A Walk in the Desert

Full disclosure to start: there are no Merlin pictures. I will, however, start with a short video. As I look at my phone sending it to email so I can download it, I'm not sure the Miracle RV Park in Tucson has the bandwidth to make that happen before I'm done with this blog. That's been the issue, you see. RV parks tend not to be WiFi hotspots. Well, sometimes they are pretty good but I have games and political news to catch up on. Ah! I unfairly judged the WiFi power here. Ta da!

The trip from Quartzsite to Tucson is only about two hours so I decided that I wanted to get our feet dirty in the desert. I drove about 30 miles south of Quartzsite and found a reasonable looking dirt road to pull off on and get beyond power lines to be able to share the beauty of the desert.

No place better to start with than the mighty saguaro, icon of the Southwest and found only in the Sonoran Desert.

Then there's the, "It looks just like the movies!" landscape. I hate it when people say that and they've been doing for a long time before so many of us rarely glanced up from our tiny screens.

We weren't there long enough, or still enough, to witness all of the life the desert supports. I broke what I thought was a rock and later found some elk dung that suggested the cool rock I collected was dried out dung. I hang my wanna-be-geologist head in shame. If you look, however, there are signs of life in what Maureen words for were, "It's so fucking desolate."

Trust me, these were not your kitchen ants. These were some big ants. Desert Harvester Ants, in fact. There were other interesting creature holes that Merlin and I elected not to explore. 

I found a few other rocks on which I practiced my skills with my geology tools. There's probably gold in them thar hills but I didn't find any.

We also found evidence of human insult to the land. Take THAT! humans.

And now, particularly for my many SoCal friends, this is what "The 10" looks like in Arizona.

And, because some have asked if I've given up photographing birds, no I haven't. What I failed to pack is my field guide so I'm taking guesses as I go along. Feel free to correct me. 

Cactus Wren

Correction: I met up with my college roomie for lunch today who gently told me that I spelled Tucson wrong. If there's still a "Tuscon" in here somewhere, it is not for lack of trying on her part. Also, she confirmed that the bird is a Cactus Wren and gave me some cool birding info for local birds and birding hotspots in this part of the state. Thank you, Lynda!