We're not in Kansas anymore!

We pulled out of the High Sierra today on the heels of a foot of snow.  Our day started with a lot of shoveling, putting chains on the truck, and watching other people slide around the icy roads.  If I would have been willing to take my gloves off, I could have snapped a picture, but I wasn't, sorry.  Next, we cruised through Deep Springs, which we will use forevermore as a disciplinary tool - it is The Place where we will send our son to college if he gets out of line.  The only ways to get into trouble in Deep Springs are cow tipping and throwing rocks.  Making it out of Deep Springs, we crossed the north end of Death Valley, enjoying a 60+ mph tail wind that sand-blasted the truck clean and improved our gas mileage by 10%.

Much to our surprise, after driving through the desert for four hours, we ended up in Italy.

We even saw Vesuvius erupting.

Since we are in the middle of the desert, I figured out quickly that we are just seeing a...

Mirage is a great word to describe the feeling you get after a meal of fine sushi.  You think you've eaten a four-course dinner, but just after you leave the restaurant, your stomach tells you that it was just a mirage.  We had just such a great feast at the Japonais Lounge, where we enjoyed fantastic service and a tasty "meal".

It started with a compliment from the chef...a tasty shrimp in every sense of the word.

Next came the seared tuna with garlic chips...delicious but difficult to deal with as eight pieces of tuna and three sets of chopsticks does not divide evenly!

The chef's sashimi sampler plate disappeared immediately.   Trust me, there really was some fresh, raw fish on top of that lemon and shiso leaf.  Just consider yourself lucky that I got a picture of the shiso leaf before it too was devoured.

The Kobe beef carpaccio was the hit of the evening, topped with crunchy garlic bits and delicious peppers!

Yes, we did eat our vegetables - robata asparagus, skewered and charcoal-grilled, then de-skewered so that we would waste no time fighting with the pointy sticks.

...a bit of chutoro nigiri was next, again delicious and better than the lean tuna that disappeared from the sashimi plate.

Finally, we topped it all off with a bit of real protein, in the form of shiso-spiced chicken thighs, again robata.

Our compliments to the Japonais Lounge for a delicious meal that we will remember in pictures.

My biggest disappointment for today, in Las Vegas - a town the "never sleeps" - the shop that I went to after the trip through the desert for some well-deserved dessert was closed.  No freshly made jelly doughnuts for me tonight!