It was cold overnight, but I managed to get a better start to the day than Friday. I had the heat on at 7:30 and the inside of my RV home was soon comfortable. The outside temperature barely made it above fifty all day despite the bright sun.
Shortly before noon I drove to the Clark County Wetlands Park for another hike in the shrubs and marshes of the Las Vegas wash wetland reclamation project. It is more crowded on weekends, but it is still much better than the crowds in the tourist areas. Today turned into a bird photography day. I even found a way to the ponds that caught my eye in the distance the last time I visited. To get there I crossed the wash and walked along a path toward the city of Henderson Nevada. It was probably about a mile walk, but it was worth it. The birds were plentiful.
Snowy Egret
Hawk?
What’s under here?
I’ll race you.
I’ll keep watch while you do whatever it your doing.
The temperature got down into the low forties outside last night. Inside my RV home it was in the low fifties when I woke up around 7:30. I turned on the heat and returned to the warmth of my bed. The next time I looked at the clock it was after 10am. A cold morning is a good way to have a late morning. The forecast is for cooler temperatures tonight, so if I’m not careful tomorrow will start just as slowly.
My Christmas Cactus bloomed in November on one side and in January on the other.
Breakfast and caching up on my internet reading took until almost 1PM. Once again it was too late to do anything complex or touristy. Instead I went out and visited a few stores without buying anything. Some people call it shopping, I call it an indoor hike. I got back to the RV park in time to pick up an Amazon order at the office. I bought two spare batteries, a remote control, a memory card and a few other things for my cameras. Amazon broke the items into five packages. Four got delivered today via two different carriers and one gets delivered Sunday. Each spare battery was in its own package. I wonder if that’s a safe shipping practice of some sort.
This evening on my walk around the RV park, I took another sunset picture. The interesting element in tonight’s sunset picture was the sun reflecting off a couple of jet contrails. Later, after taking a break for supper, I made another attempt at taking a picture of the full moon. Tonight’s came out better than many of my previous attempts. The lights of the Las Vegas valley made it hard to get a real crisp picture.
After a three day reprieve, the weather has started to decline. The TV forecasters have been calling for cooler days with wind since Sunday, but each day was better than the previous. Today was the first day that was cooler. The temperature peaked in the mid fifties and there is the possibility of temperatures in the thirties tonight.
Today was a chores and errands kind of day. I didn’t find any interesting subjects for pictures while I was out of the park. On my evening walk around the RV park I took another beautiful sunset picture to include in this blog entry. The RV park remains essentially full. Alaska and Nova Scotia remain the most distant origins I’ve spotted. That’s about all I have to write about without becoming completely repetitive.
The beautiful Las Vegas winter weather continued today. The mercury broke the sixty degree barrier again with just a little more wind to prevent perfection.
Another picture of the rabbit from yesterday’s walk in the park.
My thoughts of spending the day in tourist mode got sidelined during breakfast. There was a lot of change going on in the RV park that I got hooked watching. A few people were leaving, but there seemed to be at least as many changing sites. Since they were all monthly residents moving, my guess is long enough blocks of space on a single sites weren’t available when they booked. Consequently they had to move during their stay. The site behind me emptied out around 10am and was filled by a transfer within half an hour. I recognized the rig from another area of the park.
Sunset
The park courtesy patrol needs to park everybody on their sites to assure they are within the site’s boundary. One of the courtesy patrol drivers was waiting for the resident of the site across the street from me to hook-up for a move. It wasn’t the best planned move, because he had to wait half an hour while the folks hooked up. Once again half an hour after one set of residents moved, another RV was getting parked on the site. In this case, I think they are a new short term resident.
Moon Rise
I was watching all of these changes while enjoying my second cup of breakfast coffee. It was afternoon by the time I thought about leaving the park. The shuttle to the strip from Sam’s Town had already departed. Since I didn’t want to deal with the traffic and parking on my own, I’ll try again another day.
