Butterflies and Flowers of Spring

This is the time of year when the cactus flowers start to bloom. One of our favorite places is the Desert Botanical Gardens. As soon as we see cactus blooming around the city, we head off to the Gardens to see the real display of cactus from all around the American continents. Cactus are found only in North and South America, by the way.


These are Cholla, the worst stickers in the cactus world, but some of the most beautiful flowers


The DBG also has a butterfly exhibit. They have a huge cage with screening to keep in the butterflies with a lot of flowers.



It is a remarkable experience and one to look forward to each year.

Death from snake bite

There are 17 different species or subspecies of the rattlesnakes in Arizona. There were 202 rattlesnake bites reported to the poison control center at the University of Arizona which serves all of Arizona, except Maricopa County during 2006. However, 50 to 70% of all snake bites reported were provoked by the person who was bitten. From 2002 to 2007, Arizona had about one snakebite fatality a year. For comparison, lightning killed 17 people in Arizona from 1990 to 2003, so you are in slightly more danger dying from lightning than from snake bite.

But to get a handle on reality, in 2007 alone, Arizona had 1,066 traffic fatalities. You are, at least, a thousand times more likely to die in a traffic accident than you are to get bitten by a rattler. In 2004, there were 9,710 deaths from cancer.

One morning, we were camping on Lake Powell, not strictly in Arizona, but the same kind of area, I got up early and walked up to a small hill outside of camp. As I looked back at the camp, with all of the campers in a pile of sleeping bags and equipment, I suddenly noticed a rattlesnake coiled up just out of the camp circle. Then I noticed another, within a few seconds I had spotted about twenty rattlesnakes coiled in early morning coolness, in a complete circle around the camp.

Before and since I have seen hundreds of rattlesnakes. My first one was just under the top of the Mogollon Rim above Boy Scout Camp Geronimo when I was about 13 years old. The last one I saw was next to the Salt River at Coons Bluff. Like the old saying goes, if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. The best defense against snake bite is vigilance, look where you step and look where you reach.

The empty streets

When we were children in Phoenix, in the pre-home refrigeration days, dusk was the signal to run outside and play. We would run around with all of the neighborhood children and play the usual games. When I purchased a new home in Mesa, I wanted to duplicate that same neighborhood experience. Happily, we moved into a neighborhood with lots of children and my own children had the same experience of growing up in Mesa with a neighborhood.

One of my best memories happened late one night when there was a huge thunderstorm. The street in front of our house filled with water two or three feet deep. The houses up and down the street emptied of children, all of whom were dancing in the rain and water. It was a glorious night for children.

All of that is now past. In our new neighborhood, the streets are empty, even in the cooler evening hours. The children we see are constantly supervised by parents and not allowed out of their driveway. If they are riding a bike or scooter, they are heavily padded with helmets, elbow and knee protectors. In one instance, a few children rode their bikes around our neighbor's circular driveway, which was open to the street. The neighbor stormed out of his house and loudly complained to the children's parents and ordered them to keep off his paved driveway. Children are no longer allowed to be human, they are kept like nicknack's and wrapped in bubble wrap. The streets are now mostly empty.

One day I saw some children playing in the park next to our house. However, immediately, their father was out on the sidewalk yelling at them to get home. We have lived next to a park for over thirty years. The old one was always full of children, the new one is entirely empty, it seems to be a park for dogs only.

I know there may still be some places left in this world where children can play, unsupervised, for an hour or two outside. Where they can build mud villages and dig ditches in the dirt. Where they can run and play like children and enjoy being outside. When I see the poor little creatures sitting in front of the video or TV my heart cries out, go outside! See the sun, the moon and the stars. Look at the trees. Find bugs. Dig holes, make a mess, do things children have always done until now.

