Valley Views

By Pacific Northwest standards there is not much breathtaking about these photos.  After all this is the middle of the Mojave Desert.  They were taken on a short day hike with our friend Larry when he and Linda were visiting us last week.  These are somewhat crudely "stitched" together photos of the view at the top of the hike and give a pretty good idea of the lay of the land on this west side of the Las Vegas valley.  If you download the panoramas  (right click on image and choose "save image as") you may be able to zoom in on them to get a better look.  Not sure you can do that within the blog.

Larry at the top.

About a 220 degree panorama of valley west side and "The Strip".

The Las Vegas Strip

BROWNIE R.I.P.

A week ago Monday, October 28th, was another sad day for us.  Our Emergency Backup Kitty, Brownie woke us up at 3 am crying loudly.  We found her on the floor with what appeared to be a paralyzed rear end.  She could not use her back legs.  We did what we could do for her at that hour and got her to a vet later in the day.  The vet determined that she had serious heart disease and that as a result she had thrown a blood clot that lodged in her spine and caused the paralysis.  She felt too much damage had been done to hope for any recovery of the use of her legs and it was also just a matter of time before she threw another clot.  Brownie was 72 in people years.  She had a good last few weeks but we really had no choice but to say goodbye to her.  We were with her until the end and it was just as hard as it was with Gizmo back in September.  We were unable to tell son Paul about this until yesterday so delayed posting.  At this point I think we will remain "catless" for a while, perhaps permanently.   Goodbye Brownie.

Better Days

"MOUNTAIN" HIKE

Not a lot to report blog-wise since we have arrived in Las Vegas.  Yesterday we revisited a local park that has a "Mountain" that you can climb.  It is a fairly steep hike up.  It is maybe a half mile.  Because the Las Vegas valley is so flat however, the view from the top is pretty good, for desert that is.  I took our medium point-and-shoot camera.   Here is a picture of downtown Las Vegas from the top of the trail.  The view from there is actually an unobstructed 360 view but the rest of it does not have much of interest photographically speaking.  There is a lot of history in the valley however and some interesting facts on various signage.