It has been over eleven years since I went to the eye doctor. I know, because my late husband drove me there. Today’s visit was an eye opener (no pun intended, hah!) Things have really gotten high tech in the eye exam world. Little lasers to measure your retinal thickness. Video game type tracking of little green plus signs. And the glaucoma test is still the little puff in the eyes. It’s also more expensive these days. But I now have a year’s worth of contacts in hand. That will take some adjusting back to, as I’ve worn glasses for a while now, so I keep reaching for them, lol. The good news is that my eyes have improved. Weird, huh? But now I have readers again, which I’ll probably lose right away even in the tiny area of the bus! At least when I do, unlike when I misplaced my glasses a few dozen times, I’ll be able to see to look for them 🙂
I’m running south to escape the chilly weather in northern Nevada. Well, ambling would be a more apt term. I dropped into Pioche for a couple of days, then Caliente to visit a friend and go play in the dirt looking for fossils and doing a little rock hounding. That was fun and I wish I’d had more time to spend, but work and a cold snap pushed me onwards.
The night sky here at the edge of the Valley of Fire is pretty spectacular. The 60 mph winds were challenging the first couple of days though and I didn’t even venture outside much. The winds have died down now and it is quite warm compared to actual fall back where I started. Last night I didn’t even need a blanket for the first time in a while. I think me and a few hundred other souls are finding that nice up here on the mesa!
Pretty soon I’ll be dropping into Quartzsite along with a few hundred thousand or more people. Friends will regroup from last year’s adventures in the desert. Social distancing will become a concern once again – we’ve all traveled through hard hit states in our travels, though many of us have been mostly alone for months other than a handful of one on one visits. How will we do? No one I know on the road has been ill, thankfully, even though we’re in and out of grocery stores, medical facilities and restaurants. But this will be a mass of people in one place. Some organized camps have strict quarantine rules. I doubt our little loosely defined camps will do so. Then I have to contend with flying to the east coast for a wedding – small, outdoors, but still. I’ll be there for a month or more, then back to the sticks and bricks to see what’s up there and bring my car out here to be towed behind the bus. These are things I’ve not encountered since the pandemic started in seriousness last spring out West. I wear a mask when entering stores and such; many others I know do not. But for now, I simply have to get from here to there and see how it unfolds.
Until then, stay healthy, get outside when you can, and find joy in the little things!
~SE , resting up for the next leg of the journey.
Sunflower Solace Farm 