Hot Feet

(This post is sponsored by Reef. The writing is all my own; and I freely admit that I wear flip flops almost every day of the year!)

I've lived in the desert for over twelve years now, and like the plants and animals that live here, I've had to make some adaptations to how I survive. This is a harsh environment, with a dry and windy climate, hot summers, cold winters, and plenty of prickly things that aren't fun to step on. In order to make it liveable, I need more chapstick, more lotion, more sunscreen, and shoes that let my feet breathe!

While I wear hiking boots all day at work, the first thing I do when I get home is take them off. Then I slip on my sandals or flip flops for the rest of the day. (I might go barefoot for a little while in the house, but my delicate feet (ha!) need some extra protection outside. And we do try to go outside everyday to enjoy the fresh air and great views and to keep the kids active.

I have to admit that I don't have just one pair of flip flops and sandals. How many do you have? I have several pairs. I'm not sure if I want to admit just how many! I might not be Imelda Marcos, but my shoe shelf is overflowing. After all, sandals and flip flops come in various colors, with different embellishments, assorted heel heights (check out the Reef Krystal Star Wedding flip flops), and with footbeds that vary from totally flat to some that make you feel like you're walking on a cloud (such as the Reef Dreams Prints).

Flip flops are pretty much my go-to shoes. They are so comfortable and durable. In fact, it's a little sad in winter when I have to put them away in my closet! Of course, that just makes me think about a vacation to the beach where I can put those flip flops back on, enjoy the salty air and breeze on my face. And if I'm totally honest, I still wear the flip flops around the house in winter.

The kids are getting an early start appreciating flip flops. I don't think they care so much about letting their feet breathe, they just want to find the shoe they can get on the fastest to get out the door! (Not having to tie shoe laces makes them extra appealing.)

The desert environment makes me especially appreciate flip flops, but I'd be wearing them wherever I lived. I don't think I'll every be without a pair of flip flops. In fact, after looking at the Reef website, I'm already dreaming about my next pair. So what's on your feet right now?

A Trip up Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park

Last week I had the opportunity to climb several mountains as part of the GLORIA project, a world-wide project that is looking at climate change by studying how plant species are changing on mountain tops over the long term. The basic idea is that as the climate warms, plants will have to move upward in elevation to survive. Eventually they will reach the top of the mountain, have no where else to go, and will disappear. Yikes!

One of the four peaks we studied was Wheeler Peak, at 13, 063 feet the second highest peak in the state of Nevada. The hike is 4.1 miles long starting from the Wheeler Peak summit trailhead at about 10,000 feet. To get to the trailhead, you simply enter Great Basin National Park via Nevada Highway 488, then take the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive about 12 miles to the sign.

After a briefing about possible dangers (lightning, altitude sickness, hypothermia, tripping and falling, dehydration, etc.), we set off through the aspen groves on a rather flat section of trail.

After a mile, we reached the second trail junction, with Stella Lake nearby and the summit of Wheeler Peak only 3.1 miles away. Only. Ha.

The trail gets progressively steeper, and the peak still looks far away! Wheeler Peak is the high peak on the right, while Jeff Davis is on the left and stands about 400 feet lower. Wheeler Peak is named for Lieutenant George Wheeler, who summited and surveyed the peak in 1869 as part of an Army mapping expedition. For more on the history and climbing the peak, see the highly recommended  Great Basin National Park: A Guide to the Park and Surrounding Area. (Disclosure: I wrote it, so of course I highly recommend it!)

Before long we were above treeline and following switchbacks up the talus. Although we were gaining 3,000 feet, before the Scenic Drive existed, people would either ride horses up part way or start hiking about where the Upper Lehman Campground is, just short of 8,000 feet. And Wheeler started in Spring Valley at 6,000 feet, for a 7,000 foot elevation gain. (albeit with a horse for part of the way!).

More than half way up is a giant shoulder that is sort of flat. Some big wind breaks have been created. The wind sure can blow up here, and it's usually cold! Be sure to bring some extra layers.

During our rest break, I found one lonely little snow cinquefoil flower (Potentilla nivea). The rest of the flowers are wrinkled up and barely noticeable.

As we continued up, I commented on the flat areas with no vegetation. usually vegetation seems to like the flatter areas. I learned that these may be periglacial features. The movement of the ground due to freezing and thawing keeps it unsteady (or something like that, I'm not entirely clear about periglacial features).

