Moving On

This morning I'll need to type fast. I'm dealing with painfully slow internet, but also a wimpy battery on my laptop, or so it seems. It won't hold a charge for any length of time. After running several experiments, we've determined there must be something wrong with its battery. Even after being fully charged and turned off, my next switch to on shows only about half the battery life remaining. And so without generator power, my minutes are numbered...which I'm now wasting tell you so.  It's an old laptop, and so that isn't surprising. My own personal battery won't hold much of a charge these days either. 

Anyway...I went to the considerable use of battery time uploading some pictures one at a time. We went up to the Furnace Creek Inn for cocktails last night. I've since learned that the restaurant has been purchased by Xantera, which seems to be the company running all privately-owned operations in many of the national parks. The name of the Inn is now The Oasis at Death Valley. It seems to be the same place, but it might also explain the price increase that ruined our appetites for dinner there. Sill, cocktails are nice. First, I knew you quilters would appreciate this beautiful floor in the lounge.

Below, you can see the pretty tiles leading up the steps to the doorway.

Inside, I had this pretty cocktail...a Prickly Pear Margarita...and this was so good, we ended up purchasing a bottle of the margarita mix.

Instead of dinner, we had a charcuterie board and some red pepper hummus with pita bread. It was plenty for a meal, and about the price of one entree.

And then we got dessert to go. I so wish I'd thought to take a picture of the menu item describing this dessert. I'll be relying on my faulty memory to tell you what it was. To start with, it had some snotty French name I can't remember nor pronounce, but it was layers of puff pastry with coconut mousse and papaya  mousse in little dibs and dobs in between (technical food terms, so try to keep up). And then those little jellies were made from prickly pear. It was delicious, but a little hard to eat. We couldn't cut through the top layer of puff pastry without crushing what came beneath. We ended up picking up the layers of puff pastry like cookies and eating them that way. Our taste buds and stomachs didn't know the difference. 

I spent some time on my slow stitching earlier in the day. I've realized I can often use the top-stitching or else some element in the fabric as a guide for stitch length and placement. When I had the body of the bird below stitched, I didn't really want to stitch so tightly in the circle for the head, and so I gave him a cross-stitch eye.

And that just made me go all kinds of slow-stitching wild and crazy, because I noticed in the circles in the next block, there was an element of the fabric design that looked like a tiny cross-stitch. And so I went ahead there too.

And I liked that, so I kept going, filling in as much as I could before I needed to move my hoop.

I'd say this is where I left it, but then I'd be lying, because I did move my hoop and stitch until the next portion was nearly finished too.

I'm going to work on this a couple more times, and then I'll switch off to the snowflake.

Today we're moving along to a Nevada State park, known as Big Bend of the Colorado State Recreation Area. Camping there will include hook-ups, but it's first come first served, and so we are aware of a KOA in the area if we need it. We'll be in the tippy-tippy southern point of Nevada, and this will be a new destination for us.

Now, if I can squeeze just a few more minutes out of my battery, I'll show you last night's sunset. Oh, but first...this image of Smitty taking a walk on the top step of the RV. He doesn't like these wide open spaces, and this place was infested with Mans and Woofies. We dislike both. I told him an ample cat needed to sit up straight to look his best for his picture, but he didn't listen. He was on red alert.

And, phew! Plenty of battery left for proof-reading and posting. Here's a shot of last night's pretty sunset.

So that's all I have for you today. Three attaboys for me, sitting here and uploading these pictures. We'll be moving on to greener pastures, and greener cell phone reception, we hope. There's a lot to catch up on. Now it's time to turn on the generator and have a cup of coffee.