February 9, 2014 Quartzsite, Arizona

Beautiful sunny warm day. Sure am glad we are here instead of up north, it is below freezing and they are getting record breaking snow and cold temps.

The desert southwest is in it’s third year of drought, it is becoming record breaking too. At Havasu Lake they said that only about a third of the beavertail prickly pear cactus are still alive, the rest died from lack of water. The saguaros here in the Sonoran desert are not looking so good either. The bottoms of all of them in this area are dried up, I hope they are not dying too. Here I am posing as a saguaro in my new desert hiking clothes. Light weight, vents to keep the sun off. Day after day in this intense sun is not good for my skin.

80 degrees! It was a good day to sit in the shade in my lawn chair and read. Boy retired life is tough. Here is another shot of me hiking in the saguaros. We hiked 3 miles before retiring to the lawn chairs.

It was one of those days that if it were not for the jet trails there would be no clouds. We are on the flight path to and from Los Angeles. Thankfully the  jets are high enough that we can’t hear them. For those of you who do not know what desert pavement is- here is a good shot. It is millions of small rocks as flat as a road. They are colored black with desert varnish which is caused by the interaction of water and sun over millions of years.There are many theories about how the pavement forms, perhaps the wind blowing away all the dust, or some kind of alluvial fan thing.  No one knows. The area around here has miles and miles of it. It also has lots of washes running through it that have greenery. It is so hard we can drive the bus on it. This is one of the reasons this is such a big RV area in the winter.

Here is one of the washes. The lighter areas are plants. The desert plants have to germinate, make flowers and then seeds to survive. In these drought conditions the plants are very, very short. These patches of plants are where water puddled. It rained in November-3 months ago. It amazes me how they can grow with absolutely no more water. If there is a good rain about this time of year they will all get to their normal bigger size and there will be a great wild flower bloom, if not they will have tiny flowers and then die. When the sun get close to the horizon the whole area turns kind of red. We sit out then and watch the show.

John watching the show, it is much better than TV. Here is the sky right as the sun drops below the horizen.

and it just continues to get better.

Here is skyline to the north as the sun goes down.

Desert Mallow, desert star, two photos of desert sunflowers. For some reason this one plant was the only plant at a normal height, John thinks some one took a leak there, geranium, pea plant already with seed heads, scorpion flower- usually the plant can grow to 3 feet tall, this year it is about 3 inches, plantain-usually 7 inches tall, about 3 this year.

Diamond plated pencil cholla, some kind of thorny herb, the side of a very dry looking saguaro, a healthier looking one, a barrel cactus that is dying on the bottom with pencil cholla beside it, golden cholla, mesquite leaves that has thorns, mistletoe.

Desert trees in the first 4- saguaro, ironwood, palo verde and ocotillo, the seed head it ocotillo, an agate in the desert pavement, quartz in the pavement, two shots of tiny plants in the pavement and tick tac toe with the moon.