Cloudy Skies

 We went to town today for a fun day of dentist visits (yes, my kids consider those to be fun, to my great delight!), thrift store shopping (and dropping off more than we bought--hurray!), eating yummy food (do you know how overwhelming food choices are?), playing in an awesome playground (photos coming soon), swimming (yes, how could we resist the swimming pool), grocery shopping (every trip to town involves this), and best of all, getting to enjoy it with friends!

On the way back, the light was fantastic between the third and fourth mountain passes. (Oh, did I forget to mention that this little jaunt to town was over 130 miles one-way crossing four mountain passes? Oops. Little details.) Jenny and I couldn't resist taking some photos.

 Is this called virga when it could be snow? Actually, with the 40+ degree temperatures, it probably really was virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground). We are crossing our fingers for snow this Saturday. It would be too weird not to get any snow during the entire month of January.

 The colors in the clouds changed so quickly, and the view was spectacular in every direction. It was hard to know which way to turn. And the only other beings out there with us were some cows. I'm not sure if they enjoyed the light show as much as we did. I'm kind of guessing not. But you never know. Cows can be a little funny.

The desert is one beautiful place!

I should probably mention that it was in this same valley that a UFO was purported to land. Or rather, crash. From aerial photos you can make out the shape of the spacecraft in a playa. The report says that the aliens assimilated into the local population. So maybe the cows weren't the only ones with us enjoying the sunset. Or perhaps since we're the local population, maybe that explains some of the strange behaviors seen around the nearby towns and communities from time to time...

Random November Photos

 We saw about 70 pronghorn in one of our fields a couple weeks ago. I made my husband stop so I could take a photo of some of them. As you can see by the snow on the mountains, it's getting colder, so lots of the animals are moving to lower elevations. The pronghorn are found pretty low year-round, but it's not often that we see this many of them together.

 I liked the juxtaposition of this well against the dry desert behind it. In many places in the Great Basin desert the only water is underground, so if you want to grow something (or get water for your house), you need a well.

 It was a cloudy day, leading to the bleakness of the landscape as it prepares for a long winter ahead. This photo makes me want to curl up in bed with a good book and a pot of homemade soup on the stove, sending its delicious aroma throughout the house.

It was cold enough for icicles to form on this water trough. The cattle will use it for part of the winter as they're out grazing on the winter range. A small pipeline brings the water from a creek higher up on the mountain to this lower location.

And last but not least. The freezing temperatures at night are creating some wonderful ice formations along the creeks. 

The Great Dinosaur Adventure

Last Saturday I wanted to get out of the house, and I knew bad weather was coming, so it was now or never. There was a place at the southern end of the mountain range known for having plants not found anywhere else in the area, so that was our destination. I loaded up the kids, told my husband where we were going so if we broke down he'd come find us, and off we went. We didn't see any people the entire day, but we did see some sheep.

 The southern mountains were beautiful, and colorful flowers dotted the benches (slopes coming down from the mountains).

 We stopped near some rocks to go "rock climbing." Desert Boy decided after a quick try that it wasn't quite right for him. Desert Girl tried out her newly acquired bush-whacking skills. She did quite well.
Then we had a picnic lunch. That always makes every trip fun. Afterwards Desert Boy wanted to climb the hill on the other side. I wasn't too enthused, but he really wanted to go, so up we went.

 I did find a couple interesting flowers on the way up, and the views were really nice.

 At the top, Desert Boy found a couple bones. He was delighted.

 We wandered over the flat top and looked down at the wash on the other side. The bottom was bright green with round circles.

 It was so quiet, and it felt so desolate! One of the things I like best about the desert is the sound of it.

 But then little cries irrupted the silence. Desert Girl had found what made all those circles down below--harvester ant mounds. She had been intrigued by one and wandered close enough that the ants started crawling on her. One bit her, and she was none too happy. We hiked back to the truck and continued on our trip.

 The next road we traveled was nearly a tunnel through the sagebrush. These are some of the tallest sagebrush, and densest, that I have ever seen. The kids napped while we bumped along on two-track roads. There are very few signs out there, so it's a really good idea to have a map.

When Desert Boy woke up, he wanted to go home. I told him we weren't quite done with our adventure. He wasn't happy, but when I told him we would look for more bones, he perked up.

 Then we found LOTS more bones, and he was so happy! I wouldn't let him take anything that still had hair or blood on it. I guess I'm a mean mom.

 We went farther and he found even more bones. I found flowers. Desert Girl found more ants (but observed them from a distance). So we were all happy.

 It was getting cloudier and windier, so it was time to head home.

The next day when we woke up, we were in for quite a surprise:

 Back to winter! It was a great day for relaxing. And for Desert Boy and his daddy to work on their project: putting the bones together. Because these weren't just any bones, they were dinosaur bones. And they were both very determined to recreate the dinosaur.

This is what they came up with:

It's a very dangerous dinosaur, even though it's small.

This dinosaur skeleton now holds a place of honor in our house.

It may take us a while to top The Great Dinosaur Adventure.

Lake Mead Trail Run

 I had to go to Lake Mead for a couple days of meetings and decided to stay at the cheapest hotel in the area, the Hacienda. It is part of a casino, which isn't too appealing to me, but it is also in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and there's a trail right next to it. So when I woke up, I headed down to the trail for an early morning trail run. The trail follows an old railroad bed, so it's perfect for not too difficult a run.

