Spring Training in AZ

I've been hangin' in the Phoenix area for the past week; went to three spring training games with my friends Dave and Wayne. We hit Scottsdale, Surprise, and Camelback Ranch in Glendale on successive days. In each case we hung out on the outfield lawn for several innings, then migrated to seats near home plate. The atmosphere here is very relaxed and informal, and pure baseball. It's a must for every serious baseball fan to go to spring training!! Here in AZ the weather is perfect almost every day; it's really nice. Here Tim Lincecum, the Giants' Cy Young winner last year, is firing a pitch at Scottsdale vs the Seattle Mariners.

Hall of famer Fergie Jenkins signs autographs at Scottsdale. Fergie was a 20 game winner for six straight seasons, unheard of today.

The Oakland A's and Kansas City Royals square

off at Surprise stadium in a night game.

Camelback Ranch in Glendale is a brand new spring training venue. The LA Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox have both moved from Florida to AZ to train here. This pic shows Bartolo Colon warming up before a game with the A's. Colon is coming off elbow surgery, trying to win a spot in the White Sox rotation. He pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings in this game, which had to help his cause. No walks, and pretty good heat!

Jim Thome, the Sox DH, warms up in the bullpen. With over 500 NATURAL home runs in the show, this good ol' midwestern boy is on the track to Cooperstown.

Fabulous Organ Pipe

I went to Organ Pipe Cactus NM yesterday, for the first time in about a decade and only the third time overall. Each visit has been brief which is a bad procedure since there's so much to see! I took the Ajo Mountain Drive yesterday and found many fine stands of Organ Pipes. These cacti are common in Sonora, across the border in Mexico, but are widespread in the US only within the monument.

In addition to a verdant, diverse cactus forest, the landscape in Organ Pipe is spectacular, with multicolored, rugged volcanic cliffs in many places.

The lowering afternoon sun renders the cacti translucent...

Especially the chain fruit cholla.

It's early for most of the cactus to be blooming, but I found this nice buckhorn cholla flower.

Saguaro West

Now this is a Big Kahuna saguaro! It's maybe 40 feet tall and 150-200 years old, still thriving in the western section of Saguaro NP. When this cactus was a little stump hunkering down under a shrub, this area a few miles outside Tucson was inhabited mainly by Indians and cowboys, both Mexican and American. There were no Burger Kings. It's defied very long odds to survive and prosper this long.

Saguaro west has some of the densest stands of the namesake cacti in the world. 80 years ago that honor went to Saguaro east, but many of the big, old cacti there were killed by severe frosts in 1937 and 1962; grazing in the then national monument kept many seeds from germinating until 1979, when grazing was stopped. Until '79 the result was a deteriorating, aging cactus forest with fewer plants every year.

By contrast, Saguaro west had large stands of small cacti in the mid 1900s; those have grown into the present big plants. Meanwhile, small young cacti are now more common in Saguaro east, having popped up en masse since 1979. The cactus forest in Saguaro west appears really healthy, with abundant plants of all ages and sizes.

This saguaro is confused on the arm concept. Two of the arms appear to be beckoning and pointing, showing the way to the hiker. The cactus isn't really that friendly; it's probably been frostnipped, causing the arms to sag. Given good weather conditions, the arms may right themselves and once again point skyward.

The tops of young, healthy saguaros have a nice symmetry.

The Fascinating Sonoran Desert

I'm really enjoying hangin' out in the Sonoran

desert, though it would be nice if I was in a little better shape for my walks. Hydration is also a problem; it's always an adjustment coming from cold, damp Monterey to the hot, arid southwest. I liked this shot of cholla silhouetted against the morning light in Anza-Borrego.

This is a birds nest, built right in the middle of a cholla cactus. The birds are apparently oblivious to the spines, which of course give them protection from predators.

A nice bunch of tidy tips in Saguaro National Park.

This wierd topped cactus is known as a cristate saguaro. Nobody knows why the cactus grows such a gnarly head; only about one in 200,000 saguaros do. Blow the pic up for more detail. In this case, the rest of the cactus appears normal, with ordinary looking arms. This plant is near the Javelina picnic ground in the eastern part of Saguaro NP.

And at the end of the day, a gorgeous sunset! This pic was taken from my deck at the Westward Look in Tucson. The desert southwest is sunset central...they have beautiful ones almost every evening.

