14 March:: The curves and hills of highway 163 end at U.S. Highway 95, a straight north-south jag. You know you’re getting close when the billboards start to appear, but there’s nothing more than a gas station at the intersection.

I spy a rest area.
I make sure we stop there


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13 March: Nearly every time I’ve crossed the state line into Nevada, casinos await. I’ve seen it in Stateline (my first time), in Primm, in Reno, in the aptly-named Jackpot.

There’s this magic line and, as soon as you cross, the high-rises and neon begin. In the case of Laughlin, you see it from across the river; you cross under an arch and there ( Read more... )

13 March: We left Avi Casino this afternoon, heading into the wilds of Bullhead City. There are two strip cities either side of the Colorado River, and in one of them you can gamble, the other, you can’t.
Crossing into Arizona


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10 March: There was no more snarfage for the next 90 miles, so we got on the road and made good time.
A lot of people overtook us


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05 June: While researching intaglios-which are more rightfully called rock art-I discovered that there were hundreds of these rock art designs in the Colorado River area, not to mention across the southwest.

I then suddenly remembered the mysterious “cultural resource” that I’d found in Quartzsite; I first spotted it on the descent from Q Mountain ( Read more... )

10 March, 2014: Snarfage: The collective noun for a bunch of historical markers.

We picked up US-95, with a view to visiting a couple of historical markers we’d never stopped at before. The first one was Blythe Intake.
This is what we found


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10 March: The motorcycle has new seals on the rear brake, and is happy. We were up early, but delayed departure until the sun was not in our eyes any more. Then we left, around 10, for what was a pleasantly flowing but not quite smooth day. We even got to overtake something.
Well, ok, it pulled over


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09 March: Our great big flashlights are here. I wanted a red one but it was more than $10 more and that was stupid. To avoid “that’s MY flashlight” conversations, I settled for a blue one at $2 more.

These puppies take three D-cells and have LEDs. They’re bright enough to wake a cat up with and severely annoy it, and also can be rested on the ( Read more... )

06 March: Helen knocked on the door this morning. It was nice to see her and we went for a short walk together, catching up and finding wildflowers. We had to turn around when it got too hot. In fact, I was too hot for much of the day.

I had hoped to get some programming in, but I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the current, intense session ( Read more... )

March 05 We’ve been trying to get out of here for a few days now, but upside-down body clocks and poor weather-it rained rather heavily over the weekend-kept us here. Still, our planets aligned today, I reached a suitable stopping-point in the programming, and we got on the road to Blythe.

There’s something odd about Blythe. It is feeling home-like ( Read more... )