Wind

Standing out on the Colorado Plateau, looking across miles of almost flat rocks and sand, you can really begin to appreciate the force of the wind. Stories passed down from my ancestors who pioneered this almost lifeless landscape, tell about people going crazy from the wind. Literally losing their minds from the constant blowing. Statistics don't do the wind justice. The Plateau doesn't have monopoly on the wind, of course, there are lots of places in on the plains where the wind blows just as much, but the combination of high altitude and dry air make for some really spectacular wind storms.

One day we drove up on the Plateau and got out of our car, I thought I might have gone deaf or perhaps was suffering from some sort of hallucination, there wasn't any wind. No such luck, ten minutes later it started blowing so hard, we couldn't open the car doors without bracing ourselves against the blast.

Since there are no trees to speak of, at least by normal tree standards, (there are Juniper bushes that most people call trees but they aren't usually more than about twenty feet high at most) there is nothing to stop the wind once it gets moving. In the Spring and Fall when the huge cold fronts start coming down from the Northwest, the wind really take off and blows, sometimes over 100 mph, which most places would be hurricane force, but up there is just another Spring breeze.

Even today, after living in the low desert most of my life, on a quiet evening, I can still hear the wind blowing in my ears.

Death through dehydration

I haven't had a post about dying in the desert lately. But it is now getting over 90 degrees in Phoenix and it is that time of year again. The University of Maryland Medical Center has first aid site that gives a good explanation of both heat stroke and dehydration. But there is one problem, Maryland isn't much like Arizona and especially the low deserts (which includes the bottom of the Grand Canyon).

To quote MedicineNet. com: "The cause of heat stroke is simple: being too hot for too long. If sweating isn't enough to cool you down, your body temperature rises rapidly, up to 106 degrees in as little as ten or 15 minutes. That's hot enough to literally cook your brain. You pass out, and if you're not treated immediately, you will suffer brain damage or die."

One of the symptoms of both dehydration and heat stroke is the inability to think properly. Many people start taking off clothes when overly hot thereby exposing more of their skin to the sun. In Phoenix, you can die of heat stroke working in your front yard, you don't have to be out in the desert. In a real sense, all of the Salt River Valley is out in the desert. Some statistics indicate that up to 50% of the people with heat stroke die of the condition.

I have been very dehydrated, one day hiking in overly warm weather, actually in November, I lost six pounds of water in an afternoon. Fortunately, none of those in our hiking group got heat stroke. But it was a real possibility.

Spring Flowers in the Desert Botanical Gardens

Spring at Phoenix's Desert Botanical Gardens is spectacular. Please take time to view the slide show of fantastic flowers. These are the first of the season and will get better as the weeks go by.

The color and form of these flowers is extraordinary. There is nothing to compare to the color anywhere else in the plant kingdom. Cactus win the prize for the best flowers.

You can spot these flowers for long distances. The are so bright and contrast so completely with the gray and browns of the desert.

Citrus and Cactus in Arizona

Arizona is know for its Five C's, Citrus, Copper, Cotton, Climate and Cattle. However, I would I a sixth C, Cactus. Here are some pictures of the citrus trees, tangelo and grapefruit, in bloom. The grapefruit tree has some fruit left in among the leave and flowers.

In March and April the cactus start to bloom. They are fantastic. Here is a column cactus with some really strange flowers.

This what they look like when they are fully bloomed.

Scorpion Wars, Episode 395

In our last episode of the Scorpion Wars, our noble heroes had battled their nemesis, the scorpion horde to a standstill, cold winter weather (relatively cold winter weather) had temporarily created a false sense of security in our noble heroes. They had become lax in manning the bastions of their defense and now.... on with our story.

When I was child growing up in the mostly desert Salt River Valley, we had every imaginable bug except scorpions. One of those things the Chamber of Commerce would like you to ignore, Phoenix is a very, very buggy place. Exterminators do a lively business and most residents have their homes sprayed regularly. The most common offenders are ants, crickets, cockroaches and silver fish. With a sprinkling of more exotic species and varieties thrown in, like earwigs, black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders and even more interesting crawly things. I had not seen a scorpion until one day, while turning over rocks in the desert, there was a scorpion, hiding down in the dirt.

