A White Christmas

We spent a lovely Christmas Day with my son and other family members. We got there in the morning before everyone else so that we could spend some time in the forest that is their backyard. I am not a snow person, but I can brave it occasionally, especially when the sun is out, and I'll admit that it was a nice touch to have a beautiful snowy view from inside Matt & Kaleena's warm house with a fabulous woodstove to back up against. The morning began, however, with us  sliding backwards down Matt's driveway in our Explorer. (I am planning to sell this before the next smog deadline, so no new tires for us.) That little glitch solved (by rocking the Explorer out of the snowbank and then parking at the bottom of the hill), we geared up with showshoes and foot warmers in our my boots and walked down to Jenkinson Lake. 

What time I have spent in the snow has been well after the storms have come through. There is something very different and beautiful about being there immediately after the snowfall......while the branches are still heavy with snow.

I loved seeing the snow clear to the tops of the trees. As the sun started warming the trees, snow cascaded from the highest branches.I spent the night at M & K's (Dan came home for chores and dog duty) and the next day Dan came back and brought Chris and Meryl with him. Then we celebrated our private family Christmas.The younger generation helping the older one with digital issues.Chris plays a mini-flute sporting his new Storm Trooper oven mitt.Here are my sheep/barn related Christmas gifts. My wheelbarrows constantly need their tires pumped up so Dan got the fittings to go on an extra air compressor in the barn. There are tubes and tires for my handtruck. Dog treats from Hawaii. Sheep and dog magnets. All the attachments for my new GoPro (birthday present). Footrot Flats is a comic strip series that I think only a sheep farmer would enjoy. Hand and foot warmers packets that I'll share with Farm Club in the barn. We took another hike that afternoon. This was a great two-day Christmas celebration with family. And it's not quite over. The kids are taking us to see StarWars in a couple of days. The only thing missing was my granddaughter and her family but at least we spent a week with them not long ago.

Road Trip to Texas - The End

In the last post we had come home to California about sunset, but we were still a long way from home. We had decided to camp at Joshua Tree National Park, but arrived there after dark. Mid-week, mid-July. No problem finding a camping site. I woke up before sunrise and walked in the desert to get some photos.I didn't have much luck with great sunrise photos but the good thing about sunrise (besides that another great day is starting) is that the light is great for other photos.

Have you ever seen so many spines?

We had slept in the truck so it didn't take long to break camp. We had entered the park from the south and planned to drive through to the northern exit.We stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden, a nature trail constructed through the cholla with warnings to not touch...for your own safety!

I was not tempted to touch. This "jumping cholla" is known for it's tendency to attach to a passerby without much provocation.

This is what the park is known for--the Joshua tree which is not really a tree, but a species of yucca that can grow to 40 feet tall. The park protects 794,000 acres of Mojave and Colorado Desert.

We drove to Keys View. At 5185 feet, its not the highest place in the park but I think it's the highest spot you can drive too. You can see the Coachella Valley to the southwest and Mount San Jacinto and Palm Springs to the north (just out of this photo)

Joshua Tree Park has plenty more to come back to, especially if we could take a vacation in the spring. Can you imagine what it would be like for early settlers? There were miners, homesteaders, and ranchers who tried to make a go of it here and there are remnants of those homesteads and mines.  We stopped at the visitor center on the way out and saw this statue and mural when driving away. After seeing the interesting public art in southern New Mexico and Arizona I wish that I had been on the lookout for it in the earlier part of our trip.Leaving Joshua Tree NP and driving through the town of Twentynine Palms, now the plan was to just head home. California is a big place. The iPhone map showed almost 8 1/2 hours to go.

More public art...or is this private art...or art at all? Amusement.

More amusement. This is the only souvenir I bought for myself (other than the National Park patches, which someday may be sewn to something but for now are on my bulletin board with others). This bighorn sheep now is on my big loom with a collection of other sheep.California oak woodland. Many hours still to go.

 Looking west from near Rio Vista. We live on the western side of the Central Valley and those are "our" mountains in the distance.