A lot of planes fly over Wheeler Peak, and that particular day the contrails were staying put, giving an idea of just how many fly over in a short amount of time. Across the valley I saw my first ever contrail shadow.


A skunky-smell started permeating the air, and I looked around closely to find skunkweed or sky pilot (Polemonium viscosum). Beautiful purple flowers are suspended on some stinky upreaching leaves.

Then came a surprising sight: Parry's primrose (Primula parry). This species usually grows next to streams (the inlet to nearby Teresa Lake is a beautiful spot). Somehow, these flowers have been able to adapt to live in the alpine environment.

Although the oxygen became more limited the higher we went, the views kept improving. Soon we reached the summit and could look over the mountain top.

From the top we had the glorious view of the south Snake Range, beginning with the North Fork of Baker Creek, and continuing down to Pyramid Peak (it really does look like a pyramid!), Mt. Washington (the light gray peak), and Granite Mountain in the far distance.

Up on the summit are several round shelters. These just aren't for sheltering day hikers, they were used as part of a heliograph station to map the 39th parallel. They have a really interesting history (see Chapter 5 in the Great Basin book).

We began our vegetation resurveys on the west shoulder of Wheeler Peak, which has less disturbance. We used a variety of different survey types to document what vegetation is present. We also retrieved data loggers to find out what the temperature has been like for the past five years. Over the next months, that data will be studied to make some preliminary conclusions. Five years really isn't much time to see huge changes in plant communities, although we did see a couple of ferns that weren't spotted last time.

This rockslide yellow fleabane (Erigeron leiomerus) was outside of our survey area, but was one of the few plants still flowering. Due to our very dry conditions this year, most flowers were past their prime.

During a break, I walked to the far east edge of Wheeler Peak's summit to get a view of the rock glacier in the cirque below. Check out this post for a close-up view of the rock glacier.

I really wanted to see the glacier at the headwall, so I moved closer, and was stunned when I realized that the ice ascended nearly all the way up the steep face. It looks so much different than from down n the glacier. The slope is covered in dust, gravel, and rock, but it's smooth surface left no doubt that it's ice. I felt a moment of realization that this really could be a glacier. (I will admit that I've been a doubter, even though Osborn and Bevis have declared it a glacier in scientific literature.)

One of the definitions of a glacier is that it must be moving, and crevasses (cracks in the ice) show that the ice is moving. I zoomed in for a closer look at the crevasses. It would be kind of cool to get really close with an ice axe, rope, and crampons, and check them out more. The only problem is that there is so much rock fall off the Prospect Mountain Quartzite--hence the very dirty glacial ice.

Then it was time to get back to work looking at plants. The Ross' avens (Geum rossii) with its yellow flowers is one of the most common plants on all the peaks we looked at.

I only found a few cushion phlox (Phlox pulvinata) in bloom during the trip; most of the flowers had already disappeared.


We finished our work in the mid afternoon. Before heading down, I took a photo looking east, over Garrison in Snake Valley and the Burbank Hills to the Confusion/Wah Wah Range and beyond. If you know the area, can you spot Crystal Peak?

The afternoon heat allowed for a wildfire to the northeast of Spring Valley to produce an impressive smoke column. We also saw a lot of dust kicked up on Yelland Dry Lake bed. During the spring, the playa will be covered with water, but for most of the year it is dry and dusty. Many people fear that more of Spring Valley will become like Yelland Dry Lake bed due to a massive groundwater pumping project by Southern Nevada Water Authority that is expected to significantly drop the groundwater level in the valley and change the plant composition.

It took me about three hours to hike up Wheeler Peak (with people in our group both ahead and behind), and about two hours to hike down. It was a beautiful day to go up to the highest point in this part of the world.

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the views! What's your favorite peak to hike?

Tips for Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower with Kids

Desert Boy holding a meteorite

You've probably heard that the peak of the Perseid meteor shower is tonight. Are you ready to watch this exciting natural phenomenon? Here are some tips to make the most of it.

1. Find a Dark Spot

We are lucky out in the rural desert to have a very, very dark place to watch the meteor shower. However, we even have some stray lights around. So to make it as dark as possible, we'll try to position ourselves to use buildings to block out that extraneous light. Tip: out in the West, the moon will set around 10:00, so it will be even darker after then. (You can find your moon and sun times for your area here.) Also, use red flashlights or regular flashlights covered with red tissue paper to preserve your night vision. It can take 15-20 minutes to get your eyes accustomed to the dark!

