KEYHOLE CANYON

Yesterday we made a short Jeep Trip to a place known as Keyhole Canyon on US 95 south of Las Vegas and Boulder City.  The gravel road is in pretty good shape and easy for any higher clearance vehicle.  We had no need for our 4WD.  As you will see in the short slideshow below this canyon was formed by water running off the higher ground via a wash that ends up at the top of the canyon.  Rain here is pretty rare.   Native Americans used this place because it is well sheltered from the elements and would be an easy place to defend.  There is native Rock Art as well as some Petroglyphs.  We suspect some of both have been left behind by pranksters who have also defaced some surfaces with initials.  No doubt some of what I have photographed is not real or original but some of it surely is.  The first two frames just give a clue as to where this location is and the last two take a shot back towards Las Vegas, which is not visible in the picture. It is over the other side of those hills.

It was a good day for such an outing.  Not too hot or too windy or too cold.  Only had a couple other cars and only saw maybe 6 other people so it was nice and quiet.

Here is a link to the short slideshow which I created and posted on YouTube.  There is no sound track.

KEYHOLE CANYON, NV on 01/16/2015

SNOW IN LAS VEGAS

Well I am here to tell you that the snow in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve was somewhat overrated.  It DID snow.....technically... but most of the rest of the country would get a good laugh out if it.  Still, the wind chill was 20 degrees that morning and that is plenty cold enough for us.

Thought I would share a couple pictures with you of our snow storm.

View of the blizzard out our front windshield.

See...I told you...real snowflakes.

And finally........

Wait for it ........

A picture of the vast accumulation

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On top of the rear view mirror cover.  You can click on this picture to enlarge if you can see the pile of snow.

MEMORIAL

This is mainly for my family.  Below is a link to a memorial slide show with pictures of dad/grandpa.

SLIDESHOW LINK

A Mix of Joy, Gratitude and Pain

The Greatest Generation lost another member this morning.  Walter M Dews Sr died peacefully in his sleep after a family Thanksgiving celebration.  He was ready and he died just as he hoped and predicted he would.  RIP dad.  We will miss you.  Oh yah, say Hi to Mom for us all. She's been waiting for you.

Jr.

RETIREMENT DAY ONE

The day finally came.  Last Wednesday I completed the sale of my business and became fully retired. After 44 years it was time to put the business in the hands of a younger generation and move on with our retirement. Thursday was our first day and we took the Jeep and headed out for a nice hike to a place called Rainbow Gardens.  I hope this is not a metaphor for retirement in general because while we did get in a decent hike there was no rainbow.  I suppose we should have known.  After all this is the Mojave Desert.

Our "hiking trail" also turned out to be a Jeep road.  That is fine, we like taking the Jeep into the desert however we were hoping for a real hiking trail, what we got was a road.  We eventually parked the Jeep about half way to our goal and then hiked the road the rest of the way which gave us a decent workout.  The only other living souls we encountered on the whole trip was whoever was in the helicopters that were flying over the area on their routes back to Las Vegas.  Having a whole road to yourself makes for a big, wide hiking trail.  There were certainly no trees to climb over that had fallen across the trail and no moss to slip on.

The pictures do not really provide good scale so it is hard to appreciate the distance that they cover or the size of the geographical formations.  I also only took my cheap point and shoot camera so had limited ability to zoom and format.  We were in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and on the way back we spotted some much more colorful formations worthy of a tripod shot with the good camera.  That will be a future trip.

In summary we got a lot of solitude, a good hike on a nice, almost too warm day,  and some views that were worth the effort and some future exploration.  Our hiking boots got some exercise too.  All in all we are grateful that we could start our real, actual, retirement in this way and not in wheelchairs.

Click on any picture for a larger view.

Always interesting to see earth that is just pushed up as if  by a giant mole.

N 36 9.279   W 114 56.422

BACK IN LAS VEGAS

We have been back at our lot in Las Vegas for almost just a full week now.  We have washed the coach and the Jeep and cleaned things up and gotten some bookwork done and had company for dinner and seen a doctor already.  Been to the pool once too.  Since our last post we made our way to Cathedral City and visited with my dad before coming here and settling in for the winter.  We will miss our friends and family in Seattle but we like our place here very much and we have even more family here than we have in the Puget Sound area so we won't be lonely.  Especially when some of you come to visit us.

All tucked in.

We cut this plant back to just a 6" stub before we left in May.

We learned that you can't leave candles in the storage locker here in the summer!

Vegas Sunset from our driveway.

Day Two - Coburg

We left our campground a bit behind schedule this morning but still managed to get through Portland before noon which was my goal.  Arrived in Coburg about 2pm.  Have an 8 am appointment at Cummins in the morning.

At a rest stop with some of Paul's friends.

We have a room with a view.

Think it's gonna rain?

Can you tell we are in Oregon Duck territory?