The good weather continued with another higher than average temperature day. I spent the morning inside doing some mundane, but necessary tasks like paying credit card bills. The amount of money I have spent on reservations over the next year is surprising, depressing, and annoying, but necessary. Most privately owned RV parks only require the first nights rent as a deposit. The state and federal parks that I prefer usually require the full stay up front. Right now, including the seven weeks in March and April that have been paid for four to ten months, I have spent more than $4,000 on places I haven’t even started traveling toward.
Don’t swim away and leave me. I don’t speak turtle.
To take advantage of the good weather I spent some time this afternoon at the Clark County Wetlands park. The parking lot had more cars than normal, but I didn’t run in to as many people on the trails as I often do. Today I wandered along a number of paths that I haven’t been on this year. It paid off. I saw a number of different animals today.
I managed to get pictures of some of the more illusive creatures. First up was a Roadrunner. It was on a dirt path parallel to the main cement path I was following. It caught up with me from behind and passed by quickly. Once it couldn’t see me anymore, it must have paused, because I was able to get some pictures when it emerged from cover further down the path.
Later on the same trail a little bunny rabbit hopped onto the path. I paused to take a picture and was rewarded by another camera shy animal. As I was taking the rabbit picture a Gambel’s quail ran across the frame. It made an interesting picture. They were both a little startled.
I also saw another bunch of birds in a body of water down stream in the wash. It is usually just empty water. Today a big white bird in the middle caught my attention. Using maximum zoom and more cropping on the computer this evening, it appears to be a white pelican, but the angle isn’t great for identification. I need to study the park maps to figure out how to get closer to the water hole. I’ve never been in that area before.
There was a little more wind today resulting in a little cooler temperature. It was still a very nice sunny day for early January in Las Vegas. The high temperature was a few degrees above the fifty six degree norm for the date. The TV forecasters are still predicting deteriorating conditions throughout the week. It still sounds great compared to the snow and freezing temperatures around most of the country.
Today was an ordinary living kind of day. I did chores around the RV and caught up on some reading. For my daily exercise I took a couple of winding walks along the many rows of RVs in the RV park. I only saw a couple of empty sites today. There is still some turnover, but the site is filled quickly. Sadly I no longer can take pictures of flower blossoms around the park. The park staff members responsible for gardening have caught up with their winter pruning. All of the rose bushes and flowering shrubs have been cut back to a few short stems.
Replacing the colorful blossom pictures in this blog entry is a pigeon. There are a few pigeons around the park, but not too many. The park is kept clean and well picked up, so there isn’t a lot to attract the birds. The bird in today’s picture came walking across my path while I was out walking. It was clearly used to being around people.
Today was another beautiful Las Vegas winter day. The temperature was just under sixty with sunny skies and a little wind. The weather prognosticators still predict a downward turn tomorrow. The good news is the days are getting longer and the average high temperature for the day has turned the corner and is climbing.
Blue sky and thin wispy clouds.
I think the holiday season is finally coming to an end today. The last TV Christmas movie marathon came to an end today. Having things back closer to a normal day will help me be more aware of the passage of time. Without consistent TV programming and all the other subtle time clues around, I continue to get the day of the week confused. I started Saturday thinking it was Sunday and started today in total confusion. Having to look at one of my electronic devices to find the day of the week is annoying.
I finally made it to Walmart for groceries today. I’ve been putting it off hoping to find a quiet time. Today wasn’t one. It was very busy this morning and seemed to have more than the normal compliment of people that should only be there when it is empty. Those are the very slow and the very fast shoppers. This morning there were plenty of people that wanted to stare at the shelves for a long time before picking up a product and reading the label. Of course, the first product wasn’t the one they wanted, so the process repeats. Getting to products in their path takes waiting, reaching and lots of “excuse me” on unhearing ears.
The very fast shopper is the one that can’t park their cart long enough to pick up a product. They seem to be in continuous motion grabbing things off the shelf as they pass by. The only problem is they seem to manage to run into other carts and an occasional person on their mad flight through the store. It would be so much more enjoyable not to have to share the store with these two kinds of shoppers. Dealing with family mobs of 4 or more shopping together is bad enough.
One of the only blossoms I can find outdoors.
