Anybody who has retired from eastern states to western states must eventually experience some nostalgia for the thunderstorms back east. How can they go wrong with the North Pole colliding with the Gulf of Mexico? The western states are dominated by a pleasant, arid climate and frightfully boring weather. How I yearned for a real cold front, thunderstorm, or even a respectable twister every now and then.



But my little poodle doesn't agree. This messed up photograph might actually fit his mental condition during a recent thunderstorm:



If you look up the domestication of dogs in the standard references they will tell you that about 10,000 years ago wolves came into human encampments, attracted by food odors, and that humans realized the wolves' usefulness as intruder alarms. I propose an alternative theory: that the big babies came into camp to find shelter from thunderstorms.

Since we get a buildup to a thunderstorm every afternoon here in the Little Pueblo I've had a chance to see other animals going a little crazy. Perhaps if we had the hearing that some of these species had, we too would freak out:





Birds and butterflies get crazy too, as the afternoon crisis approaches.

Normally the sky cracks open towards sunset. My advice to newbee RVers in the western states is to stay in the Southwest in the summer. You'll miss all this up north with their contemptible dry season in July and August, their long days, and you'll waste a lot of gasoline getting there. Low latitude, high altitude, is the way to go.