Merry Christmas

We have just been chillin' down here alongside the American Girl. Sounds lazy, looks lazy, hell it might even be lazy, but that is what we are doing here and we are pretty happy doing it. I still wander about the desert, even sometimes take a picture or two, almost have to as my version of Blogger won't actually make paragraphs in this journal so unless I take a picture and insert them, this just becomes one long, long run on sentence.

Of course then the challenge becomes one of, "did I already put that picture here, where else is it, will it bore the folks who are following me on Facebook?" all stress inducing decisions. Well not really, it works like this, if I like it you get to see it, over, and over, and over again, sometimes two or three times.

A couple of days ago we had a rainy day, rainy for down here in the desert, more thunder and lightning than rain, but it did get the wash running for a while. Not enough to get our fishing poles out, but enough to change the scene a little for our sundown. And cause us some chaos with our Starlink. The folks at Starlink jumped right to attention said, yep, you bet we can deal with that, in fact we will send you an entirely new system. Took about 5 minutes to get to that point, then they threw in a complication, they are sending the new system to Mom's old house. Folks will probably figure out that since Mom passed almost 12 months ago, her house is not her house, or our Amazon depot anymore, so that will give us something to fret about over the next few days, while we try to convince Starlink that sending a big box of stuff halfway across the continent to an address, we no longer have access to makes a whole pile less sense than sending it halfway across a state to the place we actually are. Oh well, first world problems. But while those issues are buzzing back and forth in our human world, my friend here comes every night to enjoy the sunset with me. Hopefully by the time we leave this spot we will have got an image that does his brillaint plumage justice. It does change with the light, a twist of his head can change the whole scene.

Same bird, different angles, the one below is as we sat watching the sun sink over the Imperial Dunes to our west.

Oh yah, Merry Christmas, the neighbours down the wash were kind enough to invite us to join them for their Christmas Eve celebration so we are actually infused with a little Christmas spirit here at Dogpound Anywhere.

Same Old, same old

Still hanging out here along the American Girl, still taking a stroll in the morning to get my heart pumping. Gives me time to listen to some political podcasts and contemplate the state of the world as I wander about the desert. I was looking back at my old blog entries back in early 2011 and I was doing sometimes 5 or 6 miles a day, maybe sometimes 7, today I am lucky to cover 5.5 kms so I guess old age is a metric measurement. Oh well, it is what it is I guess, still feels good.

I took this shot yesterday on my way back from my walk and then spent the rest of the day just watching the world go by, and stopping it with my camera a time or two to capture the things that pleased me. The picture below was taken from the comfort of my recliner just behind the rig.

And here is a look at our site from somewhere down in the Wash

We do have more critters visiting us here than just the hummers, this little fellow spends his days much like I do, just soaking in the sun.

I was just recollecting the old days in blogging when I was a lot less likely to stick a bunch of photos into the entry. We had about 5 GB of data to last us a month, now with Starlink the sky is the limit from here at Dogpound Anywhere. So I get to subject you all to an endless series of sunsets, sunrises, hummingbirds and neighbourhood views. This pair of hummers are pretty frequent visitors here at DPA so they are starring in a lot of our pictures.

And just so you know I am not the only picturin' person here at DPA the shot below is one I stole from Brenda of the sunset last night.

Crossing the Line

This morning started like every other one here along the American Girl Wash. I did my daily inspection tour of the desert as the sun came up, and then it was back to Dogpound Anywhere (DPA) for a bit of breakfast. About mid morning our neighbours from up the wash a piece came down and we slid in behind them. They led us down to the parking lot north of Los Algodones, BC, that's Baja California, a little Mexican border town just south of the extreme SE end of California and just across the river from Yuma, Arizona. We have been across the border here a few times in the past, but never with such a big gang, in total we numbered 8 folks, Deb and Ryley, Tom and Deb, and Kim and Ken, all Canadians hiding out from winter here in the Southwest, except for Tom and Deb who call the Upper Peninsula of Michigan home, so they are damn near Canadians.

We didn't have anything special in mind, just a little trip for lunch and a few drinks. Oh yah, and a chance to see about augmenting our drug stockpile, prescription drugs, but just like last time I had a look, most of them are cheaper in Canada than down here in Mexico. We did pick up few Z-paks of antibiotics just because, but other than a cool shawl that Brenda bought and a couple pounds of shrimp we just carried lunch and a few drinks back across the border. The line at the border was pretty quick, so that was a bonus as well.

Left to right, Ken, Kim, Deb, Ryley, Brenda, Deb, and Tom at our last cantina of the day. Once we got across the border Brenda and I ran into Winterhaven to the local pot store to pick up a few things that seem to give her a little relief from the trials and tribulations of CRPS. Then it was back out along the American Girl where we rejoined the whole group for Happy Hour up at their spot a half mile or so farther up the wash from our location. I have been shooting some hummingbirds here the last few days so I will throw a couple of shots in of these little critters.

