Category: National Parks

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Santa Rosa National Monument

Coachella Valley From Art Smith Trail

Henry stitched together this photo of the Coachella Valley from our favorite “lunch rock”. It is a steep one and a half mile hike on the Art Smith Trail but great views as well as nice rocks and cactus. We have seen lots of hummingbirds.

11-01-02 Art Smith Trail

The trail also allows views of some of the great homes in the BigHorn development and golf course. Notice how green the valley is from all the irrigation. Normally this part of the Sonoran Desert only gets about 8″ of rain – much less than Denver’s average of 14″. So I am getting new ideas for xeric landscaping from our hikes.  There are 5 groves of palms on this hike – not on the San Andreas fault but another fault: Technically we are on the Pacific Plate not the North American Plate.

10-12-25 Carrizo Canyon

On Christmas morning we took this scenic hike looking for the Big Horn Sheep but didn’t have the pleasure to see them. This trail is only open October through December: the rest of the year the sheep are breeding and raising their young. We explored both the Carrizo Canyon and the Indian Canyon – beautiful hikes.

10-12-31 Steel Cactus

The ultimate water free cactus: Totally Xeric 😉

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Death Valley Experience

 

Saturday, 4 December 2010 we visited Death Valley National Park – Henry’s last National Park in the continental USA west of the Mighty Mississippi. We camped at Texas Springs and saw a star gazing program with the ranger at Zabriskie Point. Here is a picture during the day

Later in the day we hiked Golden Canyon and came upon this bit of wildlife. The ranger told us it was a male Tarantula as the females are even a bit larger, since this one was as large as Henry’s hand.

As we were waiting for a ranger led walk through the dunes, we read about the park in the newsletter…noticing the picture was taken where we were sitting. It was a good nature walk as we learned about the creosote bushes and how the kangaroo rats lived in the roots – we saw some tracks but only saw a stink bug.

We stayed and watched the sunset before camping a second night at Emigrant Pass. More star gazing tonight as it looks very clear.