I took the day off from summer travel planning. Maybe the end of the holiday season will find more campgrounds prepared to take reservations.
Today wasn’t a day with much to write about in this blog, but it was another beautiful weather day. The temperature didn’t quite break sixty and there were a few more clouds than Friday. Tomorrow is forecast to be similar before the weather takes a downhill turn for Monday.
Another red sunset tonight.
I spent the day doing chores around the RV, watching TV and doing more travel research. One of the chores was taking the Christmas decorations down. I am now back in total humbug mode. Most of the other residents of the RV park have also taken down all of their Christmas spirit. It really seems like Christmas was months ago.
On the travel research front my to do lists are getting longer, but my actual set plans haven’t gotten any more complete. The number of places I’d like to stay that aren’t taking reservations for the summer yet is growing. What surprises me is that some of them don’t even tell you when they will accept reservations on their web site or recorded voice mail message. I’m afraid if I don’t keep trying I’ll return to my previous form and be too late for the better places.
The TV watching wasn’t any more successful. I just watched the Tennessee Titans win over the New England Patriots. While I’m not completely surprised, I’m not happy about the outcome. I guess I’ll have to switch my championship hopes to the NFC.
The nice warmer than average weather continued today. There was a little more cloud cover than Thursday, but the temperature still managed to reach the low sixties. The trend is forecast to continue through the weekend. Next week may not be as nice.
As I have mentioned in this blog before, my cell phone is starting to show its age. I think the phone is just over five years old. The battery is not holding a charge as well as it did when it was new and the charge cable no longer fits snugly into the socket. Consequently, when I think it is charging it is actually continuing to discharge. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve had a dead phone when I was expecting a fully charged device.
Over the last few weeks I’ve researched the available Android phones online. I know the pluses and minus of the Samsung models, LG models, Motorola models and Google Pixel phones. The other brands were out of the running early in the search. Today was phase two of the search process. I went to the Best Buy in Henderson to touch, hold and consider the different models. The expedition resulted in a little more clarity in the search. I’m no longer opposed to the larger size of some of the devices as they will still fit in my pocket when necessary. Now I need to decide between the Samsung Galaxy models or the Google Pixels models. The Pixel is newer with a better camera but has a smaller battery. The Samsung Galaxy will be updated with a new model at the end of next month. The internet is full of rumored specs for the new handset. Decisions, decisions; how long can I keep my current phone limping along? Do I live with the smaller battery in the Pixel? The search process continues.
On the way back from phone shopping I stopped for another walk in the Clark County Wetlands park. It seems like every time I’m out in that direction, I stop to visit the birds and get some exercise. There were a lot of people in the park today. It wasn’t nearly as quiet as I like, but I still managed to see a few of natures creatures.
It was a beautiful warmer than normal day. The temperature got up to the low sixties under a brightly shinning sun. The normal temperature this time of year is in the mid fifties. The day ended with another gorgeous sunset.
These mid week holidays cause my head to spin trying to figure out the day of the week. This morning I was convinced it was Monday. Once I realized that wasn’t true I started to think it was Friday. Of course when I actually thought about it, I knew today was Thursday. I even typed the correct day in the start of this post, but I admit I had to go back and edit the year from 2019 to 2020.
Today was another day focused on travel research. My online calendar is full of notification events to remind me when to make reservations for a few days in May, a few days in June and lots of weeks in late July and August. That is in addition to all of the events already in my calendar to remind me when to book next winter in Florida. I have 23 weeks in the first half of the year booked and seven weeks in the second half of 2020. It is a far more detailed plan than I ever had this far in advance for Rob’s Rambling Road Trip, but I’m still not satisfied.
The RV park is more or less full again. There are a few sites empty for a night or two as people leave and new residents arrive, but overall it is full. The WiFi is another indicator of the density of park residents. In the evening, the WiFi is very slow now. I’ve had to switch to my cellular data plan a couple of nights to get good through put for posting to this blog. Yet another indicator was the available of machines in the laundry today. I will be trying again tomorrow.
To summarize my day I’d say “I did a lot, but accomplished little.”
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 