Incredible Arizona sunsets

Oh, Arizona sunsets! They can be amazing. I have only been in Arizona two evenings and look at tonight's sunset — gorgeous! It may have even peaked a few minutes before I could get my camera. Wow!

Huge lizard at the campsite got my attention!

I couldn't believe what I was seeing! A large reptile, some sort of lizard I thought, was basking in the morning sun at the campsite next to me at Lake Havasu State Park in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

But there it was! And it was really big, much bigger than the lizards you see all over the place in the desert! I stared at it, but it didn't move. Maybe it wasn't quite warm enough yet to be active. I approached slowly. Still, it did not move. Did it not see me? I stepped steadily closer.


Then I realized: it was fake.

A man stepped out of the motorhome. It was Art Becker of Jackson, Wyoming, here with his wife Lynn, camped in space 28. "Oh, it's made of cast iron," he said of the creature. He was very happy I had noticed it.

He bought it at a street fair in Lake Havasu City a few years ago. "They were selling fast," he said. "You just had to get in line if you wanted one."

Sometimes Art paints the lizard, which is supposed to resemble a horned toad. He's even tossed it into a fire. "It gets red hot," he said.

I thought the lizard was a pretty neat idea, a real attention-getter for sure. I wouldn't mind having one for my own.

Check out those dog choppers!

Check out the choppers on the dog on the right in a Kingman, Ariz., newspaper ad for the Kingman Animal Hospital! Now, those are some pretty handsome teeth for a pooch!

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year! It's now 2015. It's getting ridiculous how fast the years come and go. Wasn't it just a couple of years ago that we were watching the clock approach midnight as 1999 turned to 2000, wondering if the lights would go dark — you know ... the computers of the world were going to crash with the new millennium?

Time marches on, faster and faster it seems. The only way I know to slow it down is to sit in a dentist's chair all day long and maybe get drilled off and on. That would really slow down time. But that is not acceptable.

To be honest, it's time for me to simply accept the increasing passage of time and, with it, my advancing age and, alas, that some of my life dreams will not be happening. For example:

• I am never going to the Moon. That was a dream of mine for years. When the guys walked on the Moon back in the '60s, it seemed all but certain to me that we'd all enjoy lunar vacations before long. But, nope, it never happened and I'm not going. However, there's a one-way mission to Mars on the horizon and some older people are being considered for the crew. So I think that there's a .00001 percent chance that I could get invited. But, really, I don't want to go some place that looks like Death Valley, then get all excited about checking it out and then dying. That's a bad deal! So I'm giving up on travel to Mars and all other planets and definitely other solar systems. I am stuck here and that's that.

• I will never play quarterback in the NFL. Perhaps if I paid a team 50 million dollars they would let me be quarterback for one play, say at the end of a game when the team was down 50 points. My plan would be to take the snap, back pedal without falling and look around for a receiver who was not more than 11 yards away, which would be my tossing limit. Failing to find such a person, at the first sight of a 350-pound lineman, I would set sail for the sideline to avoid being crushed and, most likely, killed.

• There is no way I will win a medal at the Olympics unless Monopoly becomes an Olympic sport. In that case I would have a .0002 percent chance of taking the bronze.

• I am all but certain that a 25-year-old beauty queen is not going to meet me at a party and offer to take me home with the idea of playing around and then offering to have my children. I'd say the chance of that happening would be the same as me going to Mars.

• I will never again be able to drink beer from, say, 6 p.m. to midnight without my stomach bloating like a Thanksgiving turkey. That was my weekend routine in college. Now, I am bloated on two beers and likely asleep 20 minutes later. It's sad.

... But, silliness aside ... I am happy to be alive and healthy in 2015, and free to travel in my RV, which I will be doing a lot more this year beginning in two weeks. Many adventures await. Sure, age happens. But that's not so bad. Some of us get wiser, and we share our march through time with our peers, which is actually nice — kinda warm and fuzzy sometimes.

I wish you the very best in 2015. May you be healthy and happy and wise, and may you get out in your RV and see our magnificent North America, certainly one of the most beautiful places on Earth with its kind, friendly, fascinating people.

Happy New Year!