Kisses from Man's Best Friend.

Special Days.

Special days that include one-on-one time with Nana and Papa. Undivided attention. Building projects. A movie. No brothers. Perhaps a walk to feed the ducks. Perhaps a trip to McDonald's (tho Papa says he's done his annual trip there already and won't be returning soon!). But, gosh it's hard to WAIT for Special Day to begin.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.


Oh, WHEN will Papa ever get here?!?


Yay, yay, yay!! Papa's HERE!!!


And the Littlest Dude is exceedingly happy, because Special Days are, well ... Special.

Flower Fields cont.

Joshua Tree - Last Day "Camping"

Nap Time in the Truck

Me: Lie down and rest.
Littlest Dude: But I'm not sleepy.
Me: Stop talking. Stop squirming. Stop whining. And rest!
Littlest Dude: [silence]

Desert Blooms



The Big Dude cooks chocolate chip pancakes over an open fire (cause we forgot the propane for the campstove. oops!). And the Little Dudes eat 'em up while the sun sets.




And the "camping" trip ends much as the afternoon begun. With a nap.

The Freaky Salton Sea. The Abbreviated, No-Words Version.

For anyone interested in making a photo collage like this one, check out Flickr Toys. Click on the mosaic option and it'll walk you thru the process.

Tomorrow I'll post the last of the "camping" adventure photos.

Earth laughs in flowers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hey, guess what??? I finally got together a photography "storefront". You can read all the details by clicking on the gallery button at the top of the blog. This photo is perhaps one of my all-time favorites. It's the first one I downloaded to the gallery. :-)

This is NOT your grandfather's desert...

Look closely. The only healthy "palm trees" here are the cell phone [faux] trees!


Funny to see soooo much farm land in the middle of the desert. Here's one of the palm tree farms.


I told you the Dog Dude was a better climber than I.



In these 3 former photos you can see the Salton Sea in the distance.








Remember how the Dog Dude fell into the Sea? Here you can see the dried, caked-on salt.

Puppy Sibling Reunion

We adopted Kona, the Dog Dude, almost two years ago. His pregnant mama was rescued from a dog pound and placed with the most wonderful foster family. Mama had 8 surviving puppies who were adopted out to various families. Four of us have remained in contact, and this last weekend we all got together and reunited the "puppies."

It's not easy to get four dogs to cooperate for a photoshoot! We needed the Dog Whisperer's help, methinks!

The Boys	The Girls

'Twas a really enjoyable afternoon. The nicest people. The sweetest dogs. I think we all decided this would be a nice annual event. :-)

ps. to the Puppy People: We weighed our beast. The verdict? 64 lbs.

The Salton Sea.

Warning: I'm about to use some words. Lots of them.
And I promise it won't happen again anytime soon. Feel free to skip them if you just want to see the photos. I won't mind ;-).

How do I even begin to explain my strange fascination for this strange place? Even my husband doesn't get it. Didn't know why we were there - thought it was pointless: "there's nothing here." Which is why it's all the more precious that he drove us out of our way to take me there, to humor me, to honor my desires. I think I'll keep him. He's a good man. Even if he doesn't understand why the sea intrigues me. ;-)

I think my fascination lies in the Salton Sea's similarity to my favorite vacation destination of my childhood: The Colorado River. Annually (sometimes biannually) my parents would drive us down to Parker, AZ to stay at my grandparents' mobile home park on the River. There was heat, boating, fishing, walks to the local market, web-mesh chairs on the docks, card games, good food, friends and family. I loved it all. Still do. The Salton Sea, similarly, was once beloved by people for many/all of the reasons I just listed for loving the River. At one time, Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys crooned there nightly, and more people spent their summer vacations sunbathing along the shoreline than hiking in Yosemite National Park. But, the Salton Sea is no longer loved. It's totally abandoned. Falling into disrepair. In fact, being intentionally dismantled. It's like a nature-resort wasteland.













Today, the sea has been left mainly to the birds. It's a 300,000-acre saltwater lake that straddles Riverside and Imperial counties in the hottest, driest part of southeastern California and is a stopping ground for nearly 400 species of birds - more than any other wetland in the United States except the Texas Gulf Coast. Millions of migrating birds, including endangered brown pelicans, rare blue herons, and eared grebes flock to the sea during winter months.









