A visitor to the Furnace Creek Vistitor Center walks by a digital thermometer in Death Vally National Park Friday, June 28, 2013 in Furnace Creek, Calif. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
A visitor to the Furnace Creek Vistitor Center walks by a digital thermometer in Death Vally National Park Friday, June 28, 2013 in Furnace Creek, Calif. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Dan Kail, 67, of Pittsburg Pa., walks thru the sand dunes in Death Vally National Park Friday, June 28, 2013 near Stovepipe Wells, Calif. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Michael Jackson impersonator Juan Carlos Gomez drinks some water as he takes a break from posing for photos with tourists along The Strip, Friday, June 28, 2013 in Las Vegas. A blazing heat wave expected to send the mercury soaring to nearly 120 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas settled over the West on Friday, threatening to ground airliners and raising fears that people and pets will get burned on the scalding pavement. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
David Reyes, left, and Shavaar Hanes take a break from posing for photos with tourists as the Mario Brothers along The Strip, Friday, June 28, 2013 in Las Vegas. A blazing heat wave expected to send the mercury soaring to nearly 120 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas settled over the West on Friday, threatening to ground airliners and raising fears that people and pets will get burned on the scalding pavement. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
Parker & Sons Air Conditioning warranty supervisor Michael Hawks cools off after inspecting an a/c unit, Friday, June 28, 2013 in Phoenix. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona. Dangerously hot temperatures are expected across the Arizona deserts throughout the week with a high of 118 Friday. (AP Photo/Matt York)
DEATH VALLEY, Calif. (AP) ? Dan Kail was vacationing in Las Vegas when he heard that the temperature at Death Valley could approach 130 degrees this weekend. He didn't hesitate to make a trip to the desert location that is typically the hottest place on the planet.
"Coming to Death Valley in the summertime has always been on the top of my bucket list," the 67-year-old Pittsburgh man said. "When I found out it might set a record I rented a car and drove straight over. If it goes above 130 I will have something to brag about."
The forecast called for Death Valley to reach 128 degrees Saturday as part of a heat wave that has caused large parts of the western U.S. to suffer. Death Valley's record high of 134 degrees, set a century ago, stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
"The wind out here is like being in front of a blast furnace," Kail said.
As temperatures soared in Las Vegas Friday, 200 people were treated for heat problems at an outdoor concert, Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa said.
Thirty of them were hospitalized for heat-related injuries at Vans Warped Tour at Silverton Casino as temps reached 115.
Most of the others "were essentially provided shade and water and a place to sit down," Pappa said.
It was expected to get even hotter in Las Vegas over the weekend.
Phoenix reached 116 on Friday ? 2 degrees short of the expected high ? in part because a light layer of smoke from wildfires in neighboring New Mexico shielded the blazing sun, the National Weather Service said. Phoenix was forecast to hit nearly 120. The record in Phoenix is 122.
The heat was so punishing that rangers took up positions at trailheads at Lake Mead in Nevada to persuade people not to hike. Zookeepers in Phoenix hosed down the elephants and fed tigers frozen fish snacks. Dogs were at risk of burning their paws on scorched pavement, and airlines kept close watch on the heat for fear that it could cause flights to be delayed.
The heat wasn't expected to break until Monday or Tuesday.
The scorching weather presented problems for airlines because high temperatures can make it more difficult for planes to take off. Hot air reduces lift and also can diminish engine performance. Planes taking off in the heat may need longer runways or may have to shed weight by carrying less fuel or cargo.
Smaller jets and propeller planes are more likely to be affected than bigger airliners that are better equipped for extreme temperatures.
Temperatures are also expected to soar across Utah and into Wyoming and Idaho, with triple-digit heat forecast for the Boise area. Cities in Washington state that are better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s next week.
"This is the hottest time of the year, but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they'll be toward the top," said weather service meteorologist Mark O'Malley. "It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West."
The heat is the result of a high-pressure system brought on by a shift in the jet stream, the high-altitude air current that dictates weather patterns. The jet stream has been more erratic in the past few years.
Health officials warned people to be extremely careful when venturing outdoors. The risks include not only dehydration and heat stroke but burns from the concrete and asphalt. Dogs can suffer burns and blisters on their paws by walking on hot pavement.
"You will see people who go out walking with their dog at noon or in the middle of the day and don't bring enough water and it gets tragic pretty quickly," said Bretta Nelson, spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society. "You just don't want to find out the hard way."
Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless and elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. In Phoenix, Joe Arpaio, the famously hard-nosed sheriff who runs a tent jail, planned to distribute ice cream and cold towels to inmates this weekend.
Officials said personnel were added to the Border Patrol's search-and-rescue unit because of the danger to people trying to slip across the Mexican border. At least seven people have been found dead in the last week in Arizona after falling victim to the brutal desert heat.
In June 1990, when Phoenix hit 122 degrees, airlines were forced to cease flights for several hours because of a lack of data from the manufacturers on how the aircraft would operate in such extreme heat.
US Airways spokesman Todd Lehmacher said the airline now knows that its Boeings can fly at up to 126 degrees, and its Airbus fleet can operate at up to 127.
While the heat in Las Vegas is expected to peak Sunday, it's unlikely to sideline the first round of the four-week Bikini Invitational tournament.
"I feel sorry for those poor girls having to strut themselves in 115 degrees, but there's $100,000 up for grabs," said Hard Rock casino spokeswoman Abigail Miller. "I think the girls are willing to make the sacrifice."
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Skoloff reported from Phoenix. Also contributing were Robert Jablon in Los Angeles, Julie Jacobson and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, Cristina Silva and Bob Christie in Phoenix, and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M.
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Over the years I have heard so many horror stories about Canadians travelling abroad without adequate travel insurance. The one that sticks out in my mind as the most difficult involved a couple who were honeymooning in South Florida. With so many things to organize for the wedding the couple forgot to get travel insurance, but they were young and healthy and didn't think too much about it. Day two of the honeymoon, the groom broke his ankle jogging on the beach and it was a pretty good (or bad) break as far as ankles go, it required surgery and a pin to keep the ankle set. The bill for the two day hospital visit with surgery was just over $25,000. Not a great start to married life.
Girls I Know, Douglas Trevor?s debut novel, which was released this spring by Sixoneseven Books, is set in Boston and tells the story of a twenty-nine year old graduate-school-dropout Walt Steadman, who, after witnessing a tragic act of violence, searches to make sense of the tragedy and life in general with the help of two girls: Ginger Newton, a Harvard student, and eleven-year-old Mercedes Bittles, whom he begins to tutor. A coming-of-age novel, a novel about place, and a stirring social novel, 
It was a very hard book to write. To begin, it?s my first crack at a novel. I think I had a short story writer?s view of novel writing, which is that it couldn?t possibly be as hard to produce 300 pages that ostensibly starts and stops just once, as opposed to a collection of nine stories or whatever my first collection was comprised of, that started and stopped, let?s say, nine times. But in fact I found writing a novel to be incredibly difficult and slow going. When you are writing short stories, you are active and engaged with others in a much more immediate way: sending stories out, revising stories for publication, etc. But once I dug into?Girls I Know, I felt as if I more or less disappeared from the earth?s surface. As a writer, I struggled some with that feeling of isolation. And I had so internalized the cadence and clock that dictates short fiction that once I let that go, I had a tough time figuring out how to pace a longer narrative. It really wasn?t until the third draft of the novel that I felt like I had a sense of how to manage the narrative arc. Then the project became incredibly fun and really all consuming. And then, somewhat sadly, it ended, and now I have to start the whole process again with another book project.
You?re right that all the central characters in?Girls I Know are away from home through most of the book. I hadn?t really realized until now the degree to which this is simply true. Mercedes is in her grandmother?s home after her parents die, but she won?t be able to stay there for long. Like Walt, she is looking for a home. Ginger is the kind of person who has the resources and the confidence to make any place a home, or not to care about having a home insofar as that word means a safe place where you are surrounded by people who love and care for you. Home is a charged concept for me. My first book,?The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space, circles around the unexpected death of my sister, and the last story in the collection ends with the two of us as children, in our childhood home, thinking about where we will be in the future. It sounds obvious, but when someone you care about dies, whatever space you inhabited with them changes forever. It becomes just saturated with melancholy and loss. Mercedes misses her family?s apartment painfully throughout the course of the book, but she doesn?t want to see the apartment?not without her parents in it. Much of Walt?s journey in the novel is toward trying to understand what it means to adopt a city as your home, only to have it then traumatize you. Like most of what I write about, then, my sister?s death is lurking there, in the homes that do and do not appear in?Girls I Know. Also, I?ve moved around a lot in my life so I feel really aware of the degree to which my ?home??say, in Ann Arbor?will never be my ?hometown,? which is Denver. 