Fish Hook Flower

The detail of cactus flowers is amazing. I have always found that as you get closer to your natural surroundings you begin to see the amazing detail in everything. Looking at the world through a camera can open up the beauty of the details of life.

Moon After the Eclipse

This photo was taken the day after a total eclipse of the moon from Phoenix, Arizona. Hmm. The moon looks about the same and no worse for wear from the eclipse. You would think after all those years of eclipses that the moon would start showing some signs of wear? We couldn't get any good photos of the eclipse because of clouds.

Aloe Flower

Aloe vera is a relatively well-known plant because of its health and medicinal uses but there are 580 species of Aloes and hybrids in the world. Many of them have impressive flower stalks. We grew Aloe vera in our yard in Mesa. By the way, it spreads like a weed.

Waiting and Watching

I had never seen one of these stately herons in Arizona until I was in my 30s. This was not due to lack of contact with the outdoors, I spent many of my early years camping and mostly in Arizona. Today, these birds are fairly common in lakes and ponds across the entire state. By the way, egrets are just another kind of heron.

Two Pelicans

I am certain that this is the first time I photographed a pelican, much less two, in Arizona especially in the Salt River Valley about 400 miles from the nearest ocean not counting the Gulf of Mexico (Sea of Cortez). The story is that they get blown into the state by a hurricane.

Johnny Cash in Phoenix

Phoenix, Arizona is the home of the world-class Musical Instrument Museum. This is one of the best displayed and comprehensive museums I have ever visited. This is an exhibit of memorabilia from Johnny Cash. While I was in high school, they played the same two Johnny Cash songs during lunch almost every day for two years; Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line. If you ever visit Phoenix and love music, you have to visit the MIM.

A Saguaro Conference

Sometimes, when the weather is good, the saguaros gather together for a conference. The topics range from the annual migration to the prospect of rain in the summer. You have to be careful approaching such a conference because the older "bull" saguaros can be quite aggressive and you wouldn't want to have to tangle with all those spines. This particular conference was just ending and the topic was the next gathering and who would be responsible for paying for lunch. 

Pelicans in Arizona? Yes

Surprisingly, the last Pacific hurricane apparently blew in a few flocks of pelicans and Arizona now has a resident pelican population. These are American White Pelicans or Pelecanus erythrorhynchos
I was very much surprised to find a flock at the Gilbert Water Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona. You never know what you are going to see until you look.

Red Chili

I love chili. We used to grow several different varieties. Of course, some are too hot to enjoy, but when you get old, there is not a lot of things that you can taste but chilis are one of the things that always comes through sometimes with a vengeance.  These were in a store so that is why they have labels.

Snow in St George, Utah

Actually, the snow is on the mountains just south of St. George, Utah. The weather in St. George was its usual warm and sunny. However, this was the view that greeted us as we got up to drive further south. There are always some beautiful things to see in this world.

Kofa Mountains of Western Arizona

The Kofa Mountains of Western Arizona are some of the most rugged and remote in the entire state. The name "Kofa" is really an acronym for a mine in the area called the King of Arizona. There is one part of these otherwise largely inaccessible mountains that is frequently visited called Palm Canyon. It is the home of some of the only original native palm trees in the Southwest.

My Favorite Cactus

It is probably obvious why I relate to Cephalcereus senilis or the Old Man Cactus. But the real reason is that we had one of these beautiful cactus growing in our front yard for years. They get to be between twenty to thirty feet high. You can see one in the background. They have long hairlike spines and then some really long very sharp ones also. Sort of like me.

Cedar City, Utah LDS Temple

Cedar City, Utah Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Cedar City, Utah Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was announced in 2013 and dedicated in 2017. It sits on a prominent hill right off the freeway in Cedar City, a small university town in southern Utah. The day we stopped by was typical for me, cloudy, cold and very windy. We were just glad it wasn't snowing.

After the Snowstorm

When the snowstorms roll in from the northwest, you can see the snow like a curtain across the valley. Then the snow curtain covers the mountains to the north of us and slowly spins to the south until the snow starts to fall on our house. When the storm moves on east and the clouds lift, we can see the transformation of the mountains from brown to partially brown and white.