The Salton Sea is a modern day environmental conundrum. It's undeniably one of the most important habitats for birds in the West. But the sea relies mainly on ["wasteful"] irrigation run-off from Imperial Valley agriculture. The farm run-off is a toxic "soup" of salt, fertilizers, selenium and traces of pesticide - all of which encourage the massive growth of plant life & algae in the water, which both richly feeds the fish (contributing to their health & well-being) and then depletes the oxygen in the water, thus killing the fish. Mass fish deaths = nasty odor that can be smelled all the way to Palm Springs. Bye, bye tourism. So, the conundrum ... conserve water, eliminate waste = the sea drying up and the birds losing an important wetland sanctuary. Congress has spent millions over the last 10+ years trying to find a solution to this tricky equation. All I know is: if anyone offers you a "hot" investment opportunity in a new Salton Sea resort ... just say no.


The "beach" is comprised of barnacles, dead fish, bones, bird feathers, and salt.


See our bedraggled, happy doggy? We gave him free rein - it's not like there was anyone there to tell us not to. Wouldn't you know, he fell off the "marina" edge into the smelly water within 5 minutes of gaining his freedom. I was just relieved to be able to pull him out without dropping my camera in!


Before we left, the Littlest Dude tried to clean the place up.

Unrelated, funky sea details:

Largest lake in CA - twice as big as Tahoe.
Perhaps the most productive fishery in the world!
Surface area of 376 square miles; surface level is 227 below sea level.
25% more salty than the ocean (tho half as salty as Mono Lake and 1/5 as salty as Salt Lake).
Due to salinity & sea level = fastest lake in the nation upon which to boat.
It's a shallow, closed basin (like a sink); thus when it rains more than usual (3 inches per year), the sea floods the surrounding areas - also a contributing factor to the abandonment.
If Congress has its way ... the current legislation proposes spending $2billion (!!) to dry up most of the lake, leaving a small brine pit in the center, and a small lake at the south end and a small lake at the north end of the current sea. I dunno. Somehow that seems a sad, sorry "solution."

Can't you almost just smell it?

Lavender.

The Rocks. It's all about the Rocks.

And the Sky. The Sky was pretty amazing, too. Joshua Tree cont...

The Big Dude and the Eldest Dude climbed this incredibly steep rock - quite the accomplishment for the Eldest!




Hmmm, I bet the view from up on top would have made a nice picture. But climbing's not my thing. I don't do heights. I take pictures from the ground floor. ;-)


Here's the view from back in the truck where we all waited while the BD & the ED made the very long descent.


So, the campsites were full, but we played in the park til we ran out of light. Then we drove out by moonlight and headed into Palm Springs for the night.

And I'm happy to report that I picked up my mac late this afternoon. Woohoo! I can stop twitching now. And get back to those photos from last week...

No Room at the Inn...

About this time last week, this is what we encountered at Joshua Tree. See those sad, sad countenances?

Ok, so it's not totally true that there was no room at the Inn, because the Holiday Inn in Indian Wells did indeed have a room for us ... and breakfast in the morning which included yummy cinnamon rolls. The Big Dude quipped that food always tastes better on a camping trip. :-) Before we headed out of the park and into Palm Springs, we did some more climbing and I took some neat moon/mountain pictures; but those photos are all stuck in my mac which is stuck in the shop which still hasn't begun the work to fix it. argh. But I'm not bitter or anything. pffft.

Park continued.

Rock World. aka Joshua Tree National Park.

Yes, I know. Joshua Tree, both by name and by the iconoclastic U2 album from nearly 20 years ago, is reknown for its trees. But. It's really all about the rocks.

Some notes: The sky really is this blue. All I'm really adding to these digital photos is a little sharpening and a little contrast. The place really is THAT awe-inspiring. The dog dude came along and loved climbing the rocks - was, in fact, quite adept at climbing. More so than I; tho, of course, I *was* the one taking photos ;-). We were very limited as to where Kona, the Dog Dude could go - ie. not allowed on trails, not allowed more than 100 feet from the road.

Again I assert: Parks didn't look like this when I was a kid.

