In Flagstaff, AZ.

We are driving across Arizona towards Flagstaff. The sun is shining down through cracks in thick, gray clouds on miles of yellow desert grass and pale green scrub in a valley surrounded by faraway peaks on either side. J is sleeping in the passenger seat after saying he is a little tired and I convinced him to put the seat back and take a little nap, that I didn’t mind at all. I am listening to the album “Alligator” by the band The National and I really feel like I could drive forever as this is one of those rare moments I don’t care where we end up, it’s just so good to be on this trip.

Our stop in Vegas was brief, much to the dismay of some of our friends who, I think, thought we were going to really go wild there, thus balancing out all these parks and museums and general learning going on during this trip.

According to the city’s well-known catch phrase, what happened in Vegas should stay there, but seeing as the most exciting part of our night was eating Nathan’s hot dogs at midnight up in the hotel room with the city lights shining outside our window, I guess it’s pretty clear that we don’t have much to hide.

I did insist we walk the strip, however, and visit some of the hilarious, over-the-top, amazing hotels and casinos Las Vegas is known for. Plus, you can’t go wrong with people watching. I’d been to Vegas before, for my incredibly memorable bachelorette party, but J hadn’t and I needed him to see the place before we crashed for the night after a long day of driving.

We didn’t gamble at all until the next morning when we played a few 25 and five cent slot machines and, naturally, didn’t win anything. I guess you’ve got to gamble big to win big. But it’s ok. At least we had the experience. We even had a scantily-clad waitress come up to us to see if we wanted drinks. At, you know, like 10 a.m. Ah, Vegas, never failing to live up to its good name.

I feel almost bad posting pictures instead of writing about some of these places. I mean, let’s face it, I’m no photographer.

But in some cases the pictures just do these places more justice. Furthermore, it’s impossible to take a bad picture when the area is so naturally beautiful.

So, because my words couldn’t possibly explain all that these pictures can, here’s a few of Joshua Tree National Park, which we visited after leaving San Diego. As you can see, the sky was a perfect blue - we couldn’t have asked for anything better.

I’ll also note that a few miles out of the park, when we started spotting Joshua Trees along the road (legend has it that Mormon pioneers named the trees after the prophet Joshua when they saw the trees’ limbs outstretched, guiding them westward), J decided to put on the U2 album “The Joshua Tree,” which he did without any formal announcement, just glancing over slyly at me from time to time to see if I got it. Yeah, I got it.

While they were watching birds, I was watching them.

A non-wild, non “life list” countable flamingo at the San Diego Zoo.

In Cardiff-by-the-sea (about 30 minutes north of San Diego), where my friends Janell and Sarah live.

J’s birding habit is totally the fault of my friends Lisa and Eitan, who we stayed with in San Diego.

They came to visit us in North Carolina a few years ago, spotted some owl in the woods behind our house, and he was hooked.

So when Lisa emailed me and asked if J would like to do some birding with them when we got down there, I didn’t even have to ask him. “Yes,” I told her. “Yes, definitely.”

Although Lisa initially got him into it, Eitan, her husband, has become a pretty expert birder. At least I think so, not that I know what I’m talking about, but he’s got birding gear and he’s really good at knowing where birds will show up on any given day. How he does this, I have no idea. Point being, J was excited to go out with him and add a bunch of west coast birds to his “life list.”

I decided to participate Saturday morning when they woke up at 7 a.m. and went over to the Tijuana Estuary where Eitan claimed there was likely to be a rare bird sighting because of the high tide that day. Everyone was pretty excited about it. I was mostly concerned with whether or not I’d get to have a cup of coffee before heading out (I did).

Neither J nor I have hung out with many birders - me, because, you know, I don’t birdwatch, and J basically goes solo. But I guess when a rare bird might possibly show up they all come out of the woodwork, and when we got to the estuary there everybody was, binoculars raised, standing near the water, pointing and whispering, some of them giving dirty glances to dog walkers who strolled by and dared to ask what was going on.

A few of them knew Eitan and Lisa. They said a quick hello, and then ushered the newcomers over and pointed out the bush where this little orange-ish bird, Nelson’s Sharp-Tailed Sparrow, was hiding.

Every few moments someone would exclaim in a hushed manner, “There he is!” and the group as a whole would refocus their lenses on the spot where some lucky soul had just seen the elusive creature perching.

Needless to say, upon encountering the scene, I was overjoyed I’d come along. This was humanity at it’s most interesting and amusing. The birders, most of them middle-aged or older and a good deal more men than women, wore brimmed hats and had various items - binoculars and bird books and God knows what else - attached to their belts. Some wielded cameras with huge lenses and took painstaking efforts to snap the perfect photo. They wore khaki and tennis shoes and some wore vests. Some were friendlier than others but they were all united in the cause.