Prickly Pear Fruit

Prickly Pear is a family of cactus plants known as Opuntia. They range over most of the United States, even in very cold locations and on the Eastern Seaboard. Some of the plants have large edible fruit. However, the plants and fruit are very difficult to deal with because of the tine spines known as glochids. Here is an explanation from Wikipedia: Glochid.

Glochids or glochidia (singular "glochidium") are hair-like spines or short prickles, generally barbed, found on the areoles of cacti in the sub-family Opuntioideae. Cactus glochids easily detach from the plant and lodge in the skin, causing irritation upon contact. The tufts of glochids in the areoles nearly cover the stem surfaces of some cactus species, each tuft containing hundreds of glochids; this may be in addition to, or instead of, the larger, more conspicuous cactus spines, which do not readily detach and are not generally barbed.

If you have ever had contact with glochids, you will remember the experience. We have found one way to remove them is with athletic tape. The tape sticks to the spines and pulls them out but it is not a pleasant experience. 

A Circle of Waterlilies

Water lilies are in the plant family of Nymphaeaceae. Here is a brief explanation of the plants from Wikipedia: Nymphaeaceae:

Nymphaeaceae /ˌnɪmfiːˈeɪsiː/ is a family of flowering plants, commonly called water lilies. They live as rhizomatous aquatic herbs in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains five genera with about 70 known species. Water lilies are rooted in soil in bodies of water, with leaves and flowers floating on or emergent from the surface. The leaves are round, with a radial notch in Nymphaea and Nuphar, but fully circular in Victoria and Euryale.

From my photos, you can probably tell that I love water lilies. 

Busy at Work

Sometimes we think of nature as something in the background. But this busily working honeybee is certainly not a background phenomenon. Currently, our honeybee population is in a major crisis situation. For more than a decade, bees and other pollinators have been rapidly declining. Is this just one more background item to be filed away or is there some reason to start becoming more environmentally aware?

Reflections

Whenever I see a reflection, I am reminded that what we see does not always represent our preconceived ideas about reality. I am reminded of Alice Through the Looking Glass and many other stories that speculate about alternative universes. But in a real sense, we live in a world of alternative universes of our own making. We fail to see the world around us as it actually is and we live without appreciating the details that are already and obviously visible. 

A PAC MAN Convention

Nothing is really new in the world. Even the most advanced technologies merely copy the natural world around us. We can feel smug in our advancements, but we are still embedded in the natural world and have to deal with the limitations our existence on earth imposes on us.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

Yellow Angel Trumpet Flowers

These are Yellow Trumpet Angel Flowers or Brugmansia suaveolens. They seem to be a favorite summer flower for botanical gardens around the United States. We have seen them in several locations. Most of them are being grown indoors in a Conservatory or greenhouse. One reason I love plants is that they have such wonderful color, texture, and some of them even smell good.

A Burst of Color

You might not know that hundreds of my photos are available for sale on the Adobe Stock website. This image is of a bromeliad of the Bromeliaceae plant family. You might recognize the most common bromeliad as the pineapple plant. Some studies have shown that in the jungle there may be as many as 175,000 bromeliad plants in 2.5 acres. Here are some interesting facts about these valuable plants:

One study found 175,000 bromeliads per hectare (2.5 acres) in one forest; that many bromeliads can sequester 50,000 liters (more than 13,000 gallons) of water. 

A wide variety of organisms takes advantage of the pools of water trapped by bromeliads. A study of 209 plants from the Ecuadorian lowlands identified 11,219 animals, representing more than 300 distinct species, many of which are found only on bromeliads. Examples include some species of ostracods, small salamanders about 2.5 cm (1 in) in length, and tree frogs. Jamaican bromeliads are home to Metopaulias depressus, a reddish-brown crab 2 cm (0.8 in) across, which has evolved social behavior to protect its young from predation by Diceratobasis macrogaster, a species of damselfly whose larvae live in bromeliads. Some bromeliads even form homes for other species of bromeliads.

Rocky Mountains in Summer

You can drive to over 12,000 feet on a paved road in Rocky Mountain National Park (assuming the government isn't shut down at the time). The scenery is fantastic but it is really hard to get any perspective of the distances and size of the mountains. The best perspective comes from getting out and walking over the mountain paths. You immediately realize you are at altitude and that the distances are very large.

