I, Chuck, am here without Anne providing aid and comfort to Alexander who while still dealing with his repetitive motion injury has to move next week.  While enjoying an opportunity to be him I feel a bit of a prisoner in being unexpectadly away from home and Anne at this time.  She, by the way, is in a bus on her way home with a group of quilters from a quilting convention in Padukah KY.  I'm not sure when or where we will next snuggle; that is in the works.  Our spring RV tour is scuttled.  Anne will have to cancel reservations when she returns home tomorrow. 

Still, it is fascinating in the Golden City.  Lots of construction and many young and prosperous people walk about in the elegant but camp garb that differs considerably from that worn by young people in NYC.  The black clothing phase seems to have ended as quickly as it began.  It never got old as it did on the East Coast.  The poor who come to town for the benefits sleep wherever, in front of buildings or under bushes in the park.  The middle class seems pretty much excluded here except as tourists. 

It is spring and many a tree and shrub are in bloom.  In this place where it is always chilly and never cold the florage is not as bright as in the Northeast, but still it is impressive and cheering.  Palms, tree ferns, euphorbs, and almost any kind of exotic plant seem to thrive here.  Rosemary makes hedges and fennel is a weed.  The region is in drought but the plants do not seem thirsty.  They are, after all, refrigerated.

This morning there are showers to interrupt the last several days when a dark blue dome enclosed the City.  There seems no weather until you walk to the top of the hill and can't stand for long in the cold wind.  A local birder commented that she usually walked on the south side of Buena Vista Park because it was too cold on the north slope.  I find the persistant breeze and chilly days a bit oppressive at times, but they make one brisk.  That is useful because there are hills to be climbed everywhere.  Up and down one goes. 

The hills here are lumps of rock that are called terranes that formerly resided on earth that slid east and under the present ground.  The terranes, being higher than the land they were upon escaped the descent by being scraped off upon new ground.  As lumps they make the town lumpy.

Have to stop now.  More later.