Wisdom cries out on the street

Apologies for the irregularity of my posts - I am constantly distracted by drugstores, deserts, small blue-black birds with very long wand-like tails and thousands of people feeding their money into machines to watch the lights flash. 


We have travelled by car to Las Vegas via Yosemite. It has been fascinating and astounding. Yosemite was cold, remote and beautiful; the bears were asleep but I did see some deer ambling across the road one night. The drive down to Vegas was fabulous - everything I had imagined about America came to life. We had lunch en route in Bakersfield. There was a bucket of peanuts on the table while we waited for our order. You just cracked them open and threw the shells on the floor. 


I'd forgotten how chatty and kindly Americans are. Everyone talks, everyone is happy to share stories with you. I've come to realise how very separate Manhattan is from the rest the States; in the last few days I've got a much clearer picture of how tough some people are actually doing it in this part of the world. I've also seen a much wider, more diverse picture of America, its industries and its geography. 


I'd show you some examples of that but at the moment the computer and I are having a little fight and it won't tell me where exactly it has stored the photos I downloaded a few minutes ago. Patience, please. There has been much travelling, many fine meals in diners, lots of sightseeing and of course shopping I need to share. 


But I can show you that I definitely am in the desert: 

 ...there's a big bustling city in the middle of it. 

 Dressed perfectly for Outlet Mall shopping - not so good for the freezing temperatures of Mount Charleston. Kindly spouse donated use of his fleece for the occasion. 

 And we found the one place in Nevada, maybe in the whole of the States, that makes real expresso coffee. 

A Colorado crow,  captured by my intrepid wandering spouse while I chose outlet shopping over fear of very small aircrafts. That's a canyon, a grand one, in the background.