Black Rock City, Nevada, USA

Once at Burning Man, I felt right at home and set up my camp quickly so I could get out and meet my neighbors! I had some great people camped near me, and also some real idiots. Just like a real city! The sunsets were amazing and the art was fantastic. I even saw some shooting stars - Nature just had to show us that "we got nuthin!" Home Sweet Home!


The sunset Friday night was incredible. We had a bit of wind and a touch of rain but nothing to worry about. The e-z up was just fine, although I'm not sure how many more "Burns" it has in it! The theme this year was "The Floating World" so all the street names and art installations were marine-related. One camp set up right at the edge of the playa and played a loop of ocean sounds out over the desert. It was strangely appropriate.



fabulous colors...



...a bit later on...



...later still...


I had a very cheerful camp, with sunflowers and free mardi gras beads at one corner. My neighbors set up a shower and, by coincidence, had brought a sunflower shower curtain so we were quite the stylish neighborhood!


Sunflowers to enjoy


At another corner I had Spidey to greet my guests. He was a big hit. At the corner of our street (I was on 285 and Mizzen), there was a camp that set up a huge lifeguard chair and a tiki umbrella on top of it. It was easy to find my way home using that as a landmark (watermark?)


Spidey to keep me company


On the roof of the truck I had a portable solar panel about the size of a paperback book. All day long, it fed energy into my portable power pack and with that I could power my laptop, GPS, etc. One of the camps, the Oregon Country Fair folks, set up a wireless network and by using a wireless network card in my pcmcia slot, I was able to send and receive email and surf the 'net. I "gave away" email access to other people around me who wanted to let the folks back home know that they were okay, having fun, etc. It was a big hit!



Burning Man was great and it felt good to clear out my mind. But where to go next? Well, I had a gumball-machine-red Kitchen Aid mixer for my sister that I bought at the Amazon.com Employee store so I thought I'd deliver that to her in Salt Lake City. She just moved into a house and I had not seen it yet.

So I set off through Nevada, headed East!



back to the start!