Today was Lisa and my 27th wedding anniversary. As we've done for the past couple of years, we celebrated with a picnic lunch at Fort Churchill State Park south of Silver Springs, Nevada. (No relation to Churchill, Manitoba, or the Fort Churchill that was there in World War II, of course.) If you've followed me for a while, there will be nothing ( Read more... )

On October 13, 1996, Lisa and I boarded Oregon's Portland Vintage Trolley #513 with guests (some of whom read this journal) and while traveling over the Portland light rail system were married by a justice of the peace we had hired for the occasion. He said he'd done a ceremony in a hot-air balloon before, but never on board a train or tram. After ( Read more... )

The plans for Lisa and my 25th wedding anniversary started very large (New Zealand trip to replace the cancelled CoNZealand trip), shrunk to middling (take a few days off and drive to Ely, spending a few nights there and riding the Nevada Northern Railway), and then came back to small. Day Jobbe wouldn't have allowed me to take more than a half-day ( Read more... )

For the past two nights, Lisa and I have been trying to get a look at Comet NEOWISE. While Fernley isn't as brightly lit as Reno/Sparks, it's still too bright to see the comet. Friday night we tried going north on NV-447. This had the advantage of putting the lights of Reno/Sparks and Fernley behind us, but there was a limit to how far we could go ( Read more... )

Things are starting to open up in Nevada, but that doesn't mean that Lisa and I feel all that safe. Still, we really wanted to get away from the house for something other than a shopping trip. I suggested we go to Fort Churchill State Park, about 25 mi / 40 km south of us on US-95A. The park preserves an old US army outpost and Pony Express stop. ( Read more... )