Love those ponies, love those burros! Here's more from Death Valley, site of the borax processing plant from the 1880's when it was mined there. The borax had to be boiled to be processed. (Like you need something boiling in Death Valley! LOL!) Here's one of the wagons the 20 mules pulled to haul the borax out of Death Valley. Borax is no longer mined there.

I got my porch swing free off CL and made the sling, cushion was cut to fit/covered it, added pillows. Buuuuuut....someone got really creative and made it out of wood! I'm so impressed! There are so many ways to re-invent an item!

Got up @ 2am Saturday morning so we could drive 3.5hrs to the crane festival and shoot the sunrise. This is when the birds cross over from standing in water to avoid being eaten by predators at night....to crossing over to farmers fields to eat grain.

Raven, in all the time we spent in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, I only saw two of those squatters and they were in older, rural areas. Restaurants, hotels, malls and other public areas all had regular western style toilets if they were in towns or cities that have western tourists visit on a regular basis. The airports also had the squatters, but they also had plenty of western toilets as well. I think that was because the airports get so many travelers from places where squatters are the norm and they sometimes don't know what to make of a western style toilet. The malls in Bangkok had signs in the stalls that said the toilets were not for feet washing.