A Little After School Exploration

 The kids are almost done with school, which means we'll have time for lengthier adventures soon! Right now we have to be content with shorter ones, so after school we went to explore this gully. It has lots of side canyons that are lots of fun. I told the kids to watch out for snakes, and we happened upon this nice gopher snake. I really like these snakes, they eat lots of rodents.

The canyon walls are very crumbly, but they also contain some pretty cool patterns.

It was cloudy, and at one point the sun emerged to light up the mountain tops. They are still covered with snow, so it made them glow.

On our return wander, we saw this eared grebe. It dove under the water a couple times and disappeared, then would pop back up.

Down the way we saw a brown blob on the shore. Upon closer inspection, we found it was a muskrat.

It took to the water when we got a little too close.

Next we went down the road a little ways to a place where we found lots of arches. This was a tiny one, about the size of the nearby globemallow.

The distant Wheeler and Jeff Davis Peaks looked rugged from our vantage point.

Desert Boy climbed up to explore an opening.

Desert Girl was busy taking photos on the other side of another arch.

We had fun taking photos.

Desert Girl wants to enter photos in this year's County Fair, so she's getting an early start!