Tonight we're trying to get home. It has been a huge pain trying to get back - I've been working on making this happen since Thursday. But it finally got set up, and I was to do a repower at the Nevada Landing Casino in Jean, NV.

I met up with the guy I was supposed to switch trailer with, and we made the trailer swap. I pulled to the end of the parking lot and completed my paperwork and my satellite terminal updates. When I finished I took a good look at where we were. I told Harri "this would be a great place to park sometime. Lots of truck parking, and look - lots of open desert that would be great for kitty walking".

I then noticed that Harri was sitting on my lap with her front paws on my window. That's the "it's time for a kitten walk" pose. It's like she was saying "look, open ground, no people or trucks or dogs, and it's dark. Like in dark-walking. And I don't see any kittens out there". So I found a convenient parking space, put Harri into her kittying gear, and off we went.

Since we were right next to the casino parking lot, there was a lot of light. But like last night I made sure to bring along the flashlight. Harri was so excited to do this walk that she was doing the kitten-run - that cute way of running where the both front paws move together and both back paws move together. We had a wonderful walk! The temperature was in the low 70s and there was a gentle breeze blowing. Even though we were 20 miles or so south of Las Vegas, I could still clearly see the spotlight shining from the top of the Luxor casino.

Harri was chasing invisible bugs again, though she also found some moths to chase. She managed to catch and eat two moths, then she found her very first grasshopper. It took the better part of 15 minutes to get bored with it, but then it managed to escape. A few minutes later we found another lizard - her 4th in 2 days. The lizard provided another 10 minutes of fascination.

The best part of the walk was when we found a joshua tree that had mostly blown over. It had several arms and branches that either touched or were close to the ground, so Harri was able to jump up onto one branch then walk or jump to the others. Exploring this one joshua tree took another 10 minutes or so.

When we got back to the truck I got a "squeak-weeeeeeeeeek" from Harri. I've come to recognize that as Roadcatlish for "thanks". My little baby is now sleeping on the dash as we finish our run back to our home terminal. A beautiful night again.

Copyright © Dan Mahoney
May 3, 2005