And it gets even worse!

Okay, I've now returned to my home in Northern California, approximately half way between that huge red square and the swarm of more than 500 earthquakes in the Reno, Nevada area.

The big square is a 5.2 magnitude quake that occurred at 8:03 p.m. this evening, Tuesday, 29 April 2008.

And take a look at that swarm in the southern part of the State on the Southern Branch of the San Andreas Fault. I just left there, right in the middle of that mess.

Since the news media isn't interested in all of this activity I wonder if anyone out there is--besides me? Oh that's right, Obama's pastor shot his mouth off again and it is occupying all of the news time. Wow, will I be glad when this election is over. In the meantime, it is rather amusing to see Clinton and Obama and their supporters forming a circular firing squad.

Why is no one concerned?

Okay, I'm no geologist but I've paid attention to the map above, on an almost daily basis, for years. After all, living in California, earthquakes are a subject of interest.

The map above is an active or vital display changing as quakes occur throughout the area. In my experience, going back about 10-15 years, this map has had an average of 350 to 500 quakes on it. You'll notice the total for this morning is twice the high end of that range; nearly 1000 quakes.

In Southern California, the legendary home of the San Andreas Fault, the news stations are treating that blob of quakes near Reno, NV, very casually, announcing, "Experts have warned the residents of Reno of the possibility of a major quake", but have interviewed no one. It seems to me that this is short sighted and that some sort of major event is getting ready to happen in which no one has shown an interest. Look at all of those small quakes throughout the State of Nevada. That is not normal!

What's going on? Inquiring minds want to know.

NASCAR Stupidity

Okay, it's Saturday and for me that means another NASCAR race day. Today's race is at Talladega Raceway in Alabama. My guy, Carl Edwards, had moved back into the points leadership of the Nationwide Series after Clint Bower wrecked earlier in the day.

Talledega Raceway is known as the home of "THE BIG ONE", a crash that usually involves a large number of the cars competing in the race. Today's BIG ONE occured as the leaders of the pack of 30-some cars approached turn one. A car driven by Kevin LePage, #61, returning to the track after a pit stop, suddenly re-entered the raceway directly in front of the cars racing on the track. The difference in speed between STUPID LEPAGE and everyone else was about 100 miles per hour.

Well, the cars on the track had no where to go and simply ran over STUPID LEPAGE. My guy, Carl Edwards, was the first car to hit LePage (his car is the one that is airborne in the photo above, totally destroying his car and causing major damage to 15 other cars (many of which were unable to return to the track.

When the ESPN reporter got to him, LePage's comments portrayed him as the victim of all of those bad drivers who could not avoid his brightly painted red and yellow car. I'm sorry Kevin, how can you ever feel justified in jumping out in front of a huge pack of cars running at race speed when you're still accelerating. He truly felt he had done nothing wrong. Kevin LePage, you should have your license yanked--PERMANENTLY!

OUR MIGRATORY FLIGHT PATH

Our Southern California winter is now coming to an end. With the successful completion of my surgical procedure last Friday, I'm now mending and, by Tuesday, 29 April, I should be in good enough condition to head this home-on-wheels towards our home-on-the-mountain-top.

It's been an enjoyable winter, though cooler and windier than normal, but we're both looking forward to being home again.

Our summer plans this year call for us to remain home rather than travel to the Oregon Coast again. Both the cost of fuel and the shortening of our time at home due to the need to head for Albuquerque, in late September for the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, weighed heavily in making this decision.

We'll pause briefly on the way home to visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for one day.

We hope you've enjoyed being able to easily keep up with our activities and my writing craziness. Our posts will be fewer at home but take heart, we'll be on the road again in just a few months.

Have a great summer with $4.00 gas and $5.00 gals. of milk. What a country. Corn for auto fuel was such a great idea. A wise man once said, "If it's good theory, it's also good in practice." I guess that gas theory was lacking a bit of something.

Migratory Birds and other issues of Spring

You become aware of a change in mid-March but it doesn’t get fully underway until after the first of April. Migratory birds are seen on every body of water here in the desert, sometimes even swimming on swimming pools, as they return north for the warm summer after their winter sojourn to Mexico.

One of the largest and amazing is the Snow Bird who actually wintered over here in the Desert Southwest from West Texas to here in the Palm Springs, CA, area. One of the breeds is the Canadian Snow Bird who, due to immigration laws, are only allowed to spend six months here in the United States. Yeah, yeah, Judy and I qualify as snow birds too but we never have to be out of here by a particular date.

Back in January and February you could not have rented an RV Space in this or any other park in the area as they were all full every night. Everyone here during those months had worked the advance reservation system to their fullest benefit, routinely making their plans 90 days in advance. As you can see, most of the sites are now vacant and all planned activity programs have come to an end.Now you can’t find a space in a storage yard as they are full. Many folks, especially Canadians, leave their RV here for the summer since it’s cheaper to store it here than move it back and forth each year.

Now some of the parks are actually preparing to close for the summer season here on the desert. We’ll be moving to one of those (Desert Pools Resort) on the 15th for the last two weeks of their season. Following that we’ll return to the site of all of the photos accompanying this blog article, Catalina Spa and Resort. Both of these are in Desert Hot Springs.

As we continue with warm spring weather here on the desert, the strange and other-worldly cactus plants come into spectacular bloom. Every day now there are more and more amazing and colorful blossoms popping out of some of the least attractive plants imaginable.

Our stay this winter and spring has been very enjoyable in spite of the fact that temperatures ranged considerably lower than average, rain was above average, and we had an inordinate number of extremely windy days with gusts to 50 mph or more. We met up again with good friends, enjoyed some pleasant outings, ate some wonderful food at restaurants that were new to us, and no problems developed with our motorhome requiring repair.

Our plans called for us to be home on 1 May but that may have to be stretched a bit as I’m scheduled for surgery on 18 April, and may need some weeks of recuperation prior to driving home. We aren’t planning on being long delayed, however, in our return to Grass Valley.