for those three newspaper subscriptions, but in my former days as a news junkie, it was well worth it. In 2008, however, as gas prices rose, housing prices fell, unemployment grew, and the stock market tanked, I could no longer tolerate my daily triple dose of death, disaster, destruction, and despair. Let’s not even talk about the election, that incessant stream of maddening commentary on the candidates’ personalities instead of upon their policies.

The weekend edition of the papers is just enough news to keep me in the loop, along with the free community papers (the Sun's Home News, the RJ's View News--in my opinion, they're a good preview of newspapers' future--smaller, more focused, less frequent.), Time Magazine, the occasional "Charlie Rose Show," and Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show." My favorite part of the weekend RJ is Margo Bartlett Pesek's Sunday Travel column, "Trip of the Week," which is a wonderful source of information about the kinds of places I like—unusual, out-of-the-way, and lightly visited.

I do check the news from time to time, just to see if things have changed, and invariably it’s the same message: we’re all gonna die. Either we’re going to be kidnapped and pushed off the deck of a cruise ship, we’re going to fry in the cataclysm of global warming, antibiotic superbugs will slaughter us, or the economy will be the Depression Version 2 and we’ll all die unemployed, uninsured, and broke (as the ice caps melt and the bird flu kills off whoever is lucky enough to find a patch of land).

Looks like the Vegas Girl’s News category may remain a little anorexic in 2009.
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Photo courtesy of Sanja Gjenero at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/953849

Under Construction

Like many streets in Las Vegas, the Vegas Girl is under construction. I’ve re-designed the blog’s look so you can cruise thru categories (aka labels)—just scroll down and check on the right hand side of your screen. I’ll be adding more features, including links to other Vegas-based blogs, in the weeks to come.
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Photo Information: Photo courtesy of Zern Liew at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/800090

The Kelso Sand Dunes

A few months ago, I got an e-mail from a gal who was wondering if she could hike at the Dumont Sand Dunes. No. It’s an ATV area (aka OHV Area), which is great if you like quads and sand rails, but it’s not a place to do any hiking. Fortunately, Dumont is only one set of sand dunes in the vicinity of Las Vegas. If you’d rather hike the dunes than ride over them, head south from Dumont into the Mojave National Preserve and check out the Kelso Sand Dunes.

In the summer months, Kelso is too hot to explore, but from about November through May, hikers can explore sand dunes that are closed to off-road vehicles. The hike to the top of the 700-foot sand dunes is one of my favorite hikes because you can slide down the face of the dunes when you start your journey back to the car. If you’re lucky, you’ll hear the dunes “booming.” Kelso is one of only 30 sand dunes world-wide that create this rumbling vibration that you can hear and feel.

Last spring I saw the Kelso Dunes in bloom, right at sunset. The evening primrose perfumed the air, and the afternoon light put shadows on the dunes’ faces. While the other desert flowers were closing, the primrose covered the ground in big white blossoms.

Photo Information: My pictures at the Kelso Sand Dunes in April 2008.

Zzyzx: The Spa in the Mojave

When the Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994, I remember being a little unsure about what, exactly, we were preserving. (This was before I discovered the MNP.) Then the urban landscape overtook the desert around Las Vegas. I’m glad now that something was set aside before the entire Mojave Desert was covered in Wal-Marts and tract homes.

Last year, my family visited Zzyzx. Today it’s home to a desert research group, but the remains of the former spa built by Curtis Howe Springer still stand. In 1944, Springer filed a mining claim on the land and proceeded to build several buildings, including a spa and hotel. The only problem was that the land was never officially his. The BLM took the property back in 1974.

The abandoned buildings on the edge of the dry Soda Lake are slowly being claimed by the desert. A boat embedded between two palms sits next to the horseshoe pit. The vast dry lake bed sits white and flat for miles, just beyond a spring-fed pond ringed with palms. The old spa’s outdoor pools still hold water. Through windowpanes without walls, the Providence Mountains rise in the background.

This was my favorite photo trip from 2008, but the pictures were never posted because about ten days after these pictures were taken in April, my mother got very ill; on May 6, she passed away. On this particular day, however, my only concern was how to find the best photograph on a beautiful spring day.

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Photo Information: My photographs of Zzyzx.

