Potpourri

Wow. Three posts in less than a month. I guess I'm on a roll now. It's either that or I actually have something to say. But since it's the beginning of a new month, it's time once again for P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is potpourri, a mixture of things, and boy do I have an interesting mixture of shots that I took last month. In reality, the amount of shots that I actually took was low and the amount of selfies last month was very high, almost 67% of all my shots included my self-serving mug in the frame, so I'm actually pleased that there's only two shots in this month's gallery of photos that has me in the shot.

So anyway, here's my take on this month's theme of potpourri.

1. How hot is it?

This past week I took another road trip, to of all places, Las Vegas. Why you might ask? Well, usually, the only time I ever travel to Las Vegas is when I'm traveling through Las Vegas to get to points elsewhere. It's not a town I really want to spend a lot of time in, but when I have been there, it's always around 110 freaking degrees outside and very unpleasant to walk around, so we get out, maybe for a bathroom break and then hop right back in the car usually on the way to Utah, where it's always cooler.

This time I purposely decided that I wanted to visit Las Vegas and I turned it into a geocaching road trip (but then again, when isn't a road trip of mine geocaching-centric?). Part of the reason was there are several geocaches in Las Vegas with very high favorite point ratings. If you have been following along, you know that I enjoy challenge caches. Find the cache, but before you can log the cache, you have to complete the challenge. One challenge that I've signed requires me to find 15 caches with 1000 favorite points. There are several in Las Vegas and I eventually found three of them, bringing my total of 1000 favorite point caches up to 11. So that gives you the reason why I went to Las Vegas, but the first shot isn't about Las Vegas at all.

No, this is actually in California. I needed lunch, so I stopped in Baker, California, had lunch, then drove over to the "World's Largest Thermometer." There is a virtual cache located here which I had already logged several years ago when it was over 100 degrees, but there's also a physical cache right near the base of the thermometer and so I ended up finding that one for my second find of the trip. Ironically, I didn't even step back to see how warm it was that day, but I suspect it was somewhere in the mid 70s, a very pleasant day to be out in the desert.

2. All Hail Caesar!

Once getting to Las Vegas, I decided to walk along the Strip. It was late in the afternoon and I wanted to find some of the virtual caches along the Strip. One of the caches is entitled Toga Party and is located outside Caesars Palace. You need to find this particular statue of Caesar and take a selfie of you with it. As opposed to some of the other Caesars nearby, this particular Caesar is quite naked and so I wanted to keep my shot family friendly and thus framed the shot accordingly. Not that anything is family friendly along the Strip, but I have some standards nonetheless.

3. Sunset on the Strip

Everything on the Strip is over the top. You like M&Ms? There's a four story building dedicated to nothing but M&Ms. You want to visit Paris? There's a replica of the Eifel Tower along the Strip. Castles, performing fountains and volcanoes, rollercoasters around high rise buildings are all part of Las Vegas and I enjoyed just taking it all in.

As I was heading back to my motel for the first night, I was greeted by this gorgeous sunset behind the New York, New York hotel and casino. I couldn't pass that up. And as noted previously, since this was a geocaching trip, I had certain goals I wanted to accomplish, so riding the rollercoaster, although tempting, wasn't in the plans for this week. Since I didn't accomplish all of my goals, I know I'll be back in the future, perhaps next fall again as I now know that the weather is much more accommodating than in the summer.

4. Annie

No, I didn't go to a play while in town, but I did visit a very dear friend of mine who I worked with for about 20 years before I retired. She subsequently retired a couple years later and she and her husband have since moved to this area. She was our school's media coordinator/librarian. She also owned several "labrary" dogs over the years who would enjoy the library on Fridays during our school year. Our school was very dog friendly and so it wasn't uncommon to see several dogs on campus, especially on Fridays. Annie was the last of the labrary dogs to enjoy the hospitality of the school's library. 

Annie is a very loyal dog and once you were her friend, she would always recognize you and ask for scritches and wag her tail at you. Sometime during the last month of school the year I retired, we had an assembly and I decided that I would be the mascot of the school during the assembly, dressing up in a large cougar costume. At one point, I was resting on a chair on the side of the gym and Annie came over to me and snuggled with me, not something she would normally do when you're so camouflaged, but she recognized my scent.

When I went to visit on my second day there, Annie barked at the door since there was an "intruder" into her humble abode. But as soon as she saw me, she was all tail wags and dog kisses. She remembered and we hadn't see each other in over three years. She's a good girl.

5. Life's short. Eat dessert first.

My last night in Las Vegas was again dedicated to walking along a different portion of the Strip. I found this side alley near the Flamingo hotel that had all sorts of restaurants, so I decided that I was going to eat back in there as there just seemed to be all sorts of gastrointestinal delights, including sushi burritos. I didn't try those, but they did look interesting. 

Before I had a chance for dinner, I found the Ghirardelli shop and entered. Mistake number 1 according to some people, but I looked at it as an opportunity. I wandered around inside, checked out the menu and then decided that life is short and I ordered this sundae, a Cookie Crumb Hot Fudge Sundae. I posted this shot to my family's group chat and my youngest immediately posted back, "I don't know what that is, but I know I want one." 

I decided that I was going to eat dessert first. Well, in reality, I ended up eating dessert that evening as it was a very filling dessert. I know it wasn't very healthy, but it was very tasty and because I don't do this on a daily basis, I could justify it for a one night extravagance.

The next morning, I hosted a coffee event just off the Strip that was fairly well attended by some of the local geocachers as well as two other geocachers from California and two geocachers from Australia who were in town for a conference. Why host an event? Why not? It gave me a way to meet some of the local geocachers, get a tip or two on some local caches that I might try to find and gave me my 8th different kind of geocache find in the state. 

