Greetings all.  Posting this blog live will avoid creating the giberish text that seems always to show up when I paste from MS Word.  Here we have Internet, at least at the RV Park office.  We arrived here within sight of Las Vegas yesterday after a two-day drive from Albuquerque.  Yesterday morning we awoke in a park just outside Winslow AZ.  We woke up early on Mountain Daylight Time, but Arizona does not use Daylight time, so we were on the road while most of Arizona slept.  Coming through town we had to stop at the "Standing on the Corner" Park.

Turns out the park is under construction.  The lovely young guitarist is indeed standing on the corner stairing at the hansome lass painted in a flat bed Ford on a nearby wall.  The cobbles are still going down, and a full intersection-sized symbol of Highway 66 is only half finished in the middle of the intersection.  We had to walk a block to see it because the streets there are closed.  Fun.  We'll try to post a photo or two later.

The morning was clear and bitterly (low 20's) cold.  We used our new catalytic heater and it kept us warm without electricity through the night.  US I-40 crests near Albuquerque at about 8,000 feet.  Lots of snow there.  The decent was gradual until we approached the Colorado River.  We observed the many signs warning trucks of the twenty-mile 6% grade.  I took it very easy.

We crossed into Nevada at Bullhead City.  We could have come across the Hoover Dam farther north, but signs warned of long construction delays and possible vehicle searches.  Turning north toward Las Vegas we found the desert green and in bloom in Nevada.  We didn't stop, wanting to get into camp.  We slowed down for Searchlight NV, a world famous speed trap, crossed another pass, and saw the famous strip before us.  Our camp is in the suburb of Henderson.  The park is not fancy.  Most of the camps are semi-permanent.  It is still better than Sam's Casino in Vegas proper where we stayed last time. 

This morning we conducted our first birding in the Henderson Bird Preserve at the wastewater treatment plant.  The parks department maintains a wonderful office and viewing station there.  At 6:00 a.m. the attendent let us in.  We registered and wandered among the ponds finding several year-birds including Verdin, Abert's Towhee, and Hooded Oriole.  The ponds were full of waterfowl.  We managed to hoot up a Virginia Rail and a Sora, but could not find a Least Bittern, Anne's nemisis bird.  Another party heard one.  We returned to camp for lunch and then went shopping. 

My cousin Tree is coming for dinner this evening.  My nephew and his wife will join us on Saturday. 

Tomorrow morning we will venture north to visit the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.  A volunteer at the Henderson office suggested we might find LeConte's Thrasher there.  That would be a life-bird.  We have planned to find it in California, but will take it sooner if we can find it.  There are other good birds in this arid spot that we have visited once before.  We also plan to visit lovely Red Rock Canyon before our departure.  This park hosts canyon birds that we can not see here in the valley.

We're on the road now for more than two weeks and still having fun.  By the way, the time here is Pacific Daylight time which is the same as Mountain Standard, but since we didn't change our clocks for Arizona, we gained an hour.  Confusing isn't it?