Christmas in Las Vegas

Christmas in Las Vegas
Is the weirdest time of year.
You see Elvis in a Santa suit
And the elves are drinking beer.

Christmas in Las Vegas
Is only the opening act.
New Year’s Eve gets top billing
Booze and fireworks—THAT’s where we’re at.

Christmas in Las Vegas
Is unlikely to be white with snow.
But we’ve got neon lighting up Santa’s sleigh
And making Rudolph’s nose glow.

Happy Holidays!
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Photo courtesy of Chad Mathews at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/545561

Snow in the Desert

Have you had enough snow yet? You may have heard this before, but no one has seen snow like this in Las Vegas in over thirty years. Henderson got socked on Wednesday with eight inches of snow. Here on the west side of the valley, we got two or three inches both Monday and Wednesday. My Mondays are normally full of things to do, but this Monday I didn’t get anything done. Instead, I spent six hours watching the snow.

We get snow flurries every year at our house because we live in the foothills of the Spring Mountains. Sometimes, I close my eyes and remember what it looked like before all the houses, when the area where my home sits was nothing but open desert. Ten years ago, when my son, Cameron, was a baby, we lived in an apartment at the edge of the rapidly disappearing desert. We had Cameron’s first Christmas in that little apartment. I hated that place. The walls were so thin that we heard everything—and I mean everything—our neighbors did, and our nephew was living on our sofa. I remember when the snow came that year. We were home alone when the snow covered the yuccas and the Joshua trees, painting the desert in white all the way to Red Rock. That year, the miracle of the snow was almost lost on me. I was sleep deprived, overweight, suffering from a very bad haircut, and not adjusting well to life with a new baby.

Here in the desert, snow is a once-in-awhile phenomenon instead of a months-long endurance test. Snow in the desert is a beautiful thing, an anomaly that helps you believe in the Unseen. Snow in the desert is unusual and memorable.

I remember when we had a white Christmas in Las Vegas, in the early 1970s. (Pictues below.) Johnny Carson joked on the Tonight Show about McCarren Airport being closed due to snow. Snow in Las Vegas! Who had ever heard of such a thing? My dad and I had a rousing snowball fight in the backyard that ended when he fell and hurt his shoulder (FYI, cowboy boots don't supply much traction on ice). I was fascinated by the snow, and even at night I would sit in the backyard and gaze up at the sky, watching the falling flakes.

I was in high school before we had a snowy day again. I discovered that high school boys like to put rocks in their snowballs. I had a bloody nose most of that day. That evening, when I was at a friend’s house, we decided to have a snowball fight. “Just don’t hit me in the face, please,” I told her. She promptly thwacked me right in the face with a snowball, and then apologized profusely as I stood there bleeding on her front yard.

This Monday, when the snow arrived, both my son and husband were home. It’s unusual for all of us to be home during the day. I woke up my son by opening his blinds and announcing, “It’s snowing!” He was out of bed immediately, dressed, downstairs, and outside. We watched as the snow started to stick, and by noon we had a thin blanket of white over everything. Our neighborhood streets were quiet and empty; it felt like we were the only people home that day. Cameron played in the snow until he was soaked; he came inside long enough to warm up and put on dry clothes, then he was back outside. Once there was an inch or so on the ground, he made a snow man. Well, it was more like a snow gnome, but it was a terrific effort. The snow turned the park behind our house into an uninterrupted field of white; I made sure to take pictures before the “sledding” began. The wet, thin snow barely covered the grass, but Cameron was determined. This time he had to go get in a warm shower after soaking a second set of clothes.

When I wasn’t watching my delighted child, I was watching the snow. I sat inside, next to a window, and looked up into the white sky. The flakes swirling down reminded me of the first time I watched snow falling. I remembered sitting on the cinder block wall in my backyard, staring up into the sky, fascinated by the snow. At a time when life often feels strange and unfamiliar, I am reassured to still feel wonder at the sight of snow falling in the desert.

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Photo information: Top--My picture taken Thursday from the west end of the valley, looking toward the Strip & the snow-covered mountains; click to enlarge. Below--Family pictures of the 1970s snow. My notes say 1973.

Las Vegas After 6 Hours of Snow

More of my pictures from our snow day today. These were taken right before three o'clock. Big snow flakes stopped falling between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m., and right now we have a light drizzling rain. Should be interesting out on the roadways!

