Inscription Canyon

Miles and miles of gently rolling hills and sand dunes in the Mojave Desert give way to some ancient lava fields.

A bit out of the way, something like 10 miles of poor condition dirt road give way to 5 miles of really bad dirt road. Here are some of the most easily accessible Indian petroglyphs to be seen.



Hard to tell exactly what some of these are suspected to be. Is this an Indian pizza???



And yet other inscriptions are more recently added graffiti. I'm not sure the Indians were up on the theory of relativity. Or have we crossed over into the twilight zone???


All images are © ancient Indians???

Love Train Tribute

Another thing we did was visit a railroad museum. Well, we tried to visit it anyway. It wasn't open when we got there, and we had a couple of other stops on the agenda for the day so we couldn't wait around for it.




However, they have several engines and cars outside of the place, and the boys enjoyed climbing all over them, and I enjoyed taking several pictures!!!




I like the way the shot through the windows came out, not only can you see my boy, but you can see my reflection.





Next stop: Inscription Canyon!!!

BUNNY!!!

The place where we stayed was teeming with jack rabbits at night!!!

They were not easy to photograph with my digital camera.

This is the best I could manage.

They were very cool to see, though!!!

65 on 66

For the long weekend we went to Barstow. The original plan was to take the Maverick, but it was having charging system problems, so we took the Falcon instead.


It was a great trip, and the Falcon ran flawlessly, with the exception of a little vapor lock when it was warm.



On the way back, we drove old Route 66 from Barstow to San Bernardino to avoid some of the traffic on the way back.


I've got at least two, maybe three more posts to come from the trip.


Stay tuned!!!

B.S. For Dinner

The other night I had a couple of turkey pot pies for dinner. It so happened that I had two different brands in the freezer, a Banquet and a Swanson. Since I've not posted in a while and it is Thanksgiving, I thought it was a pretty decent tie-in. Turkey is OK by itself or with some gravy, but given the choice I would usually go with the ham over turkey. Turkey pot pie, though... it doesn't get much better than that!!! I would mark one pie with a "B" and the other with an "S" and do a comparison. The instructions always say to cut a slit in the top, but with the frozen crust this usually doesn't work very well. I usually just poke holes with a fork, and this time I did so in these letter shapes.

My feeling going in was that the Banquet is the superior pie. I don't know why, perhaps it is because I'm more used to seeing that brand, since my youth. The color scheme of red seems more appealing to me than the blue of the Swanson. Saving my perceived best for last, I plopped out the Swanson pie first. I was ravenous, so it was really good to me. Next came the Banquet pie. It did not come out of the (paper) pie tin cleanly, leaving part of the crust stuck to it. Doesn't matter a whole lot, I cut the thing into bite size pieces first thing anyway, but I had to work at the crust to get the remains off the edge. Perhaps this was because it had a chance to cool off more, and adhered to the tin during the process. It tasted... well, about the same, maybe not quite as good. Maybe that was because I had some in my belly already and wasn't as famished, or perhaps because the crust had wronged me. Either way, I can declare neither one a decisive winner. My preference will continue to be whichever one has a better price!!!

After the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm thinking chili. Last weekend the wife and I went out to Claim Jumper for dinner, and we both had dishes featuring their chili, which is quite good. That got me to thinking that I've not made my chili in a while, I should try making some something like theirs, with big chunks of steak. Not gonna happen this weekend, it's Thanksgiving, and after that I'll we'll be out of town for a few days. Possibly the weekend after... and hey!!! I'll probably have some leftover turkey!!! Never tried turkey chili before, and everyone will probably like that better than turkey straight. Could be some ham left over, too, another thing I've never tried in chili. I've got two crock pots, one for the each of ya!!!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!! Hope your leftovers have a happy ending, too!!!

What About Them???

More fun with refrigerator magnets!!! The set is not complete, so I end up putting together whatever I can come up with. That's what happened with the last one. I've decided that perhaps I'll make this a regular recurring feature, whatever funny thing I can come up with. The letters I have are D, E, H, I (X2, or could be used as a 1), K, L, M (or could be used as a W, upside down), N, O, Q, R, S (X2), T, U (X2), V, Y (X2), Z, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (or could be used as a 9) and 8. I encourage you to make suggestions of what I could post in the future!!!

South Park Girls

(Click on the pic for a better view)

Pank: Hey, do you see that???
Lilly: Yea, how did she get those???
Gonk: They can't be real.
Eyeball's Girl: Oh, they're real all right, they are what are going to get me the BIG ROCK!!!
Granny: but we've all got big boobs in real life!!! How come she's the only one who got boobs here???

Feel free to create your own dialogue!!!

What's Lilly Been Up To???

Fire off the Freeway

I shot this over the weekend. I'm fairly talented at driving and filming, huh??? I've seen this place catch on fire before!!!

A Sleazy Proposition

Tomorrow is voting day. Be sure to get out and vote!!! My main hard and fast rule for all the propositions is not to vote for any of the bond issues. Almost every one of these ends up costing in my property taxes. A lot of renters don't see it, but if you are one, know that any property tax increase will be passed along to you. So many of the ads about the propositions are SO transparent that it is amazing that anyone pays attention. The big one here is 87, an oil extraction tax to pay for alternative energy research, with provisions to keep the costs from being passed along to consumers at the pump. We'll just see if that actually pans out that way. The other top three oil producing states have an extraction tax. The ads against it, though... "it's a bad idea, it'll never work, it will end up costing you more at the pump!!!" And you'll never guess who's paying for it. Citizens against higher taxes, AKA big oil!!! Wow, didn't see that coming!!! They have spent over $100,000,000.00 on it. Unfortunately, Slick Willie has been stumping in favor of it, and I've heard several people who were also in favor who are re-thinking because of that.

Next up is proposition 86. A cigarette tax of $2.60 per pack. The proceeds will go to various health programs, and a hit like that alone, I would think, would be a big nudge in the right direction to people who are thinking about or trying to quit. Naturally, it's opposed by (you'll never guess) big tobacco!!!

Another one out there that hasn't gotten quite as much coverage is 85, requiring parental notification before performing abortions for minors and a 48 hour waiting period. Ready for the amazing, unpredictable opposition??? Planned parenthood!!!

I've already made my view on bond measures, but I feel this one deserves a special condemnation. Proposition 84 is a "clean water" bill with a 5.4 billion dollar price tag. I'm as for clean water as anyone, but the trouble with this bill... It's been done before!!! Five times already, if I'm not mistaken. Every time, the funds get treated as government's piggy bank.

The one that I do like is proposition 1A. This is the one we need more like it. Instead of raising taxes or issuing bonds, it keeps politicians and government from raiding taxes that we've already allocated and sees to it that they go where they're supposed to go.

Perhaps I'll do an update on what makes it!!!

Flaming Eyeball Productions Presents:

We'll just see if this works!!! First time I've tried this, but with a little help from You Tube...

Two of the three videos I recorded of the pumpkin destruction!!!

For some reason, the third one isn't showing up yet. I'm not that familiar with the workings of You Tube yet, but I think I have found an outlet for my video creativity!!!

A November Tradition

At the beginning of every November, we have a tradition at our house. We throw our old jack-O-lanterns to the street, usually from the front porch!!! Always there is some kind of recording of the event, whether it be video or still pictures. This year we did both, but I was doing most of the video so I was relying on others to take the stills.
As a result, most of the stills weren't that good, but these two came out good. Pumpkin in mid-flight, and the lid of a pumpkin on it's edge. The videos came out quite nice, hopefully I'll post some soon.