Mesquite: Storms
You expect the desert to be hot, but sometimes it’s cold. Sometimes it’s rainy. Sometimes it’s gray. Yesterday morning started out cloudy and cool. The plateaus in the distance disappeared into fog.
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We decide head to Saint George, Utah, which is only about forty-five minutes away.
When approaching Saint George, you feel like you’re going to run into a wall of cliffs and mountains. Once you reach the base, though, the highway splits a path through the cliffs. Muddy rivers swirl under the road like giant streams of chocolate milk.
Speaking of chocolate milk, there’s a Starbucks in Saint George. There’s one in Mesquite, too, but that one’s in a casino. You don’t get the sense that Nevada feels as strongly about their coffee as Seattle does, though they are selling a self-warming mug down here, which I’ve never seen before.
We stop in at an arcade, where Josh wins about two hundred tickets in a wheel-spinning game. We buy candy for the trip home with his winnings. Dad finds the retro section and beats the standing high score for Mrs. Pac-Man. And then he beats his own high score for good measure.
Back at the hotel that night, it rains a little and the wind kicks up. The palm trees billow and shudder in it. Down at the pool, palm fronds have fallen into the water. In the dark, they look like snakes, or long, stringy tadpoles, or eels. They’re not, though. They’re just leaves, and they’re easy enough to clear out.
