Beware of Cholla
New hikers to our area are first and foremost warned to stay away from Cholla.
Cholla creatures seem to give warnings too 🙂
Posts from the ‘Sonoran Desert’ Category
Jun 9
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Jun 8
Visiting Frankenstone
Sunday’s hike took us past many of my favorite boulder faces including Frankenstone.
CLICK HERE to see more of my boulder faces.
Jun 7
Climbers Trails
Climbers Trails are meant for climbers but are also open to experienced hikers. Sometimes you can see the trail, sometimes not! (Superstitions on the Horizon)
Jun 6
High in the McDowells
With help from my favorite hiking partner, Chris, I finally made it to the highest point in the McDowell Mountains yesterday (4069ft). We started at 4:45am from the North Access and followed a climber’s trail through Mesquite Canyon, up over the 3 Svens, past Marcus Landslide and then up to East End. There’s a Geo cache hidden in the rocks up there with an “I made it” book and I was stoked to be able to add my name 🙂 Rather than go back the way we came, we then followed another climber’s route over to the Tom’s Thumb trail which took us back to the trail head. Four hours and a little more than 1500 ft elevation gain….it was awesome!
We saw deer and the remains of a deer which reminded us there are Mountain Lions up there but we didn’t see one (I was disappointed!). We did, however, see this guy which was pretty cool too. We had stopped to look at the view and after a few minutes, I did what a good photographer should always do and that is to turn around and shoot in the other direction too. This is what I saw. I was so excited I could hardly hold my camera still and wished I could have stayed to see him take off.
Sigma 18-250mm OS (perfect lens for long hikes), ISO 400, f/8, 1/640th sec.
Jun 4
Feeding the Birds
Expressions like this compel me to continue giving the Cardinals sunflower seeds 🙂
Captured from my dining room window.
Jun 2
Droidx Sunrise
Sunrise captured with my Droidx on my walk this morning.
(Preset to shoot Black and White).
May 31
My Hummer Buddies
Hummingbirds are very curious and boy are they fearless! Within minutes of going out to photograph in my yard, there will be a Hummer inches of my head and flitting around me for a few seconds as if to be checking me out. I think they like my hat 🙂 Whatever the reason, I love it. That particular morning, I was experimenting taking photos of cactus blooms with my 300mm lens. Right next to the cactus is an Aloe and almost the instant I started to shoot, this guy came in and started feeding. Unfortunately, my 300mm lens only focuses to 3 feet which meant I had to back up to take its photo…hence no tail.
Captured May 1st with 300mm lens. ISO 400, 1/600th sec at f/5
May 29
Echinopsis Hybrid Round Two
My Echinopsis Torch cactus continues to bloom and yesterday morning, four more large showy flowers appeared. I haven’t played in Photoshop for awhile so here is a creation resulting from multiple filters. The two filters that contributed most to this look are Topaz Detail (Lithograph) and Redfield Fractalius. I started with presets but then created custom settings for each filter.
