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.

Just Walking

and Hunting Hummers

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

Days and Nights

Not a lot of exciting stuff happening today. The weather cooled off a little. It is more comfortable for Brenda for sure, but it portends a trend that I fear might be hard to stop. For a kid from north of the Medicine Line coooling trends to bring up that ancestral fear of WINTER, so there is that. Let's just hope whomever is controlling our climate conspiracies these days doesn't get carried away with this cooling phase to quickly. All things in moderation. I continued my morning visit with the desert today, so got a few shots that I will share with you on that ramble.

I head out early, usually just before sunrise and it is all about the way the light plays on the landscape that makes the place so beautiful.

Well, that and seeing new places, or the same old places from a new perspective.

I have taken to just carrying my phone with me on my wanderings, getting old I guess, and the big old lens are heavy and cumbersome, and the new phones take pretty decent pictures, especially for this format, where size doesn't really matter. But curiousity drove me to crack out my Canon and tripod last evening and shoot a little bit of the Milky Way. Now the Canon still does a better job for full size images but that little iPhone does a pretty decent job even of night shooting for sharing here on the interwebs.

The image above was shot with my iPhone 15, while the one below was with my Canon R5, both with similar post processing although not identical.

Although you can't really see it here the Canon image survives enlarging it better than the iPhone, but how many of us blow up our shots and hang them anymore anyway. Oh by the way, those little specks of light you see, our sun is just another one of them, not even a significant one, and we are just standing on a little rock traveling around that tiny speck. to lend a little perspective to the whole thing.