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Mike's Pictures and Thoughts
My wife Kathy and I are retired and full-time RVing throughout the United States. I have been an amateur photographer for many years, primarily taking pictures as I hike through parks and wilderness areas.
This blog is some of my favorite pictures - and my thoughts - as we travel. Some of the pictures
are new, some are old, but unless I specifically say otherwise, they re all mine and are copyright by me.
Permission is granted for the use of any of these pictures for non-commercial purposes providing that I, and my copyright, am acknowledged and that I am notified. Permission of any persons in the images is your responsibility
Click here ARCHIVE to go to an archive page which displays the primary image of all posts on this blog.
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Casa Grande Mountain - March 2024
Almost every mountain in the Southwest has big initials on it representing the nearby town. Casa Grande Mountain is no different. The CG is very visible in the close up.
Many people think these bright white initials were to help guide pilots as they flew over the desert, and many early pilots did use them for that. But the primary reason they exist is that local high schools put them up there to support their football teams. Several different high schools claim to have been the first one to do that, but the letters predate regular aviation so they weren’t put there for pilots. They still make neat photos, though.
MWM
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April 24, 8:00 am
Sweet Acacia Tree - March 2024
This beautiful Sweet Acacia Tree (Acacia farnesiana) grows in a deep swail on the Northwest corner of Fiesta Grande RV Park. The swail is behind a row of park models and isn’t visible unless you go down the dead-end road to the maintenance building.
I hadn’t noticed the tree earlier because it sort of blended in to everythiung else down there. But then it began to blossom. The yellow, puffy blossoms are really eye catching and there is a slight, sweet frangrance near the tree. Judging from the number of buds visible in the second image, the tree should be blossoming for quite a while. The third image is of the top of one of the branches. Since it is in sunlight, more of the buds have blossomed.
MWM
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Round-tailed Ground Squirrel - March 2024
The Round-tailed Ground Squirrel (Xerospermophilus tereticaudus) is relatively common around Casa Grande, but you don’t see them very often. They are very fast. They hide their burrow openings. And they can remain totally motionless for rather long periods of time.
The second image is actually the first one I took of this ground squirrel. I saw him and he saw me as I approached on my bicycle. I got a quick snap image and saw that he ran to his burrow opening. Then I lost him. I took about a dozen images of what might have been a log laying on the ground and then tried to get a little closer. As soon as I moved toward him, he dove into his hole and I knew that I hadn’t been taking pictures of a piece of wood.
The third image is one where he has turned his head slightly more toward me just before he dove into his hole. They are rather cute little critters. Some people think they are miniature prairie dogs, but they are a whole different species.
MWM
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Texas Mountain Laurel - March 2024
I was riding my bicycle at Fiesta Grade RV Park when I saw this tree with beautiful, but weird, purple flowers. I took several images of it and finally found it on the internet. It is a Texas Mountain Laurel (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum), and the weird, flat, waxy flowers are called Grape Bubblegum Flowers. There was a slight smell of grape near the tree, so the name must be more than just appearance.
MWM
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Turkey Vulture - March 2024
This is another image of the turkey vulture which hangs around the Mission Valley bike path. Normally I wouldn’t post a second image so soon of the same bird in the same area, but the second image was just too good to resist. Friar Road just ends after crossing the flood control channels and there is nothing past there but sand and desert plants. The Interstate and the mountains are in the distance as the turkey vulture watches over his domain.
MWM
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Black-chinned Hummingbird - March 2024
I have only seen hummingbirds “in the wild” a couple of times and never when I had a chance to get a picture of them. I have gotten images at hummingbird feeders, but not on a tree alongside a bike path. It was a really gray day and I had to shoot at maximum zoom, so the image is less that I would like, but this is a hummingbird sitting on a small tree next to the bike path in Mission Valley. I’ve seen it once since then, but it flew away before I could get an image.
MWM
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Brittlebush - March 2024
Brittlebush is one of the great survivors of the desert. It needs very little water and most of the water that it uses is kept down in its roots. The result is that the plant itself is very dry and brittle, thus the name, Brittlebush. Brittlebush grow almost anywhere and if there is any moisture at all in February, there will be beautiful yellow flowers all over the bush.
MWM
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Very Prickly Prickly Pear - March 2024
I don’t know if it was the cooler weather or the lack of wild flowers, but the Prickly Pear at Picacho Peak had really big spines this year. Maybe they somehow know that there will be less other food and they had better protect themselves more than usual. For whatever reason it looked really neat.
MWM
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Bristly Fiddleneck - March 2024
One wild flower at Picacho Peak that the cooler weather seemed to have favored was Bristly Fiddleneck (Amsinckia tessellata). The small flowers growing together at the top of the stalk causes a curvature very similar to the curvature on the top of a fiddle neck. The bristles are very obvious in the image.
