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.

Into Town Again

The last couple of days my walkabout have been almost all in the wash here as it has been quite windy the last few days and the wash gives a little bit of protection from the wind. Once I have gone half far enough I climb up out of the wash and let the wind carry me home. Each day I do somewhere between 2 and 3 miles, and that scratches my itch to do something at least.

Once I got back and got cleaned up we headed into town to make some arrangements for our next week or so of activities and meet Don and Angela Ritter, folks who we met down here, but have followed for a long time through blogs and such. Usually we are not so fortunate as to get to spend much time with them, but this year we have met for lunch twice, once here today, and once a few months back on their home ground, Vancouver Island. Thanks Don for lunch.

Long time followers will have come to the conclusion that I am not a very good people picturer, and today was no exception, besides between telling tall tales and gobbling down a great lunch who has time to drag out a camera. While we were in town we decided to brave the local grocery store, something we usually avoid like the plague in the days leading up to American Thanksgiving, but actually other than the many carts full of multiple (6-10) turkeys and hams it was really quite civilized in there today. We'll see what sundown brings but we may end up this post with a shot of the rig as I left this morning on my daily march.

Drinking and flying, guess he didn't read the JSA.

And sundown from the American Girl Wash

Trip to Town

I might have to call these shots looking back at the rig in the morning, the view looking in my window, playing on Lorne at A Place called Away's view from his window. Well I would but I probably can't depend on having a great backdrop like here along the American Girl every day so it is going to be a limited time offering.

After my walkabout, we decided we needed to run to town, Brenda had some shopping to do, not very successful I gather, and then we needed to stop by a Cannabis dispensary. She is having a lot of pain with her knee (CRPS) and hoping to find something that might relieve it a little bit. The place we stopped in Yuma needed ID and Brenda had forgotten hers and I know absolutely nothing about the whole wonderful world of Cannabis and without ID they don't allow you in the store, so she decided we needed to head back home without anything. Once we got here we realized there was a store in Winterhaven, on the California side of the river, so we grabbed her ID and headed back into that place. Apparently, they had an entirely different process there than across the River in Arizona, and she was happy with what she found. I will reserve my happy to see if it works.

This is the view on the way back to the rig in the morning.

Just Walking

and Hunting Hummers

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

Hanging Out

Not a lot happening here along the American Girl. Roaming about the desert is the highlight of my day, that and hunting hummingbirds. My walk is always interesting in its own way, the desert is a pretty cool place to wander, you can ramble back and forth with no set destination, changing course on a whim and and zigging and zagging back and forth across the landscape.

It was a beautiful day today, warm, but a little breezy, so the temperatures didn’t climb too high. Took a few pictures, read a few books and stalked the hummingbirds most of the day. They are tricky and the winds today made them even quicker. This fellow was a little yellower than usual it seems.

We had a visit today by a couple of Osprey’s, the Marine kind, Boeing Tiltrotor aircraft. They are odd looking machines but can land either like a chopper or like an airplane, I guess, and are much faster than normal helicopters.

I wonder what these Marines think about as they buzz the RV’s in the desert.

A Different Sort of Day

I started off my walkabout this morning in a bit of fog. It was really quite different, the shot below is a panorama of my view for much of the ramble. I would say visibility was about 8-10 paces.

It was really quite disorienting in a kind of cool way. When your sight is handicapped your other senses take over and especially your hearing, the crunch of your footsteps, as you wander through the desert. Ghostly cacti appearing out of the mist and the disappearing again. Weird but I am sure welcome for the flora and fauna that call this place home. Those desert tortoises I talked about a few days ago probably depend on these mists and the accompanying humidity to get a sip or two of liquid into their diet.

That is a shot of our rig as I left walking into the mists of time. Brenda figured I should stay home but I thought with all of the technology we have at hand now, the likelihood of me disappearing forever were quite slim. That and the fact that I have walked all over this desert for years and only once saw a tortoise here, I got to thinking maybe they are only out and active on days like this. Sure enough when I stopped and listened I was certain I could hear the sounds of their footsteps and maybe the echos of their shells clunking together as they snuck through the fog in migrating herds. Can't prove it but I am sure they are out there.

I did enjoy the time in a the sensory deprivation tank though, but as I finished my wander the mists started to burn off and the sun shone through.

And by the time I got back to DPA the day was warming up and we were once again tortoise free.

El Centro

Today started the same as everyday, a desert walkabout, and then back to camp for a kick back and relax. Our rain last night didn't amount to much, but it did settle the dust around camp, but no sign of water in the washes. But, we did hear one crash of thunder off in the distance.

No real colourful sunrise but the clouds in the sky added a little drama to the situation so there is that. Yesterday I did manage to round up a hummingbird feeder so I shanghai'd a cup or two of sugar from Brenda's baking supply and mixed up a feed for my hummingbird friends. We haven't seen any around, since we arrived here at American Girl Wash, which is strange, but maybe now the grub is on the hook they will drop by.

Once we got all that out of the way a trip to Costco was on the agenda. We needed to restock our meat locker here at DPA and when we can't get our usual Long Run Ranch Beef down the road from Dogpound, we usually default to Costco. They seem to have good cuts of beef wherever we go, and for a change the Costco in El Centro also had pork chops with the bone-in. Those have been non-existent at our local Costco back at DPN, so they will be a special treat. Yuma, just across the California/Arizona border has a Marine base and we hear some fast moving jets going by but they usually are above the clouds or gone by quick so I miss any decent shots. However I did spot this pair over the desert early this afternoon, and I expect this was a refueling training mission happening.

And shortly afterwards this fellow gave us a pass by just checking out the RV'ers I expect.

Cloudy all day today, and then it was sunset time. Some places you go folks are lining up to shoot the sunset, but here it just us, and it almost seems a waste for Charlie Russell to waste all that time painting that sunset just for us two lone Canucks. But, dang it, I am going to enjoy it all the more, if it's just for us.

Now if there is one thing I have learned about picturin' sunsets or sunrises, you better hang tight and stay for the whole show cause something might come along that blows the already spectacular images you got clear out of the picture. The moon popped through the clouds for this cameo for about 3 or 4 seconds and I was pretty happy to be sitting there waiting for it. Not a hard job, it was a beautiful night and the entire event was pretty decent as the time-lapse shows but this image made the day for me.