It's Snowing in Las Vegas

Snow has been falling ever since I got up! Here are pictures I took around my house at noon.

Four Wheel Drive Recommended

If you’re an off-road enthusiast, Southern California abounds with OHV (Off Highway Vehicles) areas, many of them a short drive from Las Vegas. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we stayed on the ouskirts of Barstow and discovered the Stoddard Valley OHV Recreation Area. The area held several campsites, but certainly not so many people that you’d have a problem finding a spot to camp and/or ride your ATV. Several riders were staying at the Holiday Inn on Lenwood, a nice hotel that we enjoyed. It sits right on the edge of Stoddard Valley, right next to an outlet mall and a Hampton Inn.

My husband told me he wanted some dirt roads on this trip, so the detail map and I got friendly. For our ride home, I found a couple of detours to take us around I15 through country we’d never explored.

Our first detour was into the Afton Canyon Wilderness. The dirt road winds through the canyon. Shortly after we took the turnoff from I15, we stopped at the Afton Canyon Campground and watched a train passing. The railroad runs through the canyon, as does the Mojave River. ATVers are thick here, which was a good thing because we had plenty of tracks to follow through the river bed. My 4-wheel-drive-loving husband was in heaven, slinging mud all over his beloved truck. The muddy, bumpy, fun ride through the canyon didn’t allow for pictures.

We hopped back on I15 for about 10 miles to Kelbaker Road in Baker, where we exited into the Mojave National Preserve. We were in search of a lava tube. I knew it was off Aiken Mine Road, but I didn’t know its exact location. It’s one of the places in the Mojave NP I haven’t been. We didn’t find the lava tube, but we did find the abandoned Aiken Mine. Volcanic rock appeared to be the former mine’s product. Derelict equipment and buildings are scattered over the top and side of a cinder dome. Various grades of volcanic rock and tailings are piled everywhere. It’s all equipment my husband knows well, so he showed my son around and explained what each part of the operation did. After we left the mine, corrals and windmills appeared periodically along the dirt road. Somewhere out there, the Mojave Phone Booth used to stand, attracting a cult following before it was removed.

I planned on taking Aiken Mine Road all the way to Cima Road, but we wound up on a different road. Not many street signs exist out there. I wasn't really sure how we came to be on the sandy, northbound power-line road, but at least it looked well-traveled. The compass told us we were heading in the right direction before we could see the cars and trucks of I15 in the distance. As we neared Cima Road, we found an abandoned ranch. Vandals had scratched the year off the name and date inscribed in the concrete by the corral. My husband looked in the window of one of the abandoned buildings and saw a stack of magazines that he described as “Nothing anyone should look at. Not even me,” so we knew we had to be close to the main road. Softball-sized gourds dotted the ground under the Joshua trees.

Once we arrived at the Cima Road entrance to I15, we applauded ourselves for our navigational skills. We joined the cars heading home to Las Vegas and watched the dense line of cars snaking its way in the other direction, toward Los Angeles. How many of them have any idea what the desert beyond the highway holds?

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Photo information, top to bottom, all my photos: Abandonded ranch near Cima exit; Joshua tree with gourds growing under it; abandonded mining equipment; the view into Afton Canyon; the railroad bridge.

Joshua Tree National Park: Breezier Than Expected

This year, my family went out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday. I had a couple of places in Southern California I wanted to explore, and Joshua Tree National Park was one of them. Since it’s only about 140 miles east of Los Angeles, it is a heavily visited park, but last week, on the day after Thanksgiving, the lines at the entrance weren’t too long. The weather might have had something to do with it. Instead of the forecasted 70° and sunny, it was 50° and windy.

In addition to plenty of Joshua Trees, as you would imagine, the park also features lots of rocks. As soon as my son saw the granite boulders piled in heaps and mounds, he wanted to get out of the car and climb. We parked at the first turnout. My husband and son were headed to the rocks before I was out of the truck. The wind was cold, so I had to put on a sweater before I explored anything. Not many people seemed bothered by the cold. Families were picnicking, a group of mountaineers was giving lessons on climbing with ropes, and bicyclists explored the dirt paths through the desert. I was sizing up photo opportunities when my husband hurried over to me.

