Good morning, Final Four fans and welcome to our Friday edition of Sunrise Santa Cruz. Today the photo side heads east to naughty Nevada. Before we hit the gambling state, our first stop is beautiful Donner Lake in Truckee, California. And as you know, those Donner people liked to eat well and party. Next we move on to the Truckee River, which is the only non-electrical outlet for Lake Tahoe. The next four shots are from sunrise in the high desert city of Reno, which claims the be the “Biggest little city in the world.” I don’t know about you but when I think Reno, I think Janet. The shot of the snow covered mountain at dawn is Mount Rose, where my children learned an important life lesson. When you are flying down a hill out of control on a sled it’s best to avoid running over small children, doting parents or baby wolverines.

So let’s learn a little something about our country’s seventh largest state. Nevada, which means “snowcapped” in Spanish, is the driest state in the nation with an average annual rainfall of seven inches. And all is time I thought it was Kansas. It may be Canada dry but it has more mountain ranges than any other state and 87% of its land is managed by the federal government. Area 51, a top secret area of Nellis Air Force Base, is rumored to have housed alien and UFO research, the development of the first Stealth Bomber and the hit TV series “Cheers.”

The nation’s largest silver deposit, the Comstock Lode, was found in Nevada in 1859. Virginia City, founded when the Comstock Lode was discovered was home to 20,000 people at its peak in 1870. Now only about 800 people live in this modern ghost town but all have Direct TV. And for you 60′s “Bonanza” fans, nestled nearby in the pines was the thousand acre Ponderosa ranch, home to Ben Cartwright and his sons, Adam, Ben and Little Joe. Of course, my favorite character was Hop Sing, who was a wonder with a wok in the wild, wild west. Nevada is also the largest gold-producing state in the U.S. and is third in the world behind South Africa, Australia and P. Diddy.

More fun facts about Nevada. Hoover Dam (no relation to the Hoover who was the president of the Delta fraternity in “Animal House”) is the largest public works project ever undertaken in the U.S. and has a greater structural volume than the largest Eygptian pyramid. And that’s no scam. And here’s a fascinating rodent fact. In Death Valley, the kangaroo rat can live its entire life without drinking a drop of liquid, which includes Diet Squirt, Mountain Dew and new Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper.

Let’s move to the fun side of the state and I’m not talking the Mustang Ranch. Gambling was reinstated in Nevada in 1931. We could spend this whole blog talking about the history and splendor of Las Vegas but let’s just say it has more hotel rooms and escort services than any other place on earth. On the average, 150 couples are married each day in Vegas. The next day, an average of 149 marriages are annulled in Las Vegas. In 1899, Charles Fey invented a slot machine called the Liberty Bell, which has become a model for all slots. He was originally working on the cure for polio but ran up some gambling debts. Nevada now has over 200,000 slot machines, one for every 10 residents, prospectors and gambling addicts.

Now here’s a few more Nevada stats. The state has the second highest suicide rate in the country besides Alaska. The suicide rate in twice the national average and the rate for suicide for seniors over 60 is the highest in the nation. More Nevadans die annually by suicide than by homicide, HIV/AIDS, automobile accidents and Sigfried and Roy tigers. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the dry heat.

After that fun-filled paragraph, here’s something a little lighter. With March Madness still in the April air and the Final Four semi-finals coming up on Saturday, this is very timely. About 2.5 billion is illegally wagered on March Madness each year. About $80 to $90 million is wagered on the tournament legally in Nevada sports books each year. Legal bets placed in these sports books account for only 1 percent of all bets wagered in the U.S. each year, amounting to $2.43 billion. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimates illegal wagers amount to $380 billion annually. I’m truly shocked and dismayed by all this illegal activity and all I can say is take UCLA and the points.

So that’s it, college basketball fans. And I want to give a shout out to our lovely host in Reno, Dr. Charlotte Borgeson. She’s a Biology Professor and a student favorite at the University of Nevada, Reno. While we were there she answered all my questions about Wolf Pack basketball, got me caught up to date with the latest research on cells, DNA and micro organisms and explained the effects of crab cakes on global warming. And she makes a wonderful variety of cheeses. So enjoy the Reno sky, the college hoops this weekend and if you like snow you may be in for a special treat on Monday. Mahalo.

Good morning and happy April. Nice to be back in the saddle. Here on the central coast we had back to back days in January with spectacular sunsets but nothing really to email home about since. But that streak was broken on March 18 when a sunset appeared almost out of nowhere that really got me jacked up. I was shooting from my old stomping grounds at Stockton Avenue along West Cliff Drive as the sky just lit up with clouds and colors that only the Big Guy upstairs or Bill Gates could create. It was a really incredible night-I hadn’t felt that good since President Bush assured us that the Iraq war is not affecting the economy.

I would have ideally shot this sunset from the cliffs above Davenport capturing just sky and water. Unfortunately, there was a “Full House” marathon running on Nickelodeon and I didn’t want to miss the episode where Uncle Jessie gives Michelle a pit bull puppy and all the wacky hijinks that ensue. The third shot shows a flock of birds furiously booking down the coast. I figured they were cormorants since I usually see hundreds around this time of day. Much to my surprise, they were Canadian geese and that’s definitely a sunset first. Turns out they were hockey nuts late for a Shark’s game in San Jose.

Now let’s move on to the entertainment portion of the show. Most spiders, like myself during my early years of marriage, are solitary creatures. So the discovery of an enormous spider web that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is blowing the minds of scientists, park visitors and web designers. Sheets of webs have encased several oak trees along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, which is about 50 miles east of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. The gossamer strands, which are slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, effectively block out the sun and emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. Or maybe it’s just the cheese. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitos, flies and Maverick’s fans trapped in its folds.

Scientists say they have never seen a web of this size outside of Silicon Valley or the tropics, where the relatively few species of “social” spiders that build communal webs are most active. The web may be a combined effort of social cobweb spiders. But their large communal webs generally take years to build and this web was formed in just a few months. Or this could be a striking example of what is known as ballooning, in which lightweight spiders throw out silk filaments to ride the air currents. Five years ago, a mass dispersal of millions of tiny spiders covered 60 acres of clover fields in British Columbia with thick webbing. I think Tommy James had an inkling this might happen when he penned the super hit “Crimson and Clover” back in 1969. And by the way, what’s a Shondell?

Record breaking rains that flooded Texas earlier this summer inspired outbreaks of Yao Ming raincoats, crickets and webworms, which are the caterpillar larvae of the white moth. The rains may have something to do with the web because you’d have to get lots of spiders together and feed them buffet style to make a web that big. And I don’t want to say spiders are voracious eaters, but the weight of insects eaten by spiders every year is greater than the total weight of the human population, excluding Charles Barkley. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask Miss Muffett, if she ever gets off that damn tuffet.

The spiders are spreading out and are now taking over the cedar trees that appear to have a dusting of snow. The park staff expects the web to last at least until colder weather this fall, when the spiders begin heading to Mexico for MTV winter break. For now the park’s concern is to defend this incredible act of nature from teenagers who might want to take a stick and knock it all down, little boys wanting to push their sisters into it or angry Cowboy fans who are still pissed off about that playoff loss to the New York Giants.

So that’s it’s for our first blast of April. Let’s end it with a little humor. A man walked into a doctor’s office with a lettuce leaf sticking out of his ear. The doctor said, “Hmmm, that’s strange.” The man replied, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.” Okay lettuce lovers, enjoy the magnificence of the winter sky, the world’s widest web and the final two weeks of the NBA regular season. We’ll catch you on Friday. Later.