2. Get Comfortable

I've gone for night hikes to watch meteor showers (partly to stay warm!), but perhaps the best way is to sit down or lie down. We're planning on hanging out on air mattresses in the back yard with sleeping bags and pillows. That way if the kids fall asleep early, we can still enjoy the meteor shower. 

3. Be Patient

The Perseid meteor shower is expected to have 80-100 meteors per hour. That's over one a minute. But that still leaves about 40 seconds of every minute with nothing. That can be difficult for little kids (and sometimes adults) to wait. Things that might help are to look at the constellations and listen to stories about them, to join a meteor viewing party so there are more people to talk to, or to play games about where the next meteor might be. (Hint: this is called the Perseid meteor shower because many of the meteoroids appear to originate from the constellation Perseus, which is in the northeast sky under the "W" of Casseiopeia.)

Hope you see some good meteors! (And if you happen to get lucky enough to have a meteorite land near you, send it to me!)

Definitions from The Free Dictionary:

Meteor: A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth's atmosphere. Also called falling star, meteor burst, shooting star.

Meteoroid: A solid body, moving in space, that is smaller than an asteroid and at least as large as a speck of dust.

Meteorite: A stony or metallic mass of matter that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space.

Summertime Swimming

 School starts in about a week, so we've been trying to squeeze in as much summertime fun as we can. The hot temperatures have made it easy to agree to go to the swimming hole, where the kids also enjoy digging in the sand.

 Desert Girl was sporting a new swimsuit, which she called a "zucchini." She was sure that was the name of it.

 Isaac was having good success making sand castles.

 The dogs were having a great time, too.

 The fun factor ramped up when the kids made their own "jumping boards." The water depth in the swimming hole varies quite a bit, from just a couple inches to about four feet. It's actually a settling pond, where the water slows down before it heads down to the fields below via a pipe. It's quite interesting to see how the substrate changes, from rocky where the stream enters the pond, to sandy, to fine sediment that becomes very mucky. I don't like the mucky parts, especially when my foot sinks in several inches. The rest is nice, though.

 "Ready, set, go!"

Ava loved to splash!

 Then the big kids wanted to go into the deeper water. Desert Boy has learned to back float and doggy paddle better this summer, so I feel more comfortable with him around water. He still has a lot to learn though, so I'm sure to remind him of that.

 Henry is a natural swimmer, but even he gets worn out and needs time to go get his nose sandy.

It was a fun afternoon. Eventually we got cold enough in the mountain stream that we had to go home to warm up. That's a nice feeling on a hot summer afternoon!

Blast Off!

 Last weekend my husband got to lead the science experiment: a rocket launch. We drove down to one of the ranch fields for the launch, because he said it could go quite far and he also didn't want to set anything on fire. So we went near the center of a recently cut pivot and assembled the launching platform.

 The kids were so excited!

 My husband assembled the rocket out of various things. The guide for putting it onto the launch tower was a plastic straw glued onto the rocket.

 Then all the wires had to be attached to the launch site and the launch control box. This was definitely high tech.

 Preparing for launch! Desert Girl even has some upside-down eye protection.

The launch was a little faster than I was ready for with the camera. The rocket hissed and then took off far into the air. On the way down, close to the ground, the parachute came out, but didn't slow the rocket much. We went over to it (near the edge of the pivot, so it was good we had a really big area to work in!), and this is what we found:

One imbedded rocket! Fortunately it was good for another launch. This time it ended up going in the other direction. We have some work to do to make this more predictable!

p.s. Desert Survivor has a Facebook page, and it would be great if you'd "Like" it if you have a chance. Thanks!

Cedar Breaks National Monument - BioBlast

 Following our rained-out Fourth of July, I took the kids to Cedar Breaks National Monument. With a 40% chance of thunderstorms I was mostly expecting to wimp out and spend the night in Cedar City, but when we got up to Cedar Breaks, it was beautiful so we set up our tent. We nabbed one of the last pretty sites in the campground (the campground has a mixed bag of campsites, including 10 that can be reserved in advance, but all of them had been taken when I had looked a few days before).

 Then we headed to the visitor center and Point Supreme, over 10,000 feet high.

