I should clarify - it's not that we're 'evacuated', a person's fire plan is to either stay and fight or leave. So on high fire risk days, we go! It's still like an evacuation. So yes, we left again and guess what? Monday a fire breaks out a couple of towns away from where we were staying!! But DH's nephew has everything ready to defend his house so I watched them get their fire plan into action which was to top up their ginormous water tank, check the sprinkler system that's on the roof, fill pails with water and have mops by the pails then put them all around the house so that if a cinder falls you can douse it with a wet mop, change into all cotton clothing which is slower to burn, get wool blankets out to wet and put over yourself... have I missed anything? Oh yeah, then sit on the porch and watch the smoke and wind, listen to the news, and wait to see if the fire spreads our way. To be honest, we would have been safer if we stayed home! But on Monday the big worry was south east of here and, fortunately, nothing happened. Tomorrow, Friday, is another high risk day but I'm not sure if we're going to the nephew's house. Maybe we'll just spend the day at the mall. Then, if something happens in our area we'll go to the nephew's house. I don't know. This is getting very tiresome. I want these fires to stop already but someone told me she heard they were predicting a few more months before it's all settled. MONTHS!! And then yesterday we saw a new plume of smoke in the hills out yonder. So I called 000, our 911, and told the lady that I saw smoke coming from a hilltop but I couldn't tell her the name of the hill top and was just guessing about the area the hilltop was in. She suggested I check the CFA website to see if there was anything written there about the plume but I said it just started as I had been watching the mountains all morning and this one area suddendly started smoking - I called her as soon as I saw the plume of smoke. The lady asked if I saw flames. I said I was too far to see flames so she gave me this xyz number to call and report it. So I call xyz and I'm talking to this guy who seems absolutely clueless as to what to do and eventually suggest a number to call. And guess what number he gves me? xyz... I yelled at him and said that it's his number and asked him if he didn't know his own number. Sheesh. So then he gave me another number and I speak to that person who eventually says she'll transfer me to somebody else who might be able to help. So I'm talking to this lady and she says I've called the wrong number and that I have to call 000. I tell her that's who I started with but they didn't want to know. So this lady asked if I could see flames and I said no and then she said that 000 wouldn't do anything about it until ya saw flames. So I said, "Well, isn't it a bit too late by then? I mean, if you see flames the fire's on ya and you're dead." She was silent. So I then threatened to tell a popular news journalist here about the inefficiency and run around I was receiving and there was a big silence so the lady switched me to someone else and they said a fire truck would come by to have a look. So from when I first called to when the fire dept came was about 1 hour. The fire crew said it was a flare up within contained lines, and really that was what I was trying to find out, if the new fire was in a containment area, or even backburning by the CFA itself, or something new that needed watching. I kinda think it turned into something they needed to watch because after dark we could see trucks up there. I never felt threatened by this fire cuz it really is too far from my place, but it was extremely frustrating that when I reported it, no one seemed to want to respond. Thanks Luvs and Karen. Karen, your arm feeling any better?? LOL SHould probably ask that on 'your' thread. lol Thanks Nona. Why can't Bella write on here? I think that very weird. Glad to hear her son was safe. Well, will fill you in as it happens... or, as I'd prefer, DOESN'T happen. ;-)

I was in Las Vegas on a 4-day weekend at the end of March, some years ago. The Nevada desert is much drier than the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona, so while the Sonoran desert is actually quite lush with giant cacti (like saguaro, organ pipe, sonoita) and lots of bushes and small trees, the Nevada desert (is that the Mohave desert?, can't remember) has much sparser vegetation -- grass and scrub, lots of open ground and rock, and some cactus. I quite liked it for its somewhat barren beauty. If you can get out of town for even just a bit, definitely check out Valley of Fire state park, a bit east of Las Vegas. The rocks formations are cool and there were a fair number of daisy-like flowers and brittlebrush in bloom at the end of March. A few prickly pear just coming into bloom too. If you have more time, it's a good time of year to visit Death Valley. We went on an overcast day, with the temperature around 16 celsius. It was much more barren than around Las Vegas, but there were some small plants in bloom... mostly you go there for the barren landscape though. They also have a cool parasitic plant (dodder) that grows all over the other plants there -- looks like orange threads (has no leaves and no chlorophyll). Kind of creepy really. We went there and back in one day, but it was a pretty long drive, didn't get back to L.Vegas until about 9 or 10 at night. Anyway, here's a few pics so you'll have a bit of an idea what to expect. First, here's a scenery shot from Valley of Fire: Here's brittle brush in bloom, Valley of Fire: Here's a prickly pear cactus in Valley of Fire, just coming into bloom (these weren't common, but they are there): And finally, a view down the highway in Death Valley: Have a good trip!

Haahahahaa! Karen this is SO funny. I'm bursting into laughter reading these posts again, and remembering writing and reading them at the time. Well done! And my favourite part about Martha Stewart dropping in with her dish towel parachute!!! WAY too funny!

Thanks for all your hard work Karen! Can't wait to read it in its entirety. Jodi-