Well, that summer flew past. Hurricane Florence did her best to blow away summer’s last beams, leaving us welcoming Fall. But, we’ll always have Nevada.
A few months ago, I put my QVC sales training to the test selling my two teen daughters on the idea of a summer vacation on the Nevada backroads. Vacations past were based on visiting family and helping grandparents. With my oldest daughter entering 12th grade, I feel the need to squeeze in all the worldly experiences for us three that I can.
Like most, my kids had little experience navigating the freedom of wild, open spaces, uncharted time, and Wi-Fi free zones. I wanted my daughters to stretch and experience more than the ease of our college town utopia or Manhattan’s excitement.
Where we live, humidity obscures most of the night sky. I find it important to look into the unfathomable “starry, starry sky” and connect to immenseness. Nights marveling at the Milky Way’s scattered starlight diamonds midwifed my creative life and sense of rightness in the world. I wanted that for them too.
So, we headed for Nevada where the small population keeps the light down, and the dry atmosphere allows for stellar star shows. I picked a time during New Moon, so a beaming moon didn’t steal the star show.
Think about this: Nevada’s population is roughly 3 million and 75% of that lives in the Las Vegas area. Compare that to the 10 million that live in the entire state of North Carolina. Or, California’s 39 million people. If you want remote – Nevada is the place.
A blue as wide and deep as the open Nevada sky, Blue Zircon comes mostly from Cambodia and is the birthstone for December. It’s such a vivid, brilliant gem that bends a beam of light into its rainbow spectral colors. This is a stellar 15.90 carat pair; contact me for more info.
And, yes, the water is the color of the Blue Topaz in these Calligraphy earrings.
The area is very arid and salt plains form from dried up lakes in the valleys.
Here, the design features a stupendous large Burmese Peridot and intense Tanzanite, though the design can be adapted for different gem trios and sizes.
Nevada’s Ruby Mountains are astonishing – like a little Yosemite without the crowds. After a hike up to 8500 feet over a glacial valley, I convinced the girls to strip down to their undies and refresh under a glacial-fed waterfall. Mama stood watch. In sleeping bags at night, we watched constellations roam above the roaring earth.
There’s the image of life, and then there’s real life. But, the orange-y color of the sorrel horses reminded me of the tangerine Spessartite Garnet in my “Pantea” earring.
You’ll find Bodie around 75 miles SE of Reno at about 8,000 feet in the Eastern Sierras. A lot of mining materials have been left behind, and here the truck once again hauls treasure from the Earth. 🙂
My daughters are afraid of clowns – I don’t really get it. In the old mining town of Tonopah, there is a Clown Motel – you can see more on Youtube.
It was a dark and stormy night as I pulled into Clown Motel’s dark parking lot. It was perfect: distorted reflections of the colored clown signage reflected on the wet pavement. “This is it!,” I said. “Won’t this be fun?!” They screamed and hollered, and told them good travelers would at least look at the lobby and get a sense of the place before they rejected it. The lobby was even scarier, a dusty paneled room jammed with 600 clown figures and a disheveled night clerk focusing on reality TV.
Wishing to slap me but instead hugging me, they were soon exploring the haunted hotel and swore they felt spongey fingers stroking their heads during the night.
Mama Hits Pay-Dirt!
The rewards came sooner than I expected. Driving the last few miles, my older daughter told me she learned she could do things she didn’t think she could do. As for my younger daughter? Her experience was a bit different: “This trip taught me I want to live someplace with culture.”
Thank you for sharing life, love and trust with me,
