Midsummer Musings

How's your summer going? In my neck of the woods (actually a piece of the prairie) a three letter word about covers it - H O T. We're expecting record breaking temps in the low 100's for the next couple of days which I know is nothing compared to what some folks are dealing with. They say "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" and they can certainly keep their 115+ temps to themselves. And that's nothing compared to Death Valley just a couple of miles to the west where they've been seeing temps in the 120's. There was some speculation as to whether Death Valley's Furnace Creek would break 130 degrees but so far that doesn't seem to have happened and as I write this its only a balmy 116 degrees according to the National Weather Service device at the Furnace Creek Visitors Center. News reports say that visitors (many from Europe apparently) are flocking to the area specifically to experience what a Heat Dome (who comes up with this jargon?) can deliver. 

If you Google  the hottest temp ever recorded on planet Earth  you'll find that on July 10, 1913 it reached 134.1 degrees (56.7Celcius for our European friends) at the Furnace Creek Ranch which presumably had an accurate thermometer for measuring such things since the Death Valley Visitors Center wasn't opened until 1960. Interestingly the site I referenced  for the past several day's temps in Furnace Creek  makes a distinction between 'Hot' and 'Extremely Hot' somewhere between 110 and 114 degrees with 110 only being 'Hot'. I'll leave such nuances to those folks standing outside the Visitors Center today thinking to themselves "Hmmm, I'm feeling extremely hot at the moment..." before hopefully ducking back inside the air-conditioned comfort of the aforementioned Visitors Center.

Me, I'm just stupid. This morning I was up at the crack-o-dawn to go for a ride before it got too hot (is too hot just 'hot' or is it 'extremely hot'?). As they say, stupid is as stupid does and by the time I got home the mercury was already North of a hundred and not done rising as it was still well before noon. Some cultures have this thing called a siesta and I'm thinking of adopting that custom. Either that or I'm moving to Dawson City in the Yukon where its a chilly 68 degrees. BRRRRR. 

I've been to Alaska twice now and one of my favorite pictures about Fairbanks is the one showing University of Alaska students posing in swimsuits in front of the campus temperature sign when its 49 degrees..................below zero. Does that qualify as 'Cold' or 'Extremely Cold'? Is that a 'Cold Dome'? If I was one of these six intrepid souls I'd want to head South and get a pic next to the Furnace Creek Visitors Center temp sign (if they even have such a thing) reading 130 degrees plus. A whopping (that's another technical term I borrowed from the National Weather Service) 179 degree difference. Stick that on Tik Tok and smoke it.

Back in late April/early May my better half ( who has enough sense to get out of the sun when its still only 'Warm') and I ventured to Arizona and California with the express intention of escaping the Winter cold (though we never saw 49 below... darn). We were in the Phoenix area where it was already in the high 90's before foolishly continuing on to Palm Springs, California where, yup, it was already triple-digit temps. We then spent some time on the coast where they were having a cool and wet Spring with temps in the 50's. You can join us on some of that excursion in the video below. 

Wearing parkas and stocking caps is not what we went to California for but there you have it. Still the crowds were friendly, the traffic was at a standstill (30 mile traffic jam stop and go (mainly stop) leaving Palm Springs as the Coachella Music and Arts Festival disgorged its attendees back to La La Land, and the ocean was still mesmerizing as it's waves cascaded on the San Diego beaches which were closed to water contact while we were there thanks to a massive (another technical term) sewage leak.

What say we head back to the desert, this time to Lake Havasu where the lovely ladies in their bikinis could still enjoy actually getting wet in the cold but clean waters of the Colorado River. We were there during an event called Desert Storm which is a celebration of all things bikini with performance boat racing and expo thrown in. We're talking speeds approaching 200 mph (I'm talking about the boats not the bikinis) so it was really something to see.  Being humble folks of a more human-powered ilk we felt somewhat out of place and our Colorado license plates apparently (?) pegged us as Biden lovers (?) in what turned out to be very much a Trump stronghold with no tolerance for those not having yet drunk the Kool Aid. So it was fare thee well to the good folks of Havasu as we watched them fade from sight in the rear view mirror (figuratively and literally) as we made our way North through Vegas (ahead of the soon-to-make-an-appearance blistering temperatures) and into the cooler and more welcoming climes of St. George, Utah. 

St. George, if you've never been, is a beautiful, though no longer small (having been discovered by Californians as a relatively affordable place to retire) community adjacent to Zion National Park. Already crowded though it was still early season, we avoided the National Park where the tourists thronged and spent our time exploring some of Utah's State Parks which are equally beautiful but generally less busy. The Road That Beckons is often best when it's the Road Less Traveled and we found that to be the case in Utah. 

From St. George we continued North on I-15 and then East on I-70 where we spent several unplanned days in the little town of Richfield, Utah. What was supposed to be a one-night stopover turned into a three day visit as we fell in love with this wonderful town. Don't tell anyone, but if I was looking for a truly idyllic community to retire to, Richfield might top the list. It checks the list in terms of true affordability, a walkable downtown along with just a couple of big-box stores (Home Depot and Walmart), good restaurants, a College, and lots of recreational amenities nearby. Oh, and the high temps in the summer top out on average in the 80's and low 90's. Maybe I don't have to move to the Yukon after all.

Too soon it was time to head for home and what greeted us as we crossed back into Colorado? May.... snow showers. Welcome home.