“I ripped my pants,” David announced when he got close to me. “And not in the back.” This might have been a minor setback, if only he had been wearing underwear.

At first, I was no help because I couldn’t stop laughing. David didn’t even have a jacket, so I offered him my sweater to tie around his waist. He declined. “I really wanted to climb with Cameron,” he groused, as we watched our son scampering over the rocks.

As soon as Cameron descended from the rocks, he started an endless string of jokes about Dad’s ripped britches, beginning with, “Dad, you really went ‘nuts’ on that rock!” Since he’s 10, nothing could have been funnier (unless it involved gas).

The next stop on our trip through Joshua Tree was the Keys Trail, where a panoramic vista allows you to see the San Andreas Fault and the Salton Sea. We confabbed in the truck before getting out.

“Do you have any duct tape?” I asked David. (Personally, I believe no vehicle should be without it.) “You could tape it on the inside,” I suggested.

“Well, I’m not going to tape it on the outside!” David exclaimed. I thought he was objecting to looking like he had a duct tape jock strap on the outside of his jeans, but he told me he was more worried about the sticky side of the tape adhering to delicate body parts. We had no need to debate the questions any further, though, because he didn’t have any duct tape. “You can be sure I will have some, next time we go anywhere,” David said.

“How about a towel? You’ve got towels in here,” I said. I was thinking that perhaps he could put the towel on the inside of his pants, as a sort of inner shield, but he vetoed that idea also. “How am I going to look walking around with a towel stuffed in my pants?”

“I would think it’s better than the alternative,” I said, but he refused. I suppose a man’s got to keep some sense of fashion, even when faced with public indecency. He made do with careful positioning of the rip and holding his hands in front of him.

Our visit at the overlook was quick. The brisk winter wind cut through my clothes, and when the clouds covered the sun, I lost all interest in looking at the Fault, the Sea, and the cloud of smog rolling our way from L.A.

Our next stop was for lunch. We ate in the truck, since the wind was too chilly for any of us to want to eat outside, even if David hadn’t had a wardrobe malfunction. David was determined to find a way to climb on the rocks with Cameron, and he finally decided to use a towel in football-player/loin-cloth style, hooking the white towel in his waistband so it covered the front of his pants. With a clothing solution he could finally live with, David headed off with Cameron to explore some rocks. It was too cold for me to care about climbing, so I snapped pictures by the trailhead and stayed in the truck to keep warm.

When my men returned to the truck, they were exhilarated. David was disappointed that he’d forgotten to take his camera. The late afternoon sun was just right for pictures, and the crowds were thinning. “I think I ripped my pants some more,” he told me after he sat down, lifting his strategically placed towel to flash me. “What do you think?”

“I was just wondering how I’ll explain to your mother that we’re going to be back a day late because I had to bail you out of jail for indecent exposure,” I told him.

A few hours later, we were back in Barstow, where we were staying. Fortunately, in addition to a Holiday Inn, Barstow also has a Levi's store.

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Photo information: My pictures at Joshua Tree. The first photo (top to bottom) was taken at the turnout where the ripped jeans occurred.

Las Vegas Bloggers Make the News

In the Las Vegas Review Journal's Sunday edition a couple of weeks ago, reporter Corey Levitan (that guy who writes a Las Vegas-based, "Dirty Jobs"-flavored column for the RJ) wrote about popular Las Vegas blogs in "Viva Blogs Vegas: Just being based in the city can be enough to draw in readers." Check out his article for links to ten popular Las Vegas blogs.

I recommend the Classic Las Vegas Blog at:

http://classiclasvegas.squarespace.com/classic-las-vegas-blog/. Well, and my own blog, naturally!

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Photo courtesy of Pete Crumpton at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/743897

Phone Scams Are Alive and Well

Last month I heard from my friend Valerie that she’d been taken in by a phone scam run by inmates. In her case, she was thrown off guard by someone claiming a loved one had been injured in an accident; read the articles below to check out the other common stories and tactics used to perpetrate this scam:

From ConsumerAffairs.com, “Arkansas Warns of Prison Phone Scam” at
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/03/prison_scam.html

From SNOPES, “Call Forwarding Scam” at
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/forward.asp
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Photo courtesy of Jay Simmons at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/864770

The OJ Team: Hit and Run

Are you an OJ follower? If so, you’ve probably heard of my friend, Paul Connelly, the jury foreman on the Las Vegas robbery case. The OJ Team has been taking pot shots at him ever since the conviction, but a couple of weeks ago they engaged in what I thought was outright slander.

