Near Death and Early Man

Yesterday after the Calico Ghost Town we camped at the KOA near Barstow. It was kind of late and in order to get the grill going I took some dead branches from the bushes near our campsite to put under the charcoal. The campsite maintenance guy came by and said that the bushes were oleander and they were poisonous. If we had cooked food on the grill with them in it, it would have affected our nervous systems. Not fatal, just sickening. Fortunately we got them out and continued with dinner. The KOA was a nice campground. This is the plant.

After breaking camp, we drove to the Calico Early Man archaeological site. The site director there was a 75 year old archaeologist who has been at the site for many years and had worked with Dr. Louis Leakey in the 60s. He claims that this was the only site worked by Leaky in the New World. Nice guy and very knowledgeable (seemed so to me anyway). This site is said to provide evidence of the earliest human occupation in the Western Hemisphere, 200,000 years before present, based on stone tool finds. Dating of the tools is based on thermo-luminescence. I'll need to talk to my buddy Kurt, anthropologist/archaeologist about this. This photo is the Main Pit.

After the Early Man, we took off for Boulder City, NV where we planned to take a Motel for the night. Now bear in mind that this is the Mojave desert. Do not, under any circumstances, voluntarily drive a 33 year old air cooled (un-air conditioned) vehicle through the desert in the afternoon in September! When we pulled in to the motel in Boulder City 160 miles later, Rose was literally smoking. Nothing was on fire but she was pretty hot in the engine compartment. Old oil was burning off and coming out of the cooling vents. We got here a nice parking spot and let her rest for the night. Hopefully I didn't hurt her but she was not happy.

Tomorrow we plan to go to the Hoover Dam then on towards the Grand Canyon. We are having a heat wave and temperatures were near 100 degrees today.Wish us all luck.