I've been hanging out in Vegas since Thursday night, waiting for Monday when I'll probably get a load out, and today I decided to go over to Hoover Dam. After quite a bit of walking and picture taking, I was ready to go and get some lunch. I noticed on the map that there was a park with a picnic area in Boulder City, so I stopped at a grocery there and got some meat and charcoal. I went over to the park and found a picnic table with a grill and set about cooking my food for the upcoming week. After cooking and sitting there to eat my lunch, it was getting quite warm out and I elected to go back to my van and sit in the AC for a while. I was pretty relaxed, looking out at the mountains and listening to XM, basically just chilling out, and I decided that I would just stay there for the rest of the day instead of going back to the truck stop right away.

That's when things got interesting. This park was quite busy today. There is one of those splash areas where kids can run around with water being sprayed on them from various fountains and it seemed like everyone but me was there with kids. I noticed one particular woman walk by my van at least three or four times and finally she walked over by my window. I put my window down and she looked at me and said, "You're making us nervous." I asked how and she said, "We're protective of our kids, and you've been sitting here for a while. It's making people nervous." I told her that I'm stuck here until Monday and I'm getting tired of sitting in truck stops and she just kept coming back and saying that I was making people nervous.

Help me out here folks. Is a man sitting in a commercial vehicle in a public park somehow a threat to children? Do predators sit in vans in the middle of the day in parks trying to figure out how to get at the kids, while all the parents are present? Would it have been any different if I had been in a car? The way I see it, I have every right to be in a public park, even if I want to sit in my vehicle and listen to the radio, and I have every right not to be disturbed by overly suspicious morons.