Laguna Beach - Bluebird Canyon

My computer's heading into the "doctor's office" tonight for some repairs. I'll probably try to post tomorrow's stuff this afternoon, and hopefully will have more Joshua Tree photos on Friday. Happy Tax Day ... or not. :-P

Sneak Peek of our Joshua Tree "Camping" Weekend

These pictures were all taken on Saturday in the desert area just south of Joshua Tree during our scenic drive from the Salton Sea back over to Joshua Tree.

Trail back to the Truck.

Ok. Back on flat ground! Despite it feeling like we were in another world all by ourselves, we were actually within a stone's throw of Interstate 5 when we were on this trail.

Thus ends our first San Onofre visit. Can't wait to return sometime!

San Onofre continued.

It's going to be a busy weekend, so I'm posting early. Sunday, I'll finish up our San Onofre evening with photos from the wildflower-strewn trail back to our truck. We originally drove out to this beach on a whim, hoping to set up one particular photo (which we didn't end up doing due to a lack of the right lighting & weather conditions). I had NO IDEA the treasures we would find on this little beach adventure. What a place!

The STEEP Trail 6 "short-cut."

I'm not kidding. It was steep. And narrow. And I was NOT wearing climbing shoes. But my little mountain goats seemingly had no problems. They quickly scaled right up that trail. But hey, they weren't taking photos like I was. Yeah. That's why it took me so much longer. ;-)

San Onofre Beach to the South of Trail 5.

Tomorrow, I'll show you the trail back up the cliff. The trail for which my shoes (clogs) were completely inadequate. And please excuse those weird cloud markings in the large photo above (they don't exist in the high-res version). And please excuse my silly need to even say that.

Over-population? Over-crowding?

We live in Orange County ... with approximately 3 million other residents. We are bordered on the North with Los Angeles County and its 10 million residents; on the South with San Diego County's 3 million and on the East with San Bernardino's and Riverside's 2 million each. So, where are all these people? Certainly NOT on this beach with us.

All these following photos are taken from the mouth and towards the north of the trail we just came down.

Get rock.


Throw rock.






In the far north distance, you can see the nuclear power plant.


Tomorrow, I'll show you our meanderings to the South - to the area understood to be a n#dist beach. Yes, we traipsed our sweet, innocent kiddos right down to the n#dist beach ... that was completely unoccupied by anyone but us. And we all had our clothes on. ;-)

The flowery meadows meet Bryce Canyon National Park meet the Grand Canyon meet the ocean. All in one place.

About a 30 minute drive from home...

The requisite artsy fence post picture.


Nearing the bottom of the trail...


Our resident rock climbing fanatic.


Near the end of the trail that opens onto the beach, looking back from whence we came.



Tomorrow I'll show you the amazing beach.

Sunday Blessings...

Giant Tecolote Ranunculus from the Flower Fields of Carlsbad.

The Flower Fields continued

Here are my companions for the day. Don't they look like nice, law-abiding citizens?



See the yellow tape below? It says, "Do Not Cross Tape".





Yup. We crossed it. My mother really did raise me to follow the rules. But we couldn't resist. I like to think we followed the spirit of the rule. And we didn't do it again ... after we were asked not to.







The moral of the story? Snap & get the image first. Apologize second.

The Flower Fields of Carlsbad

I apologize in advance for the plethora of ranunculus I will pepper throughout this blog ... for the rest of the year!! Yes, the fields were THAT beautiful. And I took lots and lots and lots of photos. So did my darling friend, Leslie, who spontaneously joined my spontaneous photo trip of the day (she already posted a slew of them over at her blog - go see!).

More photos to follow in days to come...

More Boy Behavior at the Beach

Here's the canyon at the base of our neighborhood.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Oh. Well, that explains things a bit.

I guess we'll have to walk elsewhere.

I'm a Cheap Date.

Just take me on a walk where I can see beauty and take pretty pictures.






And so my wonderful husband did. This is a ridge trail above the canyon that, to the east, ends below our neighborhood and, to the west, ends at the ocean in Laguna Beach.








End of walk. Now we're off to the local Fish Tacqueria. And can you see the wind that made all hope of macro floral photography nil? Many thanks to Nana and Papa for giving us many opportunities for cheap dates :-).