Modern Salt Lake City

Unless you have been to downtown Salt Lake City, Utah within the past few years, you probably have a memory of a city that was more small town than big city. But rapid development in the downtown area has completely changed the way the city works and has made fundamental changes to the way it operates. Salt Lake City has a well-development public transportation system and is one of the most walking friendly cities in the United States (assuming, of course, you can stand the altitude). The almost explosive growth of the city has caused problems with air pollution and traffic, but the city is addressing both problems. The wide streets of the downtown area make traveling by car much easier than many Eastern Coast cities and there are a lot of open spaces and parks.

Slot Canyons: Beautiful but Dangerous

Northern Arizona and Southern Utah are known for their sandstone slot canyons. There are probably hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these narrow, winding canyons scattered across the Colorado Plateau. They are the obvious results of flash flood erosion and can be very dangerous during stormy weather. Every few years, people get killed in slot canyons from sudden floods. It may be hard to imagine this dry looking canyon filled with brown rushing water many feet deep, but some of these canyons have a huge drainage area and even a small or moderate storm can fill them with water rather suddenly. The storm could be many miles away and the water can travel great distances before filling up the slot. Over the years, I have seen a number of such flash floods out in the desert and I have a healthy respect for the danger involved. The attraction, of course, is the colorful beauty and form of the canyon walls.

Sandstone and Clouds

After spending a year on the East Coast, I felt like it was time to get back to WalkingArizona and throw in a little bit of Utah in the bargain. We are back in Utah in the middle of the Winter with a lot of snow and ice, but the mountains look wonderful and the air is mostly clear and you can see forever. This image from Southern Utah is an example of what we will be seeing over the next few days, weeks, and months.

Unworldly Sandstone

You can't really appreciate how strange this part of the world is when you are standing there in person. Once, you get away from the actual site and look at a few photos, the unreality of the entire area hits home. This is a relatively remote area of Southern Utah almost on the border with Arizona called Kodachrome Basin. There is a lot of sandstone in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, but not too much of it is as beautiful as this small area.

Utah Petroglyphs

There are a considerable number of rock painting and petroglyph sites in Utah. Many are quite accessible but difficult to spot. There is a lot of speculation about the origin of the petroglyphs and even more speculation about their meaning. All of them are protected by Federal and state laws but Utah is known for high profile cases of people destroying unusual rock formations and otherwise defacing and ruining our historical and prehistorical heritage. What don't people understand about look and don't touch. See Prehistoric Rock Art Defaced in Utah

Crowded Sandstone

While traveling around in Southern Utah, the trip is full of endless surprises. While traveling seemingly endless dirt roads, there are occasionally small signs that point to side roads and by traveling onto a narrow and bumpy side road, we discover an endless wonder of sandstone formations that delight the eye and give pause to reality. We can never guess what amazing sights the next dirt road will reveal.

Please Stay on the Road

In the United States, common sense seems to have mostly evaporated. The current shut-down of the United States government is a good example. Because of the shut-down, theoretically, I could drive down this road and then drive off of the road with impunity because there would be no Federal agents to enforce the provision requesting that I stay on the road. But how stupid is that? I don't have to drive hundreds of miles into the desert to find a place to ruin the environment by driving off-road. I can do that quite comfortably closer to home. But should I do something just because there is no one around to prevent me from doing it? Unfortunately, from reading the news it would seem that this is what many people believe is how our country operates: if you can't get caught, you can do anything you want. What happened to decency and moral responsibility? Do we all want to live in a dump? Perhaps we need to realize that we create our own environment and begin by cleaning our own houses and treating "public" property with that same level of care and consideration.

By the way, you might have to click on this image and enlarge it to read the sign which says "Please stay on the road."

About as far away from it all as you can get

There are few places in the continental United States that are as remote as this road in Northen Arizona. It is called Tuweep and is part of the Grand Canyon National Park. The trip in is said to require some determination and advance preparation. There is a warning sign on the road as you go into this part of the country noting that more than half the people who travel this road end up with a flat tire or two or three or four. We managed to have a flat just as we got back to the pavement after driving 128 miles of dirt road.