Spring Flowers at Anza Borrego

Here's a few flower shots from Anza-Borrego. This is a pincushion cactus. It's only a few inches tall, and the top of the plant is barely larger than a quarter. But it puts out great blooms!

Desert sand verbena, common in the Socal desert given adequate rainfall. At times there are large fields of these around Palm Springs. They even grow in some coastal areas...I believe I've seen them around Monterey.

This large field of desert dandelions is right in someone's front yard in Borrego Springs! This is the best display of this flower I've seen so far this year.

These attractive white flowers are desert chicory, blooming in Borrego.

Fine Day in Palm Canyon

The Lizards and I hiked Borrego Palm Canyon today. I'd done it several times in the past, but not for a decade or so. It ain't as easy as it used to be! It's 3 miles round trip, a rock clamber in many spots. Flowers were blooming everywhere and the creek was running for about the last half mile to the palms. The trees are naturally growing Washington Palms; there are quite a few of these oases in the Socal desert. They're always neat, especially on a typically hot day; it reached 91 here at Borrego today. While I was tired, the Lizards took it all in stride; of course, they're bionic.

Here I'm approaching the palms. There were a fair number of people on the trail, but it wasn't choked with humanity like, say, the popular trails at Yosemite.

The water in the canyon comes partly from springs and also to some extent from runoff in the adjacent mountains. This year has seen about average rainfall in San Diego county so it's a decent...not great...year for streams and flowers. The last time I was here was, I believe, in the El Nino year of 1998; at that time there was water much farther down the creekbed, all the way to around the parking lot.

These globemallows were blooming in the upper part of the canyon; they're unusually big and colorful for the species! I have a lot more flower pics but I'm still a bit tired and will be in the Desert SW for a while; will post more posies at later dates. For you young'uns, posy was a synonym for flower decades ago; haven't heard the term since the '70s.

Fair to Middlin' Flower Season

Rains have been average or a little below over most of Cali this year, but good moisture in February has resulted in a decent flower season in the desert. I traveled from Tehachapi to Borrego Springs today and stopped at the Poppy Reserve. There is a good crop of poppies coming up but the wind was howling about 15-30 mph so many of the flowers were not open. I did see this golden river flowing down a hillside that was sheltered from the strongest gusts.

On the eastern side of the Antelope Valley near Saddleback Butte, I came across this patch of Goldfields in a nice setting. Flowers blooming in a usually barren desert are just more impressive than in wetter climates.

This shot near the Poppy Reserve shows a wall of clouds jammed up against the Tehachapi mountains to the northwest...blow up the pic for more detail. The cool air rushing down the lee slopes of the mountains created a Bora effect, thus the chilly windy weather in the Antelope Valley.

These are red maids, in the Santa Rosa Plateau preserve near Temecula. It's run by the Nature Conservancy and is a haven for beautiful Southern California oak woodland that has virtually disappeared in the massive urban sprawl. Yes, I know they're not red...the color in the pic is accurate. Don't know how they got their name.

Carmel River Rocks!

I meant to upload these videos with the previous blog post, but momentarily forgot how (a senior moment). Here's the Carmel River at Garland Park...you'll get a tour of the gauges near the bridge in this one.

The Carmel is roaring robustly into the sea at the state beach. The seagulls and pelicans who usually live in the lagoon have bailed.

Beneficial Moisture

The rains have finally come to Monterey, and have alleviated the drought a little. In fact, Monterey airport has had measurable rain 20 of the past 28 days. Rainfall for this season is now near normal, but since the past two years were dry the reservoirs are still very low. But, some rain is better than none. I've had about seven inches during the past month; many places have had more. As a result, the Carmel river is now flowing strongly. The lagoon is now the river channel, with strong current and even a smidgen of rapids! The pelicans and seagulls have had to find another place to hang. Compare the width of the river with the pic on the previous blog post.

About ten miles upstream at Garland Park, the river is also running strongly. Although many trees are in the water, the river was about three feet below the official flood stage when this pic was taken.

Yes, I know this is not a spectacular waterfall, but it's running stronger than I've seen it in several years! This is the waterfall at Garland Park; it was dry just five days ago. It's about 40-50 feet high. The water flows into the Carmel River just a few hundred yards downstream.