Chapter 474

WARNING! This post is only travel photos. 

Please don't continue if you aren't interested!

This pretty much duplicates the photos I've put up on Facebook so I'll just go through these quickly! 

I missed a couple of photos at Karen and Bill's. Here's Bill making BBQ ribs. YUM!

I missed a photo of the St. Patrick's Day corned beef that Auntie Karen made for dinner but I did get them in their St. Patrick's finery. Uncle Bill wearing green...

Ant Auntie Karen wearing the greenest she had.

I finished the doll blanket that Reagan requested and specially selected the yard for at Walmart. One project down, a couple more to go!

Then it was on to De Anzo Borrego Desert State Park. I do love myself some really cool looking rocks.

Look at 'em! Aren't they cute?

We went hiking up through these rocks and looked all the little teeny plants that the extra rain encouraged to grow.

These little teeny flowers are one of the many bounties of the extra rain the desert has created. 

Yucca bloom in progress.

 Literally, an entire mountain of rocks.  They were very beautiful.

 Mistletoe is such a great part of Christmas it's hard to believe it's actually a parasite that grows in desert trees sucking the moisture out of trees that worked so hard to collect it.

A beautiful moon rise in the desert.

Costco is a great lunch stop when you are travelling!

Downtown somewhere near the Salton Sea.

 Prickly pear cactus spawning little bitty prickly pear fruits.

Palm trees that have never had a haircut before. The birds love 'em!

Leave it to the State of California to take all the fun out of a simple nature walk through the desert.

The Salton Sea is muuch larger than I had imagined it to be. It a man-made ecological disaster. The lake was created my mistake when a dam broke and the Colorado River flooded the area. It became a popular summer destination with thousands of tourists from the LA area boating and camping on it's shores.

The Salton Sea used to have war boats during the 1940s and brought barnacles with them. Now barnacles make up the "sand" around the lake shore.

The lake level has dropped so low the dock is bent down and the agriculture runoff and salt are 30% higher than the ocean.

The channel from the boat launch is too low to get boats out now.

With only agricultural runoff contributing to the lake, the level is getting lower and lower creating toxic dust around the edges of the lake that blows directly into a town of agricultural workers. California doesn't have the water to spare to refill the lake to help out.

Next stop, Palm Springs. The flowers are amazing this year.

Bottle brush flowers. I used to paint with the pollen of these when I was a kid.

The hills over Palm Springs are normally brown, brown, brown. Right now they are green, green, green.

There is an orange tree near our camp that I have made a personal mission to empty. The new orange blossoms smell soo good!

 Albert, my flamingo buddy on pins and needles in the sunshine.

Albert just didn't learn his lesson and is trying to climb this cactus.

We took our car in to get washed today. This is not like any carwash I've ever seen before. Clothes, snacks, electronics, and drinks keep the customers entertained while they wait for their cars.

Our car was in good hands in went into the car wash between a Lamborghini and a Bentley. When our car came out, it was still a Subaru. I was hoping a bit of the other cars would wear off on it.

An old movie set at the base of the rock mountain that I liked. 

A section of The Wall. This is how close to Mexico we got. There were no legal crossings to get over and check it out so we stayed on our side.

We got to watch the Blue Angels practice (with their smoke on) while we were at a rest stop near El Centro, CA. The rest stop workers were going about their business while the tourists were standing around watching the Blue Angels practice their maneuvers. It was an unexpected surprise for us.

Have a great week everyone!