Now let me say, I do not like scorpions. I do not like bugs very much at all, especially at night and especially when they land on you suddenly. One day, while living up on the Colorado Plateau, we had a "Child of the Earth" land on our screen door, which freaked us all out, anyway, to get back to scorpions, we now have scorpions. They are a fact of life. We have probably killed hundreds in the past three years alone, all of them in our house or on our lot. Scorpions do not respond to poison. They can live without air, they can live without water, they are closest thing to eternal that exists on the earth. We use glue boards to trap them and a vacuum to get the ones we see. The vacuum has the air go through an impeller, which is highly impractical for cleaning but good for bugs.

It is now the time of year to start to see them again. We will start the annual battle of the ultra-violet light (scorpions fluoresce in black light) and we will once again watch for their straw to brown colored bodies on our walls, ceilings, carpets, anyplace. The worst is finding some scorpion carrying all of the little babies on its back, yuk.

Driving around in the Phoenix/Mesa Metroplex

In case you didn't know the area around the Salt River Valley is now called the Phoenix/Mesa Metroplex. Not to denigrate any of the other communities, but Mesa's population is now over 445,000 people. The Phoenix population is over 1.5 million and growing at almost 15% a year. Phoenix passed Philadelphia as the fifth largest city in the U.S. Now that you are suitably impressed with the size of this huge city, you can start imagining driving around in 115 degree heat.

First the positive, Phoenix has a really good freeway system compared to someplace like Philadelphia, but it is about the same as that in San Diego. Drivers tend to drive much faster that the allowable speed limit, like up to 80 mph in a 65 mph zone. But the drivers are much more predictable than they are in a city like Salt Lake City, Utah. Plus, there is no snow and almost no rain making the streets clear almost all of the time. Another advantage is that most, not all, of the major streets are straight and a few go all the way across the city, I mean like about 50 miles. So if you are familiar with McDowell Road in Phoenix, you will find the same east/west street in Apache Junction and the same street in the far west valley except where blocked by freeways and mountains, canals or whatever.

We do have some really interesting things to contend with, for example, four wheel drive trucks that look like they are going to compete in a monster truck competition. I drive a Prius and I can look under (and might be able to drive under) some of the trucks.

I have found that driving in Phoenix is the same in all directions, the streets all look the same, the signs all look the same, the shopping centers all look the same, it is Alzheimer's patient's nightmare. If you were driving in Glendale and were suddenly beamed to Chandler, you might not notice.

The city is filling up with photo radar speed traps. That is a recent innovation. I was behind one crash that occurred when someone spotted the photo radar on the freeway and jammed on the brakes. People love to run red lights in Phoenix but not so much as other cities. The so-called downtown section of Phoenix has been a maize for years, they are always reconstruction some or all of the streets and you can never predict how you will have to go to get into the downtown area. Fortunately, though, unless you work in downtown Phoenix or attend sports games, you have absolutely no reason to go down there. I find many people in Mesa who haven't ever seen downtown Phoenix in their entire lives. I also find that people in Phoenix in a lot of cases have never been outside of Phoenix, they don't know that the Salt River has water in some places or that there are huge lakes, mountains and green trees.

We do see a lot of major accidents. Like the one this week where a small car smashed into a palm tree in the median of Main Street in Mesa. We could not figure out how the car got onto the median to hit the tree, the curb is almost a foot high.

The Dream of Thunder River

Many years ago as a young child, I read of a fantastic adventure traveling to the depths of the Grand Canyon to see a fabulous waterfall coming right out of a cave in the side of the cliff. This place of fantasy had the dramatic name of Thunder River. I read and re-read the account of the trip to this fabled place.

Years past, but the dream of the waterfall was kept fresh in my mind. Sometimes I would start to think that maybe I had dreamed about the waterfall and the cave. Maybe it didn't really exist.

