cave creek

it was 101 degrees Fahrenheit here in tempe yesterday (at 9pm on sunday, its 87). please note, its still april. that is damn hot. to escape the heat, we went camping in the seven springs area of the tonto national forest. its not far from here, but its a couple thousand feet higher (=cooler!) and a different type of desert (semidesert grassland and montane scrubland) that i haven't visited before.

it was really pretty neat, more rolling hills than the rugged mountains you generally see around here. and, there was a permanent stream! water! trees, trees with real leaves!!

and there were tons of wildflowers blooming, which were nice to see.

tim's favorite part was the ants. there were ants everywhere. lots of different kinds. he spent a lot of time like this, looking at the ants.

it was a good trip, even though it started out not so well. with a 10% chance of rain, we decided not to take the rain fly for the tent. then as we're leaving, they sky looked really black and stormy. then we took the wrong exit and got a little confused where we were (why are there 2 exits for the same road, separated by 5 miles?). then there was a huge dust storm and it was extremely windy and it sprinkled a little. we stopped by the ranger station and the ranger told us there was some big weather system coming up from mexico and it was probably going to be really windy all night, and it might rain. a lot. and if it rained a lot, the campsites might flood because there was a fire a couple years ago. (umm, why did this not show up on weather.com a few hours before? but you can see some burned trees on the far hill in the top picture) but then we visited some indian ruins a few miles down the road and it cleared up and the wind died down some, and the huge black clouds weren't coming any nearer, so we all decided to stay.

then when we got to the campground, there were no open sites. so we picked a site that was maybe a site, maybe not, right on the parking lot of the trailhead. worked for us, but it was right by the road. which you would think, not so much traffic 12 miles down a gravel road in the middle of the night, but apparently people like that road at night. no more troubles after that. no wind. no rain. lots of moonlight. and, there were a bunch of toads hopping around, trying to get to the creek. fun for all!

its supposed to be 98 tomorrow, don't you want to come visit?

wild kingdom

today i saw a roadrunner kill an inca dove. it was awesome, but a little sad too because inca doves are pretty cute.

first i saw a mourning dove kind of freaking out on the ground, then i saw there was a roadrunner checking it out. the roadrunner charged and the mourning dove flew off. then the roadrunner was super quick and snatched the inca dove out of a creosote bush! just grabbed it in its beak and whacked it on the ground a bunch of times. then it started pecking at it and eating it. it saw me watching and dragged it under another creosote bush, then i couldn't see much so i left. it was pretty cool, i didn't know roadrunners ate birds but i guess they eat pretty much anything.

other than that, i'm still waiting to hear about a really interesting job i applied for. its now been 8 weeks since the application deadline. never mind they originally said they expected to hire someone in 30-45 days. every 2 or 3 weeks i've checked in with them, and they just keep telling me, "maybe another couple weeks." argh!!

i also made a scrumptious strawberry pie this weekend.

spring eye candy

some springtime cheer for those of you who are in the cold. plants (mostly cacti) from the desert botanical garden. i don't know all their names, any help from out there? (ma arntz?)


no idea on this one.


mammallaria


prickly pear


some kind of wildflower


baja fairy duster



cholla flower


a desert scene



hummingbird (probably anna's or costa's) on ocotillo blossoms



hedgehog cactus.

easter vacation

for our easter vacation, we went down to picacho peak state park. its about 70 miles south of phoenix, right off I-10. its some kind of volcano flow mixed with sedimentary rocks.... who knows. the campground was pretty nice, even though you can see it from the highway. it was super windy, i thought that our tent was going to blow away. with us in it! so it was a little hard to sleep, but otherwise nice. i was on a quest to see an elf owl, but i was again disappointed! but the bird book says they're here in the summer so maybe its too early. we did hear a great horned owl.

some views from up the peak.

some scenery
we also saw some birds, ants and lizards. and i saw the eye shine of what may have been a ringtail or a kit fox. some medium-sized, agile mammal.

we took the scenic route home today, and it really was more scenic. part of the drive was through the gila river indian reservation, which was much nicer to look at than the fields of who knows what (wheat? we couldn't tell) that shouldn't be growing there. at some point, i thought if you ignored the mountains in the distance and the sorry appearance of the soil (it does not look like what i would call "fertile"), you could pretend you were in the midwest. the road was straight and flat, and there were fields on both sides of the road.

anyway, then we stopped at the casa grande ruins national monument. there are ruins of a huge house and smaller houses and a ball court, etc., from the hohokam tribe. you actually can't even go see most of the smaller structures, it looked like they were doing some new excavation. this is the casa grande, protected by that big roof (which a sign said was built in the 1930s i think).


it is impressive they built this huge community in the middle of the dessert. the walls are basically primitive concrete made out of busted up rocks they dug out of the ground.

the two holes in the wall below are for a celestial calender sort of thing, one lines up with the setting sun on the equinox (or maybe solstice? i forgot) and the other with the moon on certain days.


the doors in the smaller buildings are smaller.


these little guys (round-tailed ground squirrels) were all over.

and, we drove through a small town called coolidge. i kid you not, there were people there selling "baby easter turtles". what turtles have to do with easter, i don't know. but i guess baby things are always good for easter since its springtime.