April 24 to 29, 2003. We're off on our annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the company golf tournament, which is mostly a weekend of drinking, gambling, seeing old friends with a little golf thrown in. This year we headed out in the van a day early and stayed an extra day before heading back to make up for it. Click on the links embedded in the text to see photos!
Mojave National Preserve
Driving up I-15 is always a joy, especially when you get past Victorville and the construction starts. For some reason we hit a lot of bugs this year and naturally ran out of washer fluid somewhere near Barstow. We decided to stop and camp Thursday night, and the Mojave National Preserve (for those of you like my brother Bob who are Spanish language deficient, Mojave is not pronounced "moh-jave" it is pronounced "moh-hah-vee") looked like a good place. I know it's hard to imagine for most people who have made this drive that there could possibly be any reason to get off the Interstate at Baker and head south into the desert, but that's exactly what we did. You would not want to do this in the middle of the summer, but Thursday afternoon the weather was good, relatively cool with a light breeze. During the summer it is usually 110 degrees with a light breeze of about 80 miles an hour. Not very pleasant. Anyway, we found an out-of-the-way place to camp and set up for the night. Did I mention out of the way?
The desert was alive with flowers, the cacti were blooming, the yucca were blooming and the time was right for yours truly to do a little exploring. Of course, being an archeologist, I keep my eyes peeled for signs ancient human occupancy. I was lucky enough to find several well-preserved artifacts, which I labeled, so you non-experts can understand what you're viewing, then photographed and then returned to their original locations for future explorers to enjoy.
Las Vegas
The next day, Friday, we headed on up to Las Vegas and the luxurious Treasure Island Hotel and Casino and Pirate Adventure, the home-base for the Hunsaker golf group. Our room was on the 28th floor facing north with a view toward the Stardust, Circus Circus and the Stratosphere.
The weather held for the golf tourney on Saturday. Earlier in the day the wind kicked up but by tee time at noon, there was just a gentle breeze and the temperature was in the 70's, as good as it gets in Las Vegas. Amazingly, I shot a 99, legitimately breaking 100 for the first time in my life - no mulligans, no picking up after double par, no foot wedges. Those of you who know how I play golf know that this is a major accomplishment for me. On the bus ride back to the hotel, Bruce Hunsaker smugly tallied up the scores and once again the Orange County office was victorious.
Winning the H&A Ryder Cup gives the winning team the dubious honor of hosting the "Awards Ceremony and Dinner" which seems to get bigger and better every year (thanks to H&A Irvine). Here are Glenn & Lynn Showell enjoying the feast. This is not a very flattering photo of Sargon Tavour, for sure. Here is a group shot featuring Glenn & Lynn Showell, Dave & Wendy Hammar, Bruce & Kim Hunsaker, Kittie & Eddie Brisendine and Jack & lorri Hill. Lorri is the one in her familiar wine-drinking pose. Because of Lorri's wine drinking another group photo was called for. As you can see, in this one, Lorri has her eyes closed so a third group photo was necessary. Finally, I think we got it right.
Topock, Arizona
We left Las Vegas on Monday and headed south to the thriving metropolis of Topock, AZ, just across the mighty Colorado River from Needles, CA, home of Snoopy's desert dwelling brother, Spike. Actually, Lorri's sister Terri lives in a "suburb" of Topock called "Golden Shores", in a tidy little double-wide with views across the valley to the River and distant foothills. Here is a shot of Lorri, Ted (Terri's boyfriend), Terri and me. After a nice visit, we headed west on I-40, along the south side of the Mojave Preserve. More Terri Photos.
Mojave National Preserve, Part 2
It was late afternoon as we left I-40 and headed north to the Kelso Sand Dunes. Once again we found a nice place to set up and watched the sun set over the dunes. The next morning, the sky was crystal clear and cool, perfect weather to hike to the top of the tallest dune we could see. Well, Lori made it about half-way (the easy half) before she became bored and headed back to the van. I continued to the top and was rewarded by a spectacular 360 degree view. This was the view along the ridge of the dune looking north. One of the constant challenges of outdoor photography is trying to give scale to things. These dunes are huge but in most of my photos they look rather ordinary. OK, I'm no Ansel Adams but I try. This photo was taken looking down from the top. There is a small figure in the middle foreground which is another hiker, not an ant. This one shows two hikers at the top of the dune (you can barely see them) and two others headed up. These four people were the only other people anywhere near where we were.
Finally it was time to head back to sunny San Diego so we got back on I-40 and caught the 15 at Barstow, we blasted past Victorville, conquered the Cajon Pass, flew past San Berdoo, raced right by Riverside, tore through Temecula and made it home in time for cocktails!
