A great time in Florida

The brightness of the greens and the vivid colors of the flowers in the sub tropics is so splendid after so much brown in our part of the world right now. We had a wonderful time visiting my parents and enjoyed sampling some wonderful food freshly harvested from the gulf. It has been at least a few years since we have made the trip to Naples on the gulf coast but it is as beautiful as we remembered. The car photo is for Chris O.

We love the warmth of the evenings that don’t cool off rapidly when the sun sets as ours do. We love how our skin gets soft while we are there and doesn’t get flaky for at least a week or so after we return. We love the easy going lifestyle of beach sitting under a blue umbrella and lounging out by the pool reading in the shade. We love borrowing the Miata and driving with the top down. We love the wonderful variety of plants and the funny mocking birds with their ever changing songs and even the funny geckos that scurry fast off the brick walk when someone comes along. We don’t really love the no see ‘ems that bite at dusk if you don’t spray up, or the traffic in March at the height of the tourist season. We do love the beautiful new spa that has been built to overflow gently into the pool with its soothing waters. We love key lime pie!

Lou

It is a losing battle

Here is Penelope through the back door screen, she wants to come back in. She is happily wagging her tail. Here is a close-up of her back after she has had a good back scratch by rolling on her back and wiggling all over in the dry grass in the back yard. We have tried brushing it off with a wire dog brush and wiping it off with a towel, but she gets it so embedded that it is hopeless. We just have to wait for the grass to green up again and that will be awhile yet. It is hopeless, our floors and area rugs are always covered in little bits of brown grass. Oh the joys of being a pet owner. Just about every time she goes out she comes in covered again.

Lou

Doorways

There’s just something about the old doorways in the historic centers of places like Las Cruces and Santa Fe that are so interesting and appealing. The thickness of the adobe walls, the bright blue trim or bright painted colors and designs, the old Spanish churches, the ever present hanging chilies, and the tin fixtures and wrought iron gates that has a quaint charm all its own. These were all from the old Mesilla area in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Lou

The Cliffs of Zion

I have always wanted to visit Zion National Park and in January finally did. We were on our way from Orem Utah to Las Vegas for the night. We drove right by the Kolob Canyons portion of Zion so stopped to take photos before driving on south and then west a bit to the main portion of the park. In the winter you can drive cars on the scenic drive through Zion Canyon but most of the year only shuttle buses are allowed. The light was getting low in the late afternoon so the bright colors were fading into the shadows but it was still spectacular.

Rains falling on the high Colorado plateau flowing ever downward through the soft geological layers have created the beautiful canyons in the “grand staircase” that includes Bryce Canyon (which is further north and east, we still have to go there) Zion Canyons and lower still the Grand Canyon where the waters all flow into the great Colorado River.

People have been coming here for thousands of years and have left traces. The Southern Paiute people lived here after the Ancestral Puebloans. A storage jar of corn was found in the park dating back 1,000 years. The new settlers who came were the early Mormon pioneers in the 1860s.

In addition to Bryce Canyon National Park we’d also like to go back and see Arches National Park in Utah sometime on another trip.

The first photo is from Kolob Canyons and the next ones are from the scenic drive in Zion. We made it to Las Vegas well after dark that day.

Lou 

Monarch Viewing

On our last day on the Central Coast before seeing our daughter, son-in-law and grandson off to the airport in Santa Barbara we got to visit one of the locations where the Monarch butterflies spend the winter. They live in the eucalyptus trees within walking distance of C’s grandmother’s home. Following the trail you arrive where the butterflies are but if it is a cool day they will be hanging in masses that look like growths or clumps of dead leaves high up in the branches. As the day warms up thousands fly around apparently. We only got to see a few “awake ones” but it was really cool.

After mating in January and going through a couple of generations the butterflies migrate over the spring and summer all over the western US and ultimately the adults that survive end up back on the Central coast of California again to spend the winter and start the cycle all over again.

Here is a description from a website where there is more information.

http://gocalifornia.about.com/cs/californiamenu/a/monarchs.htm

“ From mid-October through February each year, Monarch butterflies sleep in California's coastal eucalyptus groves. In early morning, visitors watch the trees like a crowd of expectant theatre-goers. Basketball-sized clusters of what at first appear to be brown leaves rustle and stir. The air fills with orange and black wings, and a monarch butterfly parade begins.”

Look for the clusters in my photos. One butterfly was kind enough to pose for me on a post.
Lou