MWM
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Picacho Peak State Park - March 2024
Last year there was a “Super Bloom” of wildflowers at Picacho Peak State Park. Alas, this year it was not to be. There was sufficient rain for a good crop of wild flowers, but the temperatures, especially the soil temperatures, have been below normal this year. The peaks and the cacti are still there so it was still worth the trip out there to see things.
MWM
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Mountain View Cemetery - February 2024
Mountain View Cemetery is just below Casa Grande Mountain. It is a very old cemetery that was once strictly divided between Hispanic and Anglo. Now there is no restriction, but cultural norms still tend to create the separate but equal of bygone eras.
The top half of this image is the Anglo portion of the old cemetery. The bottom half is the Hispanic portion. The difference is obvious. The lavish displays are not allowed in the newer sections, so many Hispanics continue to buy spaces in the “old cemetery.”
MWM
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Juvenile Jackrabbits - February 2024
I don’t where the baby jackrabbits hide out. I assume there is an underground burrow. But in the early Spring, if there is a warm day, they come out to sample the desert grasses. Assuming they don’t get eaten by hawks, owls, or cats, they grow bigger and then disappear again until their offspring start hopping around next year. There were over a dozen juvenile jackrabbits running around in the dry wash next to the bike trail. Haven’t seen a single one since that day.
MWM
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Doves - February 2024
There are a lot of Mourning Collared Doves and Eurasian Collared Doves here in the park. I think they have interbred because it is almost impossible to tell them apart. But up in Mission Valley there is a rather large flock of ordinary doves. They like to hang out in a grassy area right next to the kids’ playground on one of the bike paths. I don’t know if they are eating seeds or small insects, but they are there every day and only fly away when a child goes running into the midst of them.
The first image is of part of the flock on the ground. The second image is a closeup of one of the doves.
MWM
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First Turkey Vulture of Spring - February 2024
Turkey vultures are somewhat common here in Casa Grande. I kind of miss the flocks of black vultures of Florida, but the reality is that black vultures don’t have the hawk-like eyesight which enable the turkey vulture to hunt the desert areas of Arizona. In fact, black vultures in Florida will often shadow the more solitary turkey vultures and then swoop down to share in whatever the turkey vulture found.
This particular turkey vulture was sitting on the top of a light stanchion on the bike trail. He checked me out as I rode under and then stopped to take this picture, but decided that I was no threat and went back to scanning the area for small rodents or other sources of food.
The second image was taken a little later as the vulture flew away and was circling on a thermal to gain altitude. It is not a real clear image of its face, but the very distinctive “finger feathers” which denote a vulture are very visible. If you can see the fingers, it is a vulture. If there are no fingers, it is probably a hawk or perhaps an owl.
Evidently he saw something, because in the third image he came back down and flew out over the open area.
MWM
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Serendipity - February 2024
The composition of some images is serendipity. That means nicely accidental. I was riding on the bike trail and noticed a balloon floating in the sky. I thought it would be perhaps a good image if I could get the balloon with the tree and light pole in the image to give it some depth. I took several images that ranged from so- so to good but I didn’t think that any of them were worth posting, especially the one with some sort of dirt or something on the lens. Then I looked closer. That wasn’t a dirt spot. That was a bird flying toward the light post. I now had a bird in natural flight aligned with people flying in a balloon. The juxtaposition of those two made this an image worth posting.
MWM
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Alignment - February 2024
Friar Road in the Mission Valley subdivision just ends. The last couple blocks of the road as it crosses the dry wash flood control channels are blocked off with big “Road Closed” gates, but you can still go up the sidewalks to the bike trail alongside the channels. There is one bike/walking trail that doesn’t make a lot of sense. It goes straight west from Friar Road out to the western boarder of the subdivision and then ends at a really sandy farm field.
I usually go out that short stretch of trail because there are often hawks, rabbits, or whatever in the channels on either side of the trail. One bright and sunny day I noticed that the concrete trail exactly aligned with the east-west flyways thousands of feet overhead. The concrete aligns exactly with the contrails left by planes evidently headed to some major airport east or west of Casa Grande, Arizona. It makes an interesting image.
MWM
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First Jack Bunny of Spring - February 2024
It was still rather cool when I spotted this baby jackrabbit in the dry wash next to the bike trail in Mission Valley. Its ears haven’t grown out fully yet, but it was swiveling them around like radar antenna as I approached. It froze when I stopped my bike and remained still long enough for me to get this image. It must have thought I was gone or was coming after it because it suddenly made a break for the bushes and disappeared.
MWM
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