 The kids peeked between the logs to figure out what they were looking at. We had been there in 2011 and 2010, but the kids didn't remember it.

 I had binoculars, which made it extra cool.

 Actually, nothing special was needed to take in the beauty of the Pink Cliffs, also known as the Claron formation, made up of limestone rock. The stormy clouds made for some fantastic light.

 The clouds made it a little challenging to get a good view through the solar telescope, but we eventually managed.

Then it was on to do some BioBlast activities. We had timed our trip to take advantage of this new program, which was celebrating the biodiversity of birds, bats, and bugs. The kids made some shrinky-dinks, an activity which I had never seen before.

Then we went on an hour-long "Follow a Scientist" hike led by a professor from Southern Utah University.

Our first stop was right on the main trail to look at some Southern Ligusticum. Looking closely, we could see that the flowers were not alone.

On their stems were tiny aphids, which were "milking" the plant for its juice. The aphids were being closely guarded by ants, who like to partake of the sweet juice. We also spotted a ladybug, who likes to come over and eat the aphids, but is excluded by the ants from eating their milkers. Such a cool little ecosystem on just one plant!

We continued down the campground trail, flipping rocks and dead trees. We found a plethora of interesting things to survey. Professor Bill had some handy little vials so we could put the treasures in and take a closer look.

The kids were so excited about the finds. The adults were too. This walk was showing us a lot more than what we would have seen if we had done it on our own.

This little wolf spider was carrying a blue egg sac around with her.

What a fun hike!

I took a moment to enjoy some of the beautiful wildflowers, like this Colorado columbine with a fly pollinator.

I couldn't resist a quick photo as we passed a scenic overlook along the trail.

Our next stop was to the Ranger Station to meet our friend Ken, who was volunteering as an entomologist for the BioBlast. He was busy!

Desert Boy got to release this beautiful butterfly.

Then it was time to go back to our campsite and eat a quick dinner before going down to the campground amphitheatre for the next BioBlast activity: Make a Moth Catcher.

The concept was simple: put an LED flashlight in a bucket, cover it with cloth, and make a funnel-shaped opening that would let moths in but inhibit them finding their way out.

The kids loved making this. Then we took the buckets back to our campsite to find a nice spot for them for the night.

The kids and the kids from the campsite next to us had a wonderful time climbing on the pile of boulders. The family next door turned out to be from Australia, and we gradually got to know each other better. I snuck off to take a hot shower. Yes, a hot shower! Shhh, this is an amazing feature of this campground, and if more people knew there might not ever be empty campsites!

Then it started to rain, so we loaded up and went to an indoor BioBlast program about bats. The kids were really into it. By the time it finished, the rainstorm had passed and we drove to Sunset Overlook for a beautiful view.

Oh my, I felt so blessed being in such a beautiful place.

The flowers near our campsite provided a beautiful vista.

Desert Boy joined our neighbors on a bat hike while Desert Girl and I went to an owl program. We all got to bed late, and the next morning Desert Boy slept in.

Meanwhile Desert Girl and I were busy looking at the wonderful wildflowers and searching for interesting insects.

With everyone awake in our campsite and next door, it was time to work on the junior ranger booklets. And then play. And the parents really enjoyed chatting. We actually had the Australian family come visit us the next day at our house and continued our adventures (which I didn't photograph). It's so cool to have a great connection with camping buddies!

When we took the junior ranger booklets back to the visitor center, we found that more activities had been set up for both the BioBlast and Cedar Breaks' Wildflower Festival (an astute piece of marketing, if I do say so myself).

Desert Girl drew a beautiful wildflower with chalk on the walkway.

Finally it was time to become junior rangers. The kids said their pledge with Ranger Daphne.

Desert Girl's hand kept sinking lower and lower as the pledge continued. She might still be a little young for some of these junior ranger programs, but if big brother does it, she wants to too!

We had one last stop before leaving, taking our moth buckets to the Ranger Station, where we learned more about what we had collected.

The BioBlast surely was a blast, lots of fun, educational programs. It had something for all ages. I highly recommend camping at Cedar Breaks (the hot showers totally won me over, along with the scenic views), although some coworkers told me about a less-than ideal campsite they got there that left them with a very different impression. Finally, the Wildflower Festival continues through July, and the high country is worth a visit, it's a great wildflower year. Hurray for Cedar Breaks!