Happy New Year! Hope you all are doing something you enjoy today! We hiked one of my favorite trails this morning….Tom’s Thumb in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. It’s less than two miles but very steep and technical.
Tag Archives: desert
franken-stone
Do you see him? 🙂
rainy day
It was very cold and rainy on our hike this morning so I was surprised to see some Brittlebush in bloom. I gave the image a little Glamour Glow courtesy of Nik Color Efex3.
balanced rock
Ahhh….the quintessential tourist shot 🙂
desert faces
The granite boulders here take on many forms. Faces are always fun to find.
saguaro down
We’ve passed this Saguaro cactus many times so we were sad to see that it had fallen. They can live to be more than 150 years old and this one was probably approaching that age. Damage from lightening strikes and freezes can cause tissue damage which can weaken them. Then hard rains like we’ve had the last few days can do them in. This giant will now become food for many organisms.
coyote thanksgiving
Spotted just outside the garage, this Coyote’s Thanksgiving meal looks eerily like a cat 🙁
creosote aroma
Hooray for the rain…finally! Tourists are probably disappointed but many of us know that rain at this time of year is critical to germination of many wildflowers. Another bonus to the rain is the glorious smell that fills the air courtesy of the Creosote bush. All our windows are open.
this is an edit from my initial post where I was thinking creosote but typed ocotillo 🙂
photo walk
Yesterday I led a photo walk in the desert with a theme of shooting close-up. The desert has endless photo ops so a good time was had by all!
The MSC offers free guided hikes every weekend from Sept through May.
curvy shadows
Shooting on a sunny day can reveal some fun shadows like these curvy shadows on a Prickly Pear Pad. The cactus was dehydrated which was causing the pads to buckle.