Just Another Beautiful Day in the Desert

I began this morning like every morning, with a walk around the desert, checking out the new arrivals and seeing what there is to see. You would think that after a few weeks of wandering about every morning it would get old, but it doesn't. I never take exactly the same route so although you might see the same stuff it is usually from a different angle or with different light on it. The last day or two have been pretty active with rigs coming and going, here is a bunch that are familar, they must have got tired of shivering up near Quartzsite and decided to wander a little farther south.

After my walkabout I jumped in the truck and ran into Yuma to pick up a couple of Amazon packages that had been delivered to a locker in there. Yuma is obviously a "remote" outpost on the Amazon planet as even with Prime it is about 6 days to get things delivered here and often the Lockers are full and that delays things even more, waiting on folks to get out and pick up their stuff to make room for more folks and "their" stuff. Oh well it is not like we are in a rush or anything. While I was in town I stopped by the Uhaul shop and filled a propane tank, and picked up a couple of things for Brenda at the grocery store as well. And of course got rid of some rubbish along the way as well. The rest of the day was spent chillin' and watching our little buddies buzzing around.

This fellow above came and sat in a tree about 2 feet away from me, obviously wanted his portrait done. And a few seconds later he jumped up and headed for the feeder for this action shot. They are not bugged at all by having me and my cell phone sitting almost on top of their feed source, and I can get within a foot or two of them while they are eating. All todays shots were taken with my iPhone.

Back in the Desert

As I said the other day we are back from the seashore, and after rescuing our rig from the Park we abandoned her in for a short trip, we headed back out into the desert. The Park wasn't crowded but it was NOISY, and that is not what we are used to. We are happy to be back out alongside the American Girl Wash again, in fact within inches of being in the same spot we were in earlier. Good thing we pulled out here yesterday, today there have been a few more rigs joining us along the Wash, so for sure this great location would have been taken. I am back to my old desert walkabouts early in the day so I will bore you with a few sunrise pictures.

It is great walking along the wash early in the morning, not a sound out there except the crunching of my boots in the sand.

And soon after the sun is up in the sky the hummingbirds come to feed. Today it was a lot like rush hour, guess they were happy to see us back or at least our feeder back in the neighbourhood.

I probably need to apologize to folks who also hang out on the Facebook site as most of these pictures show up on both sites. I have said before but these little buzz bombers are aggressive protectors of their food sources so it is a constant air war going on here daily.

Camp Day

It is Thanksgiving Day for all our American friends, but us Canadians had our turkey day back in October, just before we left to come south. I enjoyed Thanksgiving at my son Paul's place, and they always have a big spread of to much food that tastes to good to not eat, so I have already done my overeating for the fall season.

Here is my looking back at my window shot for this morning, taken as I was heading out to make sure the desert was all good since I was last out there yesterday morning. I like to get a little exercise in the morning as for the rest of the day I do a pretty fine imitation of a sloth and don't do much of anything.

Someone was working overtime this morning colouring up the skies for us desert rats. Once I get done my wander about the countryside I usually just come back and chill around camp, unless there is some burning desire to go to town, but today is a camp day, and tomorrow probably as well, as the Black Friday horde will be out in full force I can imagine. So it was basically a listen to tunes, and shoot some hummingbirds type of day. I caught this one showing off her flying skills and coming in for her Thanksgiving feast on full instruments, she has done it so often she can do it with her eyes closed.

The shot below shows some nice colour but really shows how fast these little critters move, my shutter speed is taking this image at 1/8000 of a second and that can't even freeze the wing action on this little desert speedster.

And Again

I needed to fill one of our propane bottles and it dawned on me that tomorrow was Thanksgiving here in America, and then Friday is that horror of horrors they call Black Friday and I try to avoid both of those days like the plague. So today was the day to run in and get ourselves ready for a couple of days hiding out here along the American Girl. The hordes won't find us here although, from all the toy haulers passing by on Obilby Road today, the Dunes to the west of us will be a busy spot this weekend.

I took this shot above as I left this morning on my ramble across the desert and shortly after this dead tree caught my eye.

And then as I returned I walked by that same old tree and the different light changed the whole view. Almost looks like one of those critters the folks were riding around in the movie Avatar was frozen in time and turned to wood.

We brought some leftovers home from our lunch yesterday and I do believe they were even better today than they were yesterday, so thanks again Don. Then I spent the rest of the day setting out watching the 3 Hummers we have here dogfighting and zooming back and forth in front of me. They are entertaining little critters and it is a good thing they are hardly bigger than a bumblebee, as agressive as they are. They are cool to capture with the camera, but it takes a little patience, and a well charged battery. Today I took about 750 images of them, and picked what I think are the best three to share with you folks.

So that is a hit rate of about 0.4%, now there were a bunch that were decent but these were my picks. With todays camera's there's not really a lot of terrible ones, but my first pass through I threw out about 650 of them as not worth keeping, and then the next time through whittled about another 50 out, most as pretty much duplicates of something I kept or Hummers, just like people, sometimes blink and we all know how folks hate those pictures so off to the round file they went as well. I did keep one of the terrible one just to post here though.

So for all our American readers, enjoy your day tomorrow and hope you are lucky enough to spend it with family or friends and eating to much.

Just Walking

and Hunting Hummers

The sunrises shot with my iPhone, the Hummers with my Canon.