Yes, there's a challenge for that in Colorado called the 8x8 challenge where they want you to find 8 different kinds of geocaches in 8 different states. I now have found at least 8 different kinds of geocaches in 3 states, California, Arizona and now Nevada. New Mexico is the next closest with 7 different kinds and all I have to do is go to New Mexico and either attend an event or host my own event and I'll then have 8 different kinds of caches there. 

Well, there you have it, my take on the theme potpourri for this month. Please stop by P.J.'s blog and check out some other people's interpretation of the same theme. As always, please comment here. I won't bite.

Happy

Well, July was a total bust regarding this blog. I had high hopes for the month of July, but the month just got away from me. A trip to the Bay Area during the second week in July fulfilled my retirement goal of an overnighter per month, which is starting to look pretty good for the near future at least. 

And I was able to get out and take some photos, so P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge looks doable this month as well. With these photo blogs, I usually don't try to think about the theme very much and then when the month is ended, I look at the shots I've taken and see if they fit into the them for the previous month. Sometimes, it's really easy, sometimes, I don't participate because I didn't take anything that I felt fit the theme.

This month's theme was happy and I think I was able to get five shots that fits the theme pretty well. So without further adieu, I give you my take on the theme happy.

1. The COVID hairstyle

Most of you who have been following along know I decided right from the get go that I wouldn't expose myself unnecessarily and so things that didn't need to be done, didn't get done, like getting my haircut. Several of my friends took the same tack, one of them being John, a fellow geocacher. We both had gotten our last haircut in February of 2020 and had only seen each other via Zoom meetings. We joked about the length of our hair and decided to have a contest as to which of us could have the longest hair length by the time the next time we met at a geocaching event. Yesterday, for the first time in about a year and a half, we saw each other at a geocaching event. Since I got my haircut about a month ago, I definitely lost that contest, but it makes me happy that we were able to get together once again.

2 & 3. Family and Dogs

As always, getting together with family makes me extremely happy. In mid July, my wife and I drove up to visit with two thirds of our kids, both of who live up in the Bay Area with their respective spouses/partners. My youngest was visiting with his partner back east, so he wasn't along for the ride, otherwise it would have been the first time the entire family had been together face to face, since before the pandemic began.

We also got to meet my daughter and son-in-law's new dog. I say new, since we'd never met her before, but they've had her for over a year now. About a week before we got there, my son's partner got a German Shepherd puppy which we also met for the first time. It's been a long time since dogs have been in our households and it was really good to see four legged friends enjoying life under our rooftops again.

4. Travel

I love to travel. I especially love to travel to new places that I have never visited before, but a couple of places are near and dear to my heart, one of them being San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I could sit in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge and watch the sunlight and clouds play around its spires for days and days. No matter how many times I visit, I try to sneak in a visit to the bridge and this last trip up north was no exception.

Because I was doing some geocaching related things I also decided that it would be a good time to explore Ft. Point again, located underneath the bridge and to also walk across the bridge over to Marin County. I've done that one time previously about 6 years ago, but it felt like a good time to do it again. I'm not sure I'd do it again, mainly because of the noise and the fact that I've already done it twice, but standing on the bridge and getting different kinds of photographic shots still inspires me and makes me happy, so I won't say I won't ever do it again, because I know in the long run what makes me happy.

When I originally took this shot, I thought it was going to be a throw away shot, one that I take, because I don't think I've gotten enough shots of a particular subject. I always take more than what I really need to take for this reason, because every now and then, you get a shot that just tends to grow on you. This is one of those shots. I love how the south spire of the bridge disappears into the mist of the cloud bank and how you can barely make out the north spire. 

I love the architecture of the bridge and how the bridge was redesigned  to include the arch so that Ft. Point wasn't demolished when the bridge was built. I love that surfers use this area as a gathering spot in which to ply their particular hobby (It's not for me, but that's what makes the world go around, is a little bit of diversity).

5. My love

I met her at a party in June 1986 and we were married a year later in July 1987. We've had our ups and downs, but mostly it's been a lot of ups, which makes me very happy.  To this day, I can't for the life of me even begin to understand why she still wants to be around me with all of my faults, so I guess I can consider myself a very lucky man.

I know she doesn't really like this particular photo, but I think it's one of the better photos I've taken of her over the years. It was taken at an outdoor dining venue in town, where we went just to enjoy each other's company and enjoy eating together. I like how it shows her relaxed side. As my daughter says, "Vacation Mom is the best mom." 

We don't eat out very often during her regular work year, but when she's on summer vacation, we get to spend a lot more time together. Evening walks to help keep us in shape happen during the summer time and she's expressed an interest in continuing that into the fall and winter months. I'm agreeable to that. And so it goes. But she makes me happy and I hope I make her happy as well.

And that's my take on this month's theme. Stop by P.J.'s page and click on the links at the bottom to see how other people have interpreted this same theme.

Doppelgänger

I'm not sure I believe in the whole doppelgänger thing or not, but yesterday, my wife and I went out on a walk and was this woman walking her daughter's dog Atlas.  The dog was on "vacation" from New York.  Apparently, this is going to be a regular  feature for Atlas in the near future.  Live the winter months in New York and then spend the summer out in California.

Anyway, as we were walking, we spotted Atlas and I said out loud, "that dog looks just like Rocky."  Rocky was the dog I'd gotten my wife for her birthday the first year we were married.  Half Cocker Spaniel, half Siberian Husky, Rocky was a whirlwind of energy.

I'll let you be the judge on whether you see the doppelgänger thing or not. The photo on the left is Atlas at age 2 and a half.  The photo on the right is Rocky at age 3.  Atlas has at least 30 pounds on Rocky as he is a Alaskan Malamute mix and Rocky was on the small side, but the similarities were very striking.