On Frenchman Mountain

On Sunday, January 20, the four of us drove approximately 130 miles west to Death Valley National Park for a day trip. Our first stop was in Beatty, Nev. In Beatty, the local Bank of America is inside an old house. When I was with the Bank several years ago, they tried to close the [...]

Our first stop was at the popular ghost town of Rhyolite just outside the park. Gold was discovered near Rhyolite in 1904 which led to “gold rush” to the area. By 1908, the city of Rhyolite was the third largest in the state with a population of 8,000 people. Because of the mining, the railroad [...]

Part 3 of our MLK weekend adventures…Death Valley. About 2 hours from Vegas just west of Beatty, NV is an entrance to Death Valley in California. After exploring Rhyolite, we headed west to see what it was like (and so we could say we’d been to Death Valley). We didn’t expect much, but lo and [...]

Headed North from the sand dunes of Death Valley, our final stop was Scotty’s Castle, a massive depression-era oasis in the middle of the hottest place in North America. The details are somewhat speculative, but the gist is that a cowboy hustler named Walter Scott conned several thousand dollars in gold mine seed money from [...]

The Democratic Caucus began at 11:30 am at a local elementary school in a multipurpose room. Our chair read a letter from US Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)and Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Jill Derby. To help pay for administering the caucus, a donation envelope was passed around. Of the 734 total registered voters in our [...]

I just got back from the GOP Caucus supporting Ron Paul…what a chaotic and fun process that was. This is Nevada’s first stab at a caucus, and everybody all the way form the participants to the leadership of both parties are pretty far down on the learning curve, obviously. We had thousands of people packed [...]

Robot Calls Here it is, the night before the Nevada Republican and Democratic Caucuses, and we’re getting LOTS robot calls from all the campaigns. Jeremy estimates roughly nine calls today. Ron Paul’s campaign called to report that some supporters had been told to show up to caucus at 9:30 am. But the doors to the [...]