After breakfast, we drove out to hike the Alcoholic's Pass trail.
There were lots of flowers along the trail, and a few bugs. The bug on the right looks a little like a lady bug, but not. Just colorful.
This is what most of the cholla flowers I've seen before are like, a yellowish green.
On the far side of the pass at the foot of the trail I saw what looked like a couple of beavertail cactus flower groups. They both looked complete with lots of flowers. I took a picture of the first group then went over to the second and was surprised by the fact that it wasn't a beavertail cactus but was a hedgehog. A hedgehog looks like a bushy cholla. Giving it a cute name like hedgehog isn't enough to impress me but it's flowers do. There are many types of cholla and around here there are two basically different types, tall ones and short bushy ones. I try to avoid getting to close to any of them. The hedgehog flowers were on what looks like a short bushy cholla. The flowers look like a beavertail flower except they are larger and more open and a deeper color.
There was also a desert lily along the trail which some nice hiker had placed a rock wall around to keep people from stepping on it. In the wash on the far side I saw a group of small lavender flowers that just looked interesting.
These white flowers were on a bush at the beginning of the trail. On the far side of the mountain I also found a white mushroom which seems odd in the desert.
On the way up to the pass we saw this horned lizard (horned toad). I haven't seen one in 50 years. We had them around my home in Bakersfield when I was a kid. Seeing this one made the hike worthwhile by itself. They are so cute. This has certainly been a reptile sighting trip.
Here is a desert iguana I saw on the way back to the car. They are all over the place along with all sorts of lizards.
When we returned to the car, we headed further up Coyote Canyon stopping at Desert Garden for lunch. We had some of Lou's ham sandwiches. After lunch we continued up the valley but had to turn around at the first river crossing. Not much water but two pot holes one in the water and one just beyond that were deeper than our ground clearance and unavoidable. There was also a pretty steep rise out of the creek at the same time. All that and the fact a pickup, with more clearance than we have, was being pulled out of the sand just before the crossing. Some other day.
We relaxed at home most of the afternoon. The wind picked up as we arrived back and was so strong, we had to go inside. My laptop computer kept trying to blow away. That wouldn't be good. The winds were gusting over 30mph by my estimate and shaking the RV but the earthquake in Mexico was still felt quite easily due to a good long shake.
Dinner was leftover chicken, broccoli, coleslaw and re-fried beans.
I've been having and continue to have problems publishing photos to this website. Something seems to be wrong with the server but it's hard to isolate the problem. May be my computer or the satellite Internet link. Either way, it's so much work that there may be no further pictures until we return home.
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