And finally, the real excuse... there is so much going on at Burning Man. People to talk to and laugh with, art to see and events to experience, costumes to prepare, and a Temple to manage. I was not inclined to spend this short week glued to a computer screen. I wasn't even that inclined to take pictures. But I did take some and so did our friend and camp-mate Tony from London. We present them here along with commentary.

We left Arizona on Friday morning with the disassembled pieces of the front entrance to the Center Camp Cafe - an art piece/portal designed by Royce Carlson (me). This is my truck, the Tribal Truck.

Our plan was to arrive at Black Rock City on Saturday afternoon.

In addition to the Tribal Truck carrying the cafe portal, we had a van and a trailer to haul everything else. Here, Creagan breaks open a bag of ice while Royce holds a bag of lunch meat and Juanita supervises.

After filling our jugs with about 80 gallons of water we drove our overloaded vehicles the last hundred miles. Next stop - Empire

Burning Man participants are everywhere and this is where we met the first fellow burners on our way. We got a last sandwich and some other goodies and headed on down the road excited to be returning to the playa.

The event is held in the Black Rock Desert on a gigantic dry lake bed. We call it the playa, which means "beach," but it's not really a beach. It's a mud flat that is dry in the summer and wet in the winter..... except for this last winter. Apparently it was a dry year which caused the surface of the playa to be softer than usual. This means dustier than usual as we were to find out as more and more people arrived.

This is what the playa looked like from the vantage point of the top of our 14' ladder on Saturday afternoon. It looks pretty empty but, by Monday, it really filled in.