Springtime wanderings

After a cool week, the weather is starting to warm up again and it's just beautiful here right now. Wildflowers everywhere! When we were in Death Valley last weekend the ranger mentioned that they aren't having a very good year for flowers, and I know Lancaster isn't having a very good year with their poppies. But it's beautiful around Ridgecrest.

Today we made our first visit of the year to the Desert Tortoise Natural Area (DTNA), which is outside California City, just south of us. We got there about 10:15 am, and I was sure we'd see a tortoise or two. But no, there were none. The naturalist told us that earlier in the week, when it was colder, they'd had FIVE tortoises walking around, but now that it's warmer, nothing. We are beginning to doubt such stories. "Oh, there was a tortoise here a moment ago, you just missed it," etc., etc. It's like the Monty Python sketch with the man pretending to sell cheese.

Still, even without tortoises, the DTNA is a lovely place, and we enjoyed our walk. We did see several lizards, and that made the boos happy. Here is one, a horned lizard (also known as a horned toad):

There were nice flowers too. Here is a shot of the boos among the goldfields:

It is getting harder and harder to take photos around them, because now they insist on taking photos too. Every time I photograph a flower, Baby A then has to photograph the flower, followed by Baby B. They snap several shots, just to be sure they've got it. Meanwhile, my camera's batteries run down. When I get home and download the photos to the computer I then have to go through them and delete all of the babies' shots.

Here's an example (that I kept to show you). They insisted that I take a picture of a rock with lichen on it. Here's the rock:

And here's their blurry picture of the same rock, with the camera's cord hanging down in the middle of everything:

They insist on holding the camera about 2 inches away from whatever they're photographing. I say to Baby A, "Not so close!" but he ignores me. Then Baby B gets the camera, and Baby A shouts "Not so close!" which makes Baby B nervous, so his shots are even worse than Baby A's.

I guess I could just say "No! It's Mommy's camera!" That's what parents would have done in the old days, when cameras had film. But I figure they're learning, and no one's dropped the camera yet, so on we go.

Later in the afternoon, when we were hanging out in our backyard, watching Daddy work on the weeds, I said to Baby B, "Did you like the tortoise place?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry there weren't any tortoises there. But there were lizards."

Baby B said, "And a tortoise picture."

And so there was.