One day, I decided to go and see for myself if this place of dreams really lived on the side of a cliff deep in the Grand Canyon. I recruited some friends and took my oldest son, then only eight years old, and we set off for Thunder River. Of course, the reality was hardly dream-like, we had to obtain camping permits from the National Park, find the trail head, walk miles and miles through the Canyon, but finally, there it was the fabled place.

Unfortunately, we chose to hike in August. The heat was brutal, 95 degrees at 6:00 am in the morning. We ended up spending the day sitting next to the waterfall and then walking out of the Canyon after dark.

It is not a trip for the unprepared. We found two groups of people lost in the Canyon. It is dangerous place and really far from any support system. I think about the trip often. It was one of those things, when you get my age, that you don't think seriously about doing again.

Spring in the Desert Botanical Gardens

This is a series of posts on Spring in the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona. I have added about 60 pictures to the slide show here on the site and I will feature some of them in future blogs.

Earlier in the Spring the wild flowers start to bloom. The cactus don't start blooming until later in March into April and on until June and July. I hope to show the progression of the blooming at the Garden.

Right now, we have the Dale Chihuly Exhibit at the DBG. The sculptures are all blown glass. They are really remarkable

This is a Texas Mountain Laurel, very pretty in the Garden.

Spring in Mesa

We certainly enjoyed that one Spring day in Mesa. No, really, usually it goes from cool weather to hot in one week. This year the weather keeps getting warm and then cool again. Of course, cool here is relative. We think that 80 degrees is a cool day.

This tree is growing right across the street from the Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One of the major events in our desert is the blooming of the cactus flowers. We will be going to the Desert Botanical Gardens soon, because the cactus start to bloom in March.

Here is a cactus flower picture from past years:

The mystery of rock art

Because of the mostly dry climate in Arizona and surrounding states, drawings and carvings from the ancient inhabitants have been preserved in abundance. From the above paintings in Canyon de Chelly, to the petroglyphs in Phoenix's South Mountain Park, there are lots of interesting sites throughout the state.In almost every description of petroglyphs, they are described as "mysterious." Archaeologists spend thousands of pages analyzing them and trying to decipher some meaning.
Most of the rock art is subtle and unless you are aware of the location, might be missed. Occasionally, there is a huge collection, such as Newspaper Rock, in the Petrified Forest National Park, but even the larger collections, such as Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in New Mexico, have many glyphs that are small and unnoticeable.

The only real mystery about rock art is why the scientists think there is some kind of mystery. Graffiti has been a common human experience forever. If you spray paint a wall it is graffiti, if some ancient Indian scratched his name into a rock, it is rock art. There are a lot of good reasons to study ancient artifacts and ancient rock art. Mystery is not one of them.

The Phoenix area is a good place to visit and see an amazing array of rock art. You might try South Mountain Park, San Tan Mountain Regional Park, and Estrella Mountain Regional Park for a start.

Thanks to Flickr for the South Mountain Park photo.

The Usery Mountain Wind Cave

There are 29 miles of trails through the desert in the Usery Mountain Regional Park. The Wind Cave trail winds up onto the side of the mountains and ends at a huge hollow in the rock face. The band of light colored rock, where the cave is located, is visible from most of the eastern part of the Salt River Valley, although after years of living in Mesa, the view becomes almost invisible. The trail is suitable for younger children, but becomes a little steep and unless they are used to hiking, they will probably asked to be carried some of the way. This is one of the first hikes my children probably remember.

The entrance road to the Park continues over Usery Pass and then down into the Salt River valley and joins up with the Bush Highway. The circuit from Power Road in Mesa, over the hill to the Bush Highway and then along the Salt River to Usery Mountain Road and back over the Pass is a favorite with bike riders. The road can be dangerous due to its proximity to Saguaro Lake and huge amount of traffic generated on weekends and holidays.

Thanks to Flickr for the photo.

