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The plan for this trip was to spend a couple of days in Spokane with my son and his family, then on to Red River New Mexico for the Jeep Jamboree, and finally home via the California coast, starting with the southern part.
The Spokane part went very well and I believe all had a good time at the Spokane fair too.
The Jeep Jamboree part started well, and as far as the off-road part, went very well too. However, things began to change during this period.
I had felt some tingling in the nerves around my upper left face during the travel time to Red River. While at the Jamboree, the tingling turned into pain, and by Saturday (day 2 off-road), a rash had appeared.
On Sunday, last breakfast of Jamboree and start travel home, things were much worse. The rash was spreading and VERY painful. I did not get much sleep Friday night and even less Saturday night. I skipped the Sunday breakfast.
Now Red River New Mexico is a very small town and kind of out of the way. It is way up in the hills, over 6,000 feet. So I packed up and started driving. I headed south and found a Holy Cross hospital in Taos New Mexico. This being Sunday, it was not terribly busy, and the doctor on duty diagnosed my problem right away. SHINGLES !!!
Shingles is a common term for Herpes Zoster. It is a reactivation of the dormant chickenpox virus. I didn't know that when you have chickenpox, and get over it, the virus does not die, it retreats into the base of the nerves at your spine. It sits there waiting for some event to trigger it again and the result is Shingles. Click this if you want to know more about Shingles.
The really ugly part of this was that it occurred while I was on vacation and about 2,000 miles from home. So after the diagnosis on Sunday, I spent much time driving and made it home by Wednesday evening. On Monday, I called my own doctor from a rest stop in Arizona to make a follow up appointment for Friday. This is Thursday and I am VERY HAPPY to be home.
So, the pictures tell my tail up to the Shingles. After that, I only had one thing in mind, get home. Therefore, the south California coast will have to wait until another time.
For those that are interested...
These pictures were taken with my Panasonic DMC-FZ10 digital camera. It has 4 mega pixels with a Lumix lens. The camera is circa 2004. It has a 12x optical zoom and a 3x digital zoom. I have the digital zoom turned off. The millimeter equivalent of the optical zoom is about 35 wide to 450 telephoto continuous zoom, all with the original lens. It really pulls the images in close.
The resolution of the pictures when taken was 2304 by 1728. However, those chosen for this internet show were reduced to one quarter their original size. This reduces the quality a bit, but the download time is reduced considerably. I still have the original versions on my computer.
This web page was created by hand, including all the sub-window processing. I did not use any web creation tools. After all, it's my profession.