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Desert sheep is not amused.

Sorry for the extended absence — it ended up being a day longer than planned. The Wife and I headed out to California, to Joshua Tree National Park and Anza-Borrego State Park. Above is an Anza-Borregan state sheep, silently urging me to update my blog.

The little fellow’s actually lucky to be alive. The day we hiked the park, we were fortunate enough to run into a California Department of Corrections prison fire crew, all female and all butch, wielding axes and other threatening implements in one of the most-likely-to-go-horribly-and-bloodily-and-somewhat-hilariously-awry attempts at prisoner rehabilitation I’ve ever encountered.

Anyway, I continue to be stunned by just how nice everyone you run into is in any given park — even the prisoners, truth be told, seemed like lovely women. Nature, it seems, makes you nice. Even I am less of a bastard on the trail. I actually asked an elderly couple where they were from, for God’s sake. In New York, I’d fake major head trauma to avoid social interaction with strangers in public.

So, don’t be put off by the awful Ken Burns documentary from earlier this year. Go see the parks!