Seven Springs

Water creates the greatest contrasts in Arizona, either present or not present. Anyplace there is water year round becomes a mecca for water-starved desert dwellers. Seven Springs, originally a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, is located in the Tonto National Forest. Yes, Arizona has rivers without water and forests without trees. To be fair, there are a lot of trees in the Tonto National Forest, at least in parts. My trips to Seven Springs started as a young Boy Scout camping in the wilds at the end of a long dirt road. There were very few facilities and almost no traffic.

In contrast, on a warm day in Phoenix, Seven Springs located 15 1/2 miles north of Carefree, can look like an outdoor mall in the holiday season, with a constant stream of traffic both directions on the still dirt road. There is a short perennial creek with a picnic site consisting of a few tables. There is also a pack-it-in/pack-it-out campground consisting of four tent sites. You may wish to check with the Tonto National Forest before trying to camp there as the reports indicate there is no camping from time to time.

As with many sites in the Tonto National Forest, it now has a daily fee. Recently, the campsites and tables have all been full every time we have visited, but on an off day, it would be a lovely place for a hike, suitable for toddlers if watched carefully up to challenging and long desert trails. The trails in the area link with Cave Creek and you can hike well over 20 miles if you care to do so

We used to find geodes in the area, but the geode beds appear to be long picked over.

Roosevelt Lake Full

Roosevelt Lake, the Salt River's largest reservoir, is at the flood limit and water releases are starting through the valley. Arizona is one of the few places that has rivers with no water. The Salt River, which supposedly runs through the valley, is almost always a dry, sandy, rocky and empty river bed. However, in years when there is sufficient run-off from mountain streams, the river runs through the valley. This event is generally called a "flood." When the river is running like any normal river, it is a flood. When it is dry, it is a river.

It is a major event every time the river runs, because in their infinite wisdom, the city, state and county governments build their roads in the "dry" river bed. So, every time the river "floods" the roads are under water and generally destroyed. The governments also build "bridges" which sometimes begin and end in the middle of the "flood." So the roads and bridges are closed to traffic. Before they built all the bridges, that used to mean that there were only one or two ways to cross the river, on the "real" bridges that had been built when the river was a real river. But now, unless there is a big flood, most of the bridges work and people can drive from Mesa to Phoenix without waiting for three or four hours to cross a bridge.

Now that we have the ground rules out of way, we read the story about Roosevelt being full, and drove to the lake, about a four hour drive if you return by way of the Apache Trail, a 15 mph dirt road. Anyway, the lake was full. Of course, the pictures are really bad and all they show is a lake with a lot of water, but that is the point, the lake doesn't usually have a lot of water. Maybe I could find a few early photos to show the change. If so, I will post them. I will also tell about the Apache Trail.

The bridge in the photos is across the lake at the dam. It is the longest single arch steel bridge in the United States.

Roosevelt Dam was rebuilt and raised in the past few years. If it had not been raised, the water in the lake would now be pouring over the spillway and running through the valley in a real flood, as opposed to the fake floods when the river is running normally for a river.

Here are some quotes from the news:

Roosevelt Lake, which had risen steadily since a series of storms in January and early February, crept closer to the flood-control limit as water gushed in from the Salt River and Tonto Creek. The three downstream reservoirs - Apache, Canyon and Saguaro lakes - were already full.

Shortly before 4 p.m. Friday, Roosevelt hit the legal top, an elevation of 2,151 feet above sea level. At that point, SRP switched its operations to comply with rules written by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees flood-control regulations.

The utility increased the water flowing past Roosevelt Dam to 1,900 cubic feet per second, about 853,000 gallons per minute. During typical dam operations, the amount of water released from Roosevelt is much lower and fluctuates depending on the need for water in the Valley.

SRP will continue to release water at the required rate until water levels at the reservoir stabilize below the flood-control limit.

We were out walking and noticed the canals were full to the edge of the concrete, now we know why. They are running water into the canals rather than send it down the river.