Dan and I started out with a plan this a.m. It semi worked. Las Vegas is overtaking the desert and all of my old favorite haunts for 4X off road and some hiking spots, are disappearing as fast as the sun sets on the horizon. It’s sickening – and scary. Where will it all end? And what will happen to that piece of red sandstone that I used to climb around over and down after I 4X’d up about five miles? We did make it upand away from the city and confusion of construction that blots the landscape in every direction, and did manage to run through a drill that we had in mind. Nice!

Yesterday evening found me trekking through Sunset Park with Carmen Bates (sure, long time friend that is a high brush at Bellagio). That was great. We got plenty of exercise, watched a billion little wild and domesticated (wild now) bunnies go hip-hopping across the terrain, carefully stepped over and around the goose shit from all of the geese that frequent the island in the middle of the man made lake where people were fishing and sitting around visiting, passed through soccer fields and baseball fields full of people, and just managed to catch up on our personal lives as we watched plane after plane come in for a landing at McCarran Airport. If you live in Vegas and you haven’t been to Sunset, you’re missing a treat. Carmen and I are going to start meeting at some of Vegas’s parks for a weekly exercise session.

I seriously doubt if the old Pan Game crew will ever revive. I have no place to host and most of the people that do, don’t seem to have the time or the energy. It’s sad in a way because it was a long standing tradition and a lot of fun away from the noise of the gambling world. But as all things happen, change manages to move us further down the road of life so I accept closing that chapter.

As life moves on, this is a lot of what I see and what I’m doing on a regular basis. This is the first time I’ve ever seen one of these alive. Years ago, while hiking in Calico Basin with Carmen Bates and Kristoph Haller, we found the shell of one down in a ravine, but this is the first one that actually blinked as I moved around it taking pictures. This one was about 13 to 14 inches long. Cain – my son’s dog, an American Bull Mastiff – just walked around the turtle and went on by.

This is Cain as he tried to figure out why Dan was stuck in the middle of a bunch of damn rocks.

We were headed up a saddle – a pretty extreme climb when we saw Big Horn on the ridge to the right above us. I’m not even sure how these pictures turned out as good as they did, especially at the distance and the light at that time of day. But this is one of the sights that all hikers and climbers hope to see while they are in the canyons around Red Rock and Calico Basin. You’ll have to look close at the first one to find the ram with the full curl, the others are easy to spot.

So when I’m not out walking in a park, working on the website, answering emails, taking a hike, doing tidy bowl chores, and a few million other things, I have these two little jewels to keep me occupied.

Life is sweet here in the Desert!