Do These Pictures Make Our Asses Look Big?

We made a side trip from Needles, California, back into Oatman, Arizona- only about 30 minutes away from our campsite on the Colorado River. This was a trip to see the wild burros: asses if you will! But it turns out it was also Biker's Week so we got a bit more in the way of asses than we had planned on. At first we thought the 6 pounds of carrots we bought to take for feeding the asses might go to waste, what with all the noise and hullabaloo. But nope. Not a problem. Have to learn to be flexible. Turns out one good ass deserves another and so the day was a big success.

When we got home from the day's outing we took our fav beverages and walked down to the beach at the river and watched the boats go floating and/or zooming by. It was HOT but there was a nice breeze blowing down river and it felt great. I took a bunch of videos with my phone but they were all sideways. Huh? Anyway, I probably should have walked back to the coach and gotten my camera, but hey, my ass was too tired! (get it???)

Brenda: Season 2013 Wrap Up

Well, sir, just now getting around to wrapping up the posts from Brenda for this season. It was a fairly cool winter but not like the rest of the country and I think we probably had the best weather anywhere in comparison to the rest of the country. can't complain, although we may do so from time to time just to keep it real. For the garden it was a great year. The cactus had a tremendous bloom and the veggie garden produced non stop and without a hint of pests like aphids and the like. The cactus garden is now on weekly watering with our helper, Ellie, and the veggie garden is all closed up for now but ready to begin again in the late fall.

 Everyone got together for a final bite to eat before leaving camp including but not limited to our resident chuck-walla seen here checking out the apple a day scenario.

 We put out dinner of smoked pork butt and the trimmings for the neighbors and had a good odds and ends session in the big tent with the Happy Tuesday gang.

We were afriad that the Argentinian Giant wouldn't bloom before we had to leave but it hurried up and did just that. It's really a pretty special cactus flower to be sure.

Marilyn kept trying to have one last fire in the chiminea and our local dove couple kept trying to lay an egg in the top of it every time the fire went out. The battle was declared a draw when the egg got laid but didn't get cooked...

When we left camp we first headed east to get an oil leak that was persisting fixed up in Mesa. That completed, we returned to spend one more night in camp before heading west into Needles,California on old Route 66. That is where we are as I write this, parked on the Colorado River with all types of boats buzzing by as we sat on the beach at day's end. Earlier in the day, we made a side trip back into Oatman, Arizona, to stalk the wild burros that frequent the town regularly. We got more than we bargained for as you will see in the next post!

This Week In The Desert

Well I had decided how to approach this post and how I wanted to present the slide show.....that was about 5 hours ago when I realized that Picasa Web Albums which I have used to manage both my photo edits as well as select html code for embedding slide show is currently transitioning to the all new (but not as good if you ask me) Google Plus. I might have had some choice in the matter but as they often do, they trick you into something like an update to your profile which automatically "enrolls" you in something new and unfamiliar. To say that annoys me would be an understatement. Slide shows no longer work- at least not yet and not right now. Bummer. Because now I either post a hundred individual slides and take up a lot of space to do it, or lose some of the photos that I thought to be important to the story at hand. Annoyed. Yes, that pretty much says it, especially after 5 hours of trying to figure out how to do something that thus far has not been implemented by Google. Rats!

Any way, the point of the post was to be this: Our garden and our plants are all blooming beautifully. The cactus is starting its annual parade of color in the campground and out on the desert, especially at some elevations, the flowers are out in full force and magnificent to behold. That doesn't mean that life here is easy though and on our last ride we came across the carcass of a cow that had succumbed to the elements out on the open range and was posing as the classic western image of cow skull and loose bones laying in the dust under a hot sun. Then too there were some very unique beetles found- no idea what it was, so if you know please write in.

The slide show which will NOT be seen today as explained was fully captioned so as to provide some info of what you were seeing. Don't know if I will go to the mat on redoing all that or not- maybe just here and there. Pictures R US:

 Beaver tails cactus:

Cow's Tongue:

 Santa Rita:

Squash plants:

yard plants:

salad patch:

summer squash:

desert toll:

 stretching our legs on a 90 mile ride:

Hedgehog in bloom:

Ocotillo in bloom:

 red barrels on the rocks:

 the perfect desert still life:

 out by "Gene Autrey's Hideout":

so bright it looked like night:

The Flintstones Cabin- a "cave" in the boulders:

Wandering Garter Snake's tail end!

 Guzzler- wildlife water collection station:

Tank Pass- 1000 ft drop over a quarter mile, then big boulders to climb at the bottom...

Canal pumping station:

 

 Single barrel blooming on a hilltop:

 the geocache champion of the world:

 caliche collapse:

 soil particles cemented by natural lime and pressure- CALICHE LAYER

 mule deer:

 Tell me what it is- I can't find it anywhere....??? Pretty and ugly at the same time.