Archives: March 2010

I call Chewy my crazy monkey because he climbs on everything he can. Here he is above my head on my desk, knocking things down and trying to chew on those dried out rose buds.

Badwater Basin, Death Valley. Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America. It’s 282 feet below sea level and the ground is a huge salt flat. So desolate out there.

I wouldn’t want to fall on this pricky fella!

Hello there.

Today’s post is part one of a two part series of pics of our trip to Death Valley, CA. This wasn’t really a planned trip or a huge amount of fun. It was more of a healing, getting away from the world after our beloved Chase died, kind of trip. Either way, we did have a good time, despite the circumstances.

Death Valley, or any desert I presume, is a great place to find desolation and quiet if you need it. I had never been here before this trip and it was pretty much as I had expected. Very quiet and serene. Hardly any people. It’s the kind of place you DO NOT want to get stranded in! The park itself is 3.4 million acres and 90% of that is total wilderness!

February through April is actually the “busy” season here because it gets so hot in the traditional summer months. In fact the second highest recorded temperature on earth was here in 1913 when it hit 134 degrees, yikes! Luckily for us, the temps were between 65-72 when we were there, which was perfect.

The place we actually stayed at in the park is called The Furnace Creek Inn & Ranch Resort. Down the way they have a huge RV park and little “town” with a general store, a couple cafes and some other small buildings. Even though the RV park was sold out and there were tons of campers everywhere, it was so quiet and not very common that you saw people out and about. That’s how huge this place is.

Entering the park

Continue reading »

Hi all,

As you know it’s been a rough couple weeks for us here because of the loss of our dog Chase. We had to put him to sleep on Thursday because he was starting to go downhill pretty quickly because of both his skin cancer, and his age (almost 16!). It was the hardest thing we ever had to do making that decision, but of course we didn’t want him to suffer or be in pain.

We took off the next day to the desert for a few days to get some solace and peace, and it was really nice.

I want to thank all of you for your nice emails, comments and Tweets during this time. It was really great to read the nice things you guys said.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back to nail polish blogging because A. not really feeling it still, B. my nails are stumps because I cut them all off and C. I won’t have time until this weekend to swatch anything anyway, but I am going to post some pics of our trip to Death Valley soon.

-VV