At one point that morning Eitan received a text message from one of the other birders alerting the group that he’d just seen the targeted bird somewhere else in the estuary. I imagined all of them flipping open their cell phones at that exact moment and shouting out “Nelson’s Sharp-Tailed on the northern perimeter!” or something like that and realized that this was an organized effort beyond any I’d ever experienced.

Everybody eventually saw the sparrow, and I’ve got to admit I felt almost proud when I heard J softly say, “Yup. That’s him. I see him. That’s definitely him,” and then heard the others ask encouragingly, redundantly, “You see him? Pretty cool, huh?”

They drifted off after a while. A few seemed satisfied with their morning’s work and others wandered off into the park for more. One couple told us giddily that they were going “Tanager hunting” (a Hepatic Tanager, a red bird not typically seen on the California coast had been spotted a few weeks earlier in the area).

So I gave up my position standing on the side of the road, audience to a group of birders who, honestly, couldn’t have cared less about my presence there. That was the thing, the reason I could have spent all day, all week, with them. Seeing people so focused on achieving something that doesn’t really make sense to anyone but birders had somehow become more than simply kind of funny to me - now it seemed inspiring.

Also, I saw a picture of that bird and it’s pretty cute. I mean, nothing to write home about, but I’m sure if you woke up very early that morning fervently hoping to catch one quick glance of a creature that takes such pains to hide itself for most of its life, eventually spotting that unmistakable orange face peeking out from behind a branch, must be, somehow, so incredibly worth it.

A bunch of us went and saw the movie “I’m Not There” in LA last week and we immediately became a little Bob Dylan-obsessed.

After Thanksgiving dinner, J took the camera and asked everyone (including Jennifer’s friend Pete, in the third picture) to do their best Bob Dylan impression and this is the result. I think Jennifer’s, the first one, is the best. A few people asked me if I was trying to do “Bob Dylan meets Public Enemy.” Yeah, whatever, impressions aren’t my thing.

I wanted a few things to happen in Los Angeles. First and foremost, I wanted to spend tons of time with my best friend Jennifer, who lives there. I wanted to meet her friends, and hang out where she hangs out. She’s in the movie business, so she was the perfect host in the thriving city.

We had an amazing time in LA, just like I knew we would. Jennifer is just so much fun, no matter what you’re doing, and she took us out and about and showed us the real LA, beyond the LA I’m used to seeing on E! News.

She took us to LA establishments, like Philippe’s, home of the first French Dip sandwich. She took us to get Thai massages, where little women step all over you and generally beat you up and, somehow, it feels totally awesome. She took us to her friend’s house for Thanksgiving, where we ate a certifiable feast and hung out with cool people in, you know, “the business.”

We also had breakfast in the coffee shop at the Beverly Hills Hotel (after, of course, humming the “90210” theme song loudly on the way), which is now one of my favorite places in the world, I think. Trust me, pay the place a visit on your next trip.

The other thing I wanted to do in LA was see a celebrity or two.

I mean, I’m not obsessed with celebrities, contrary to what you might think after reading my blog, and I certainly didn’t want to go celebrity stalking or anything. I just thought it might be cool if we happened upon someone famous when we were otherwise minding our own business. Because, come on, it’s LA, and celebrities live there. I know what’s up.

So imagine our delight when we ran into Geena Davis in the Whole Foods in Glendale on Thanksgiving Day.

J and I had wandered away from Jennifer, who was in a frantic state trying desperately to pick the right kind of chestnuts for her Martha Stewart Brussels sprout dish, and there she was, just walking down the aisle, a basket on her arm and a smile on her face, just like, “Hey, I’m Geena Davis. I shop for Thanksgiving, too.”

I immediately exchanged a glance with J because we’re not from a place where people like Geena Davis casually stroll down the aisle at the supermarket and this was big. Geena Davis! She’s a pretty good one, right?

When we left the store we told Jennifer about the sighting and she said she was happy for us.

Later, when retelling the story to each other, as though we hadn’t both had the exact same experience, J lifted the incident to legendary status, explaining to me that the two of them had “had a moment.”

“I looked at her and I was like ‘Whoa, Geena Davis,’ and then she looked at me, and she was probably like ‘Yeah, that guy totally recognizes me,’ and then I just nodded at her, like this, and then she smiled at me.”

We eventually got over it. It’s LA, you know? You see famous people. It’s, like, totally normal. But I think secretly, when “A League of Their Own” or “Beetlejuice” comes on, we’re going to watch with a special, new sense of admiration.