Media outlets spread the story far and wide that a Team OJ investigator found Connelly was fired from a job at an unnamed soft drink company because he made racially disparaging statements. Since this isn’t true, I’ve been waiting to hear some sort of retraction or other statement. Guess it’s a good thing I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve known Paul for over ten years, and at one time he worked with my husband at the Unnamed Soft Drink Company of recent media reports. I remember when Paul left the job in question, and racial comments had nothing to do with it. He was not fired; he resigned. I’d like to know where this investigator got his information. Where is the paperwork that supports what he is saying? Who did this investigator talk to? Why is it okay to smear someone’s name without backing up the allegation? Or is silence supposed to erase the thousands of Google hits that Paul’s name now returns?

Paul Connelly is an average guy, a hard-working family man who is tired of finding a media circus in his front yard. He is a conscientious citizen who did his best to do what he was instructed to do: look at the evidence and render a verdict on the case in front of him. The trial is over, and Paul wasn’t the defendant. Besides that, is all this mud-slinging getting Team OJ anywhere? From the state of their client’s case, I guess I’m not the only one unimpressed with their tactics.
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Photo couresty of Jason Morrison at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/952313

Las Vegas to Amarillo: 12.5 Hours

I took a trip to Texas a few weeks ago. Two days of driving eastbound on I40 takes you directly into Amarillo, Texas, but I’m a scenic route kind of gal, so that 12.5 hours was only the tip of the driving iceberg for me.

This Vegas Girl may be a Vegas native, but both my parents were Texans by birth. My dad avoided admitting he was from Texas; my mother was a proud Texan all her life. I remembered Texas as our eternal summer vacation destination, a place full of farmland, grasshoppers, armadillos, aunt and uncles, and snakes. When I added up the time it had been since my last road trip to Texas, I was shocked to find it had been 18 years. The most notable change since then has to be the wind farms, which I noticed throughout New Mexico and Texas. Giant wind turbines sit in rows far out on the flat plains and atop mesas. They’re fascinating and out-of-place, and they’re almost pretty.

During this road trip, we visited the Petrified Forest, Palo Duro Canyon, and Montezuma’s Castle. We spent time with several friends and family members in Lefors, Lubbock, and Lamesa, with a stop in Amarillo. I finally got a chance to wander around the countryside with a camera. (On those long-ago childhood trips to Texas, Dad did not permit stops. For anything.)

My first stop was in Lefors, just north of Pampa. Over the next week, I drove south about 250 miles, with a stop in Lubbock, to Lamesa, the town closest to the farm my mother grew up on; then I returned to Lefors before making the trip home. The country along the farm roads is beautiful; fields of crops and grassland stretch to the horizon with occasional bursts of rock outcroppings. Every 30 miles or so, I ran into a village, many of them with populations well under 1000. It feels lightly inhabited, wide-open and unrushed, and a huge relief from the crush of people in Las Vegas. Lubbock, at 212,000 people, is close to the same size as Las Vegas was when I graduated from high school.

After a week and half, I had to come home. My husband was out of frozen food and my son was homesick. My mom-in-law, Bonnie, and I were ready to keep on going, but we knuckled under to the pleadings of our two males. Besides, we’re already talking about driving back in spring. Our journey was both brief and fun, and many green dots--they mark the scenic routes--are left to explore. As a child in the backseat of the station wagon, Texas felt as far away as the moon. This time, it felt like a quick trip. Isn’t it strange how age changes our perception—of everything?


Photo information: Above, a water crossing at Palo Duro Canyon, which is the second largest canyon in the United States. Below: the Petrified Forest; the view into Palo Duro; on a trail at Palo Duro; FM669 southbound (click to enlarge--notice the wind turbines in the background); Montezuma's Castle in Arizona, just outside the Cottonwood/Sedona area; and the area at the base of Montezuma's Castle. The sycamores are changing colors for the fall. All photos are mine, of course.