Winter pics

If you can correctly identify the locations from any of these pics I'll buy you dinner. Contest ends January 2nd, and if someone gets one right in a public forum, that one is out of contention for future guessers. Click on them to make the images bigger.

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Sunsets

Been a little obsessed with sunset pics this week. Probably because it gets dark so early so I notice the sky as I'm leaving work. Here are Monday, Wednesday and Friday's sky shots.

Death Valley wildflowers

My trip, the first weekend of April, was too late for "the bloom" according to the super-friendly tan, wrinkled couple who checked us into our campsite. But we still saw some flowers - nearly 20 different kinds by my count. And different flowers than I saw in Joshua Tree 2 weeks prior (scroll down for those posts). Some on the bottom are about to bloom or I added just because I recognized the foliage, the Arizona lupine for example. (Yes, I do seem to be addicted to hunting wildflowers.)

 

 

Joshua tree wildflowers: colorado desert

These flowers were found on March 18th, before the proper bloom season, but it was still quite a show! Even the cholla were blooming. All but the first two pics were taken  on the oasis trail near Cottonwood (south side of Joshua Tree and part of the Colorado Desert). I can imagine how the full bloom would be have more dense patches of flowers - similar to the blue flowers filling up the dry creek in the fourth shot below. (click on it to make it bigger and see the full effect)

Joshua tree wildflowers: mojave desert

March 18th is a little early in the season for wildflowers, but that made it more fun to hunt them out. Joshua Tree is a large national park, with the northern part classified as Mojave Desert and the warmer southern part Colorado Desert. As predicted by the park ranger, most of the flowers were found on a hike in southern part of the park (the oasis near Cottonwood). But first here are my favorites of the Mojave Desert. The first one was comically microscopic. And the orange bush made me stop in my tracks, and while there I found the lupine. A bonus prize! (click on photos to make them larger)