Monday

Even though we are loving our desert home, today we went looking for water.  We are quite close to Saguaro Lake and we remembered eating at a restaurant on its shores, so that was our lunch destination.   Saguaro Lake is the Salt River Project lake closest to Phoenix.

Lunch was mediocre, but the views of the lake and eating outside in the warm sunshine more than made up for the ordinary food.

spring is coming soon....

cliffs rising from the lake shore

got any peanuts?

After lunch we drove/walked around as much of the lake as we could.  The water was beautiful,  orange cliffs above and yellow wildflowers ringing the shore.    Beautiful.   Today was a holiday so there were many families enjoying their picnic lunches by the water,  so we left them to it and went looking for access to the Salt River.

we found a trail leading to the river.
its hard to believe the desert is so green, isn't it?

Salt River

he walks on water

any idea what this is?

these two look tired after their trek along the river

On the way home, we spotted this beauty out in the desert.  Dave stopped immediately (at my direction...) and I set off into the brush to get a picture......A really unusual example of a Crested Saguaro.

my humble offering to the Queen of the Cresteds  (aka Pam)

We pulled into the campground about 4 and as we drove to our site, two coyote's walked, not ran, but calmly strolled past us.  I managed to get a picture of one of them, a little fuzzy, but a picture nonetheless.

see the coyote walking past the downed cactus?

Since rain and high winds are predicted for tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday, we decided to have a campfire tonight.     Actually, we had a happy hour/sunset campfire instead of a dark of night campfire because we can't seem to keep our eyes open much after dinner and.....one of us gets too cold sitting out much after dark.  ahem.

At any rate, we brought the dogs out to the fire ring with us and they are now a slightly different color...

miss dirtball