It Tracks

This is another photo-heavy entry. We got to go out Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours and try to find spots we hadn’t seen before. We retraced our steps in a couple of places, but mostly rolled through new ground.

As usual, some of my pictures here will be sepia/b&w, though this time around I kept more color. There were a few wispy clouds in one direction. Otherwise we had vivid blue skies and the extreme shadows of a clear day. I adjusted where I could.

It was an absolutely GORGEOUS day. The past couple of days hit the mid-60s and the second that happens, the desert starts showing pops of green. Fingers crossed it explodes into wildflowers in another week – I have a vacation day midweek on the 8th, and we’re planning to make it a photography run.

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Hot-air balloons are all over the skies in our neighborhood, every weekend the weather cooperates. It’s less common for us to get close enough to photograph them. My capture was when this bright beast was still fairly high up.

G captured the same animal as it was landing:

Odd how the light and color shifted. The balloon pics were only taken a few minutes apart, using the same camera. G’s shot looks like it was taken just after sunrise, even though it was taken later than mine.

I left a sharp focus on the country road below – tried changing the depth of field.  Of the two, this shot was better. We didn’t drive down this specific patch of gravel. If I remember right, it was a private road or driveway. So far out, a lot of roads and properties aren’t marked. Google maps helