We have been somewhat incommunicado, but are now blessed with both cell phone and internet access for at least a few days. We have traveled far since our last message.

We arrived in Las Vegas and found it big and gaudy but also welcoming. Our reunions with Chuck’s nephew and his cousin were wonderful. One treasures family and seeing those with whom you share a common thread.

We camped at Sam’s Town RV Park, cruised the big city, and visited surrounding “birdy areas” including Red Rock Canyon, Mohave National Preserve and Desert National Wildlife Range. On our last evening we walked part of the famous Las Vegas strip. Caesars’ Palace is grand, the Bellagio has fountains, and thousands of tourists stream beneath the bright lights.

Leaving the City we reached almost to the California line before stopping and camping at Longstreet’s Casino. From there we toured the Ash Valley National Wildlife Refuge and saw both desert and devil’s hole pupfish. We also began our tour of Death Valley National Park from this location. The park is now the largest in the lower 48 states.

Dawn found us at Dante’s View shivering in a strong wind and looking over the salt flat several thousand feet below. A little later we admired an array of mineral colors at Zabriske Point. It was still relatively cool when we finally arrived at Bad Water, the lowest point of land in the Western Hemisphere. We walked out on the bed of salt and looked into the saline lagoon that gives the place its name. Amazingly, various aquatic insects swarmed in its brine.

The next day we drove our rig to Stovepipe Wells at sea level within the park. We camped there three nights. On the first evening as the sun set we walked across a grand but barren field of sand dunes. The next morning we visited Salt Creek springs and found more aquatic insects and birds, including a prairie falcon, in the forbidding landscape. That afternoon we drove up the Panamint Mountains and, as the sun set, looked down from alpine freshness into the caldron below.

Finally, on our last day we joined a ranger led hike up Surprise Canyon through brush and water and over rocks to a spring in a rock wall. The spring is hidden under a curtain of grape vines. Walking beneath them one is showered with water and finds a rock wall turned green with maidenhair ferns. It is a spot as pleasant as the entrance to Calypso’s lair.

With the next day’s forecast calling for a high in the upper 90s, we decided it was time to depart the famous Death Valley furnace. Minnie struggled up some 5,000 feet and then took it easy on a steep decent back down to 1,000 feet. After that it climbed again and crossed the White Mountain range and then descended into the Owens Valley. There is Lake Owens, shrunk to a pond by the ever-increasing demands for water of Los Angeles.

Across and towering above the broad valley appeared a snow covered wall of mountains, the Sierra Nevada. The range is grand indeed. We spent two hours at a visitors’ center gazing at the splendid range and its Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. This peak sits only one hundred miles from the depths of Death Valley.

The Owens Valley gives clear signs of geological activity. Here at Mammoth Lakes, geysers, hot springs, dying trees, hot ground, and smoking sulphurous vents fairly scream that the earth is unstable and fluid. No terra firma here. The USGS provides little comfort in stating that the probability of an eruption here is no more than one in one hundred each year.

The Mammoth Lakes high-end recreational community prospers in the belief (or hope) that the next eruption will be a little one only throwing only a few acres of rocks into the air. The eruptions here in the past few thousand years have been of this kind. None-the-less, there is a circular valley here with a diameter of about ten square miles. When that bomb went off the cloud probably shadowed the globe for a few weeks.

Visiting friends here we backed Minnie up over a snow bank at slightly less than 8,000 feet of elevation. Mammoth Mountain above us is still covered with snow, and skiers tell us conditions are great at least until mid-afternoon each day. The ski area is largely above tree line. Grand Jeffrey and lodgepole pines make a forest between about 7,000 and 11,000 feet elevation. The forest provides a contrast to the deserts in which we have resided since the beginning of February.

Dawn today found us in the sage bush desert to the east of Mammoth Lakes. There a happy accident made this a great birding day. We found a sage grouse lek. Chuck noticed a cluster of moving black dots in a distant grassy field. Eureka!

The greater sage grouse is the largest of our grouse. The bird is more than half the size of a turkey. In the spring males of this species gather on certain grounds or “leks” to hold court, display, and mate. Some seventy males gathered on the lek we found this morning. These cocks loiter with puffed up white-feathered breasts. When hens appear the cocks puff up even more and expose bare yellow patches of skin on their white breasts and raise a stiff circle of pointed tail feathers. Finally, they stretch and wiggle their pendulous “sunny side up eggs” and hoot in front of the prospective mates.

Then hens stroll through the lek, coyly peck at grass, and seem to ignore the gaudy displays. In the end, of course, most find satisfaction there and fly off to enjoy a few more days of freedom before making a nest and producing a brood. The cocks stay on the lek almost a month displaying, eating almost nothing, fighting for prime positions, and, of course, mating whenever possible. Finally, close to starvation, they give up the effort and wander off to restore themselves. Their excitement is over until next spring.

The greater sage grouse was a life-bird for us today, and a fine one. Later in the day a sooty grouse boomed from the mountain. We never saw him, but finding him by ear, we added him to our year list. Together the grouse made today a great birding day.

Next week we will move north and cross the Sierras west of Reno, Nevada. The roads here are still snow closed. Once over the top, we will turn north again and move toward our rendezvous with the ferry to Alaska. Along the way will be more visits, sightseeing, and birding adventures.