Benjamin’s Trip to Nevada

  Well, it’s been great having Benjamin back home!  Directly after the CHEF Conference he took a flight by himself to Las Vegas to take care of my Aunt and Uncle’s house/Golden Retriever while they were on a cruise.

  He would be in Nevada for almost two weeks and would be alone at the suburban house for 9 days – with the only mode of transportation being by foot!  It was a difficult choice for my Mom to make, but she knew that Ben’s shown capable of taking care of himself.

  So a few hours after we dropped Benjamin off at the airport he was flying above the bright town of Las Vegas:

 

And, surprise, surprise, this was the first thing to greet his eyes:

  My Aunt and Uncle actually live a little bit away from Las Vegas and are in a growing suburban area.  During the next couple of days before they left town they showed Benjamin a few of the sights and helped him get groceries.

  They drove him to Hoover Dam, but unfortunately the photos were accidentally deleted.  However, here are the pictures of the lake formed by the dam:

Lake Las Vegas

 

A bridge

Slot machines were everywhere-even in the gas stations:

2 cents (x2), 5 cents and 25 cents (x4), respectively.

  After my Aunt and Uncle left for their cruise, Benjamin was alone and had to walk a couple of miles to get to the nearest drug store.

   The heat was overpowering.  The temperature was often 105-120 degrees, but because the climate is so dry there’s no humidity and is less uncomfortable than the muggy 85 degrees we have at home.

  However, walking 6 miles in the desert for a gallon of milk wouldn’t be called convenient.

 

 

 

 

  The terrain and environment were so different Benjamin said he felt like he was on a different planet!

Legend – the Golden Retriever Benjamin had to take care of.  It was too hot to leave him alone outside, so Benjamin was able to fly out and take him for walks and let him inside the A/C throughout the day.

 

   Interestingly enough the house on the top is one of Celine Dion’s houses and the one below is Madonna’s.

 

 

 

 

   An oasis?

 

  A nearby river

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunset

  The casinos shot off fireworks that could be seen from the house

  Can you spot the jackrabbit?

  However, after 9 long days of being alone Benjamin was happy to interact with humans again when my Aunt and Uncle arrived home.  He flew out last Tuesday morning and had a layover in Kansas City before he arrived home.

  The flaps are up and the plane is on the ground!

Cicada Molting

You’ve probably seen the shell of a cicada before, but this picture is one with the cicada still inside of it.

Beginning to crawl out of his skin

 

 

 

Wings being pumped until he’s able to fly.

Benjamin found 6 of these little guys on our deck tonight and took these photos.

Vonderful Goot Fun

This afternoon Benjamin and Noah tried jumping into the somewhat dangerous world of seagull-feeding. If you’ve watched a certain video sold by Answers in Genesis then you’ll know what I mean…

Ahem-well anyways it was fun to have up to 30 birds flapping around you and taking bread crusts right out of your fingers. Most of the birds were seagulls but there were also a few pigeons looking for a free meal.

Above is a time lapse video I took of Benjamin feeding the birds.

For obvious reasons there isn’t audio on the time lapse video above. Mainly this helps prevent us from sounding like squealing chipmunks.

If you’ve been looking at my posts over the past week you’ll see that I am inconsistent in where I place photo captions…in this post the captions refer to the photo above…but only in this post. Inconsistencies…

It’d probably be more inspirational if it was an eagle.

 

This was the most daring of the sea gulls that had the gall to walk right up to us. Because of his heroism he was given a name and a picture for the blog.

The many prints made by:

Lydia had a blast on the beach this afternoon trying to catch a sea gull.

Benjamin became quite an expert in kite flying today. It was pretty funny to watch the birds avoid a collision with the kite string.

I’m not sure how high Benjamin got the kite up in the air but I do know that it took him more than half an hour to wind the string back up!

I know I mentioned that we had felt an earthquake a few days ago, but that’s not why the building on the right is about to tip over.

We wrapped up today with some pizza and a “Vonderful Goot” game of Dutch Blitz

Playing Dutch Blitz on 11/10/10