Just a Western Scrub Jay, but was able to get super close to it to take a shot. This is from our Joshua Tree trip in the spring.
It is still far too hot to hike here. We have now had 10 straight 100+ degree days, and still counting. Maybe this weekend I can hike again?
I realized that I had not shared very many of my wildlife photos with you from earlier this year, when we went down to Disneyland, Joshua Tree NP, and the Salton Sea. This little burrowing owl we found at the visitor center at the Sony Bono Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge. The lady at the visitor center showed us where it was. Would she have been so willing to do this if we did not have two cute kids with us? I think not. She told us not to cross the ditch to get too close to the owl (which obviously makes sense), so I sat back on the side of the road with my big lens and fired away. The owl was content to sit there and watch all the commotion passing by from his little man-made house.
Instead of spending a second whole day at Joshua Tree NP, we took a drive down to Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, about a hundred miles from where we were staying. It seemed that another whole day at Joshua Tree would have been too much, and I went back and forth about it in my head. I think we probably should have spent another day there, I could have gotten up for another nice sunrise shot or two at Joshua Tree, and I regret only having the one really nice sunset shot from there. But it is not that Salton Sea is not an interesting place, it really is. We saw tons of birds there, and some of them from really closeup, right beside the road, such as these cattle egrets. So I got quite a few good bird shots, and I will likely share some more.
On the way back to Twentynine Palms, we went back through Joshua Tree park, with plans of shooting sunset there. But the clouds rolled in at the last moment, and I got nuthin. We did have a very interesting drive, however, as we took some back roads to get back to JT, including a stop at a border patrol station hundreds of miles north of the border. They asked us all our citizenship and had a dog sniffing our car. What is up with that?
On our way down to Disneyland we first stopped off for a couple days at Joshua Tree National Park. The first night there we had a pretty darn nice sunset, but unfortunately we were not in a great “scenic” location. This was taken from the Indian Cove area, where we hiked along a loop before sunset. I wasn’t happy about the location (and my composition in particular), but the sunset colors more than made up for it. This was the only decent photo I took at Joshua Tree. It is my own fault, I should have made more of an effort there, but we did other things instead. I really liked the park and the desert, it is incredibly interesting. I was hoping to see more wildlife, however. The most interesting thing we saw was a jack rabbit, and that was on the first evening here (when I took this shot). We spent the entire next day wandering around the park, seeing the sites, and hiking the easy trails. I think everyone (kids included) really liked the desert and the park. They loved climbing around on the rocks and exploring beside the trails. By the end of that day I was totally beat. We got back to the hotel, I took a nap, and ended up missing a second nice colorful sunset. That did not make me too happy. The third evening we tried for a sunset shot, but the clouds rolled in an hour before the sun went down, and it was a washout. Bummer-ness!
A surprise rain in Southern California, and it got the waterfalls down there trickling.
We were down vacationing at Disneyland for the week. My initial plan on going to Disneyland in February was that I figured I could take a couple days and go waterfallin’ while we were down there. I had not yet been to any SoCal waterfalls, and I was really hoping to add to my collection this year. God had other plans, however. No rain in December and January meant the waterfalls were bone dry. I did not even take any of my maps or GPS down to SoCal, figuring it would be completely pointless to try going to any waterfalls. Instead, we took a side trip first to Joshua Tree National Park, then continued on over to Disneyland. It would have been pointless for sure. but then the surprise rain came.
It was not much rain, about an inch at the most. But I thought, what the hey, maybe the creeks got enough water in them to make a waterfallin hike worthwhile. So I quickly planned out a couple easy waterfalls to hike to the next morning.
I got up super early. I did not want to deal with any traffic through Los Angeles. Even at 5AM, there was a ton of traffic on the road. This should not have surprised me, but it did. Yikes, that is crazy, but at least the traffic was moving along quickly. It was still dark when I arrived at the trailhead to Sturtevant Falls, and I started my hike down to the waterfall, a steep descent along a paved road. Once down at the bottom of the canyon I began to have second thoughts. There was not a lot of water flowing in the creek. I continued on up to the falls. The flow was about what I expected, but I was certainly hoping for more. Nonetheless, Sturtevant Falls is a pretty 40 ft. high waterfall, and fortunately it does not need a lot of water flow to look nice.
I finished taking my photos quickly because there was a second waterfall I wanted to get to before the sun got too high. As I was finishing my last shot, a group of Japanese men came up the trail behind me to the falls. What? I was a bit shocked to see anyone out on the trail so early, and especially on a week day. If this was northern California, there would certainly be no one out so early (not counting Yosemite of course). On the hike back, I saw even more hikers coming up the trail. I guess that is just the way things are in Los Angeles but I prefer having my waterfalls all to myself, which is one reason why I always get to them so early in the morning.