Last Day in Pahrump

We had a nice, quiet day yesterday. After finishing off my blog post, I stitched up the day's inchy. This one was kind of fun. The flower center is done with closely-spaced buttonhole stitches. The pink "arms" radiating out are pistil stitch, which is just a French knot with a long neck. The border is backstitched, and then another length of floss is woven in and out of the stitches to make a "laced" backstitch.

After that, we got Smitty out for another roll in the dirt. He likes going out. He hates wearing his harness, and he's using all of his patience to allow us to put it on.

When he finished rolling in the dirt, he came in and helped me with my hand quilting. He's become my most reliable stitching cat, lying beside me while I work.

So, I spent quite a bit of time on this yesterday. When I realized I was more than half finished, I perked up and started enjoying it more. I filled another hoop with stitching and then moved the hoop to the next position.

Smitty helped with that part too. He's an excellent paw quilter.

While I had it spread out, I noticed I'd forgotten to finish stitching the interior of this block, although all the adjacent blocks were finished long ago. I only got as far as stitching around the tree on the right, and so I'll have to remember to go back and finish it.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we reserved two steak and lobster dinners here in the RV park for our Valentine's Day celebration. As we were getting ready to leave, Sadie was quite concerned about the condition of her treat bowl. She sat staring at me, while pointing at the treat bowl with her ears.

When that didn't work, she put on an even more pathetic face.

We've given our treat dispensing different names. Treats we dispense after returning from an outing are called "Treat and Greet" treats. Treats they get when Smitty comes inside after a walk are "Treats of Valor." Treats dispensed before leaving are called "Retreat Treats," and that's what she was waiting for.

Our dinner last night was very nice. When we were seated, there was a frosted pretzel at each place setting. I sat staring at mine through the whole meal, wondering when it was appropriate to eat it. Mike and I saved ours for when we got back to the trailer. Another woman at the table ate hers right away.

The first course was a zucchini-pear soup. A strange combination, and it tasted neither of pears nor zucchini, but it was good just the same.

Next, a lettuce wedge salad, with bacon and blue cheese dressing. This was quite good.

Okay, and the main course was delicious, but hm...steak and lobster? Because I don't know about you, but those "lobsters" look suspiciously like shrimp. Oh well. If I'd been blindfolded and fed by someone else, I would never have known I was eating shrimp. It tasted just like lobster. There was also asparagus and a twice-baked potato. It was all really good, and remember...this is an RV park. No fancy cheffery going on here. ("Cheffery." I just made that word up...only apparently not, because it appears in the Urban Dictionary.)

After the main course, the ladies were all given one red rose...pretty.

And then dessert was a really tasty cheesecake with some sort of raspberry sauce on it.

This morning, my rose is sharing an empty mason jar with the living basil plant. They seem to have gotten along fine during the night, although I think the rose may have drunk more than its fair share of water.

So there was no sewing yesterday. I spent most of the day working on the hand quilting. Today will be my last chance to sew for a while, and so I'll probably feel more motivated to drag everything out. I'd like to get more done on the bonus triangles before we move along.

If you read my post from yesterday, then you might recall I was bemoaning having to cross two of our future destinations off my list for lack of an RV park, and a road closure. I spent some time rerouting us yesterday and came up with a couple of good alternatives. Our first stop after we leave tomorrow will be Caliente, Nevada, where we'll spend five days. It will give us time to explore Cathedral Gorge State Park and Kershaw-Ryan State Park. As I was looking for those links, I happened to go to the main website for Nevada State Parks, and realized there are several other parks in the area we are traveling to.

One is Elgin Schoolhouse, which is probably a short day trip, but it looks interesting. Echo Canyon is another, and Spring Valley State Park. There is another state park, Valley of Fire State Park, just east of Las Vegas, and we visited there a few years back. You can see pictures and read about our visit here, here, and here. We enjoyed our time there, but we'll skip it this trip in order to see some other things.

After that, we'll head down to Boulder City, Nevada, a cute little town we've visited many times. Then on to Sedona, Arizona. You'd think two people who lived in Arizona for three years might have visited Sedona at one time or another, but we have not. Frankly, we were newlyweds and students, and we didn't have enough money to set foot in a place like that. But times have changed, and so it seemed a natural substitute when I considered our options for rerouting, and we're looking forward to it. I'm just betting there's a good quilt shop there...actually, several!

The trip is mapped out even beyond what I've mentioned here, but I'll get to the next locations as we move down the road. Just know there will be a lot of sight-seeing in the next few days, so put on your comfortable walking shoes and get ready.