Team Small dog possibly really needs to go on vacation and proof that Laura is just a retired person trapped in a non retired person body.

I think November is a month where things repeat themselves. The weather starts to turn and you remember about winter. Like didn't that just happen? When I had to put on a damn jacket? All the dog people are on vacation, and driving across the desert. I'm not sure if they call it vacation exactly. They have a higher purpose, a vision quest, and that vision is called USDAA Nationals.

I would very much like a vacation, and I would very much like it to be in a desert, except I would very much like to spend it staring at enormous painted rock mountains and houses made of bottles and memorials to borax mining mules. So going to the USDAA Nationals would be cool and all, but also sort of time consuming, not leaving enough time for strapping on goggles and mining for opals with my tiny little hammer and looking for the diners with the most taxidermy. Walking around slow, wearing boots, where there is no one else around for miles and miles and miles. Hoping the dogs come looping back and don't fall down a mine shaft as they run fast and hard across the hazy vista.

You have to drive fast and purposeful across the desert to get to USDAA Nationals. It's the destination. I don't think there's time to just stop and look at weird stuff on the side of the road. Unless you have my dream job, Retired Person. The vision quest is that you want to be the big winner and run your dog under the nighttime lights, with everybody watching you and and drinking beer and cheering you on. Hurry up and wait and then rush around and hopefully end up a champ, and when it's all done, speed back across the desert to get back to work in time.

Right now, what would be best of all would be just to pack the dogs in the car, and just get in and head down to Palm Springs and out through Coachella then up through Mojave and towards Lone Pine and across to Death Valley. Not driving real fast. Stopping anywhere and everywhere. Watch for the moving rocks. Out to Chloride City and back to Tonopah. Find the secret ghost towns, and driving out when there's some snow up high, where the burned up forest is and the stick trees are. Taking a long time to walk all around Mono Lake and squeaking through Tioga Pass before it closes up for the winter. It would take a long time to do all this. A long, long time, just driving along for days that turn into weeks and days that never repeat themselves.