 It has nice views of the marina and Lake Mead.

 I also really enjoyed the different vegetation of the Mojave Desert. These creosote bushes are always so lovely!

 This trail includes some train tunnels, making it extra fun. I remembered three from a previous jaunt, but it turned out that there were five (I guess I didn't go far enough before!).

 Signs and benches have been added since my last trip (several years ago), and they are nice additions.
Previously I had seen other people on the trail, but this time I had it to myself. It's a combo bike/hike trail.

The tunnels have been stabilized in a restoration project. I heard bats in the first one and saw birds fly out of a couple of them.

The rock around there is so different from where I live. I really enjoyed all the shades of brown and tan with hints of orange. One of the signs talked about the families that lived nearby during the construction of the Hoover Dam and how miserable it was for them due to a lack of shade.

Pretty flowers--but I don't know what they were!

After the last tunnel I passed through a gate that was marked as Bureau of Reclamation land. The trail went around some buildings and then headed downhill towards the dam. I had reached my turn around time, but I was so curious about what was next that I decided to go just a little farther.

That's when I saw some desert bighorn sheep! They were enjoying the quiet morning until I spooked them, then they crossed the trail in front of me and went up into the rocks on the other side.

I continued a bit farther, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dam. I saw lots of power lines and even part of the new bridge (on the upper right part of the above photo). The trail was descending quickly and I really had to get back to go to work, so I will have to go back another day to take the trail all the way to the dam.

The run back went quickly, although I couldn't resist stopping a couple times to take more photos.

The temperature was in the high 60s/low 70s, so really comfortable.

Finally I reached the spur trail that had led down to the main trail. At the top I went through a different spot into the Hacienda parking lot and found a sign denoting this as a trail and distances (3 1/4 miles to the dam).

I had managed to forget my running shoes, so these are the shoes I did my run in. They worked out well!

Desert Flowers and an Unexpected Sight at the End

I'm always looking for new (to me) flowers to put on my A Plant a Day blog. So when I took Desert Boy out to preschool last week, we went for a long walk/jog (a little training for a triathlon I might blog about soon). We had walked much of the same route two weeks earlier, but many of the flowers had changed. That's one of the challenges of finding all the plants in an areas--some aren't particularly visible for more than a week or two every few years.

The pink penstemon above is a common one, a young Palmer's penstemon (Penstemon palmeri), one of only two pink ones in the area. Even though it isn't new to me, I sure enjoy seeing it again!

 I went on a different road and climbed up on this rocky hillside, where I got a nice view of the valley and cloud-shrouded mountains on the other side.

 One of the many flower species on it were these dancing yellows, called nakedstem sunray (Enceliopsis nudicaulis). I enjoyed seeing them--they brightened the desert hillside so much!
They are just little bundles of sunshine.

 I saw this plant as I went skipping down the hill. It looks a bit like out of a Dr. Seuss book, but only a couple weeks earlier, it had nice little flowers on it that you can see on the Shockley's rockcress page.

 This tiny plant, only about 3 inches high, is called browneyes. It blooms more at night than the day, so I was glad it was overcast so I could see more of it blooming.

 I also found lots of Cryptantha, a genus in the Borage Family well represented in this area. From a distance it doesn't look too impressive.

 Close up, I was amazed at how many hairs protect each little white flower.

Our walk continued, with Desert Girl saying hi to the curious cows at the dairy, Henry wanting to chase after stray cats, and then to a fork in the road. I had a little time left before Desert Boy finished preschool, so we took the longer route.

 The playa that is usually dry was full of water, with some shrubs submerged. This wet spring has certainly been a nice change.

The flooded playa seemed a little boring, until I noticed something moving about on the other end:

Birds! An ibis, American avocets, and a couple ducks were probing for food. It was a wonderful treat to get to see them in an unexpected place.

The Hay Barn - Down, Down, on the Ground

Okay, the title of this post is a play on my last post's title (Helium - Up, Up, and Away). Sorry, I just couldn't resist the urge to be utterly cute and witty. Unfortunately, the subject of this post isn't so cute. In fact, today I have a sad tale to tell. It actually relates to my blog title, Desert Survivor.

In order to help protect hay from the drying sun, soaking thunderstorms, and blowing snow, the ranch constructed some hay barns a couple years ago. The hay barns had a relatively simple structure: thick posts stuck into the ground, curved wooden trusses that stretched from beam to beam, and a metal sheet roof to cover everything. Sure, the elements could still get in the sides of the barn, but the tightly packed hay was much better protected. Only the outside perimeter would get bleached by the sun, while the interior hay would stay nice and green, like it's supposed to.

Except that we had a huge snow storm right before Christmas. Then the temperatures dropped. And the wind blew. And the trusses broke under the weight of all that snow, collapsing the roof onto the hay. My husband and several other ranch employees spent days shoveling the snow off the roof so that it wouldn't melt onto all the hay below. Then the dang desert wind got under that sheet metal and blew the roof off.

Fortunately most of the hay has been sold or moved, so it's not as bad as it could be.

It's a sorry sight, though, to see the roofless hay barn. The good news: It's slated to be rebuilt.

We're not the only ones who've had problems with all the snow and wind this winter. The neighboring dairy also had a barn collapse, unfortunately with some cows underneath.

Although we don't get much moisture in the desert, when it does come, it often brings problems with it. Nevertheless, we still want it! That little bit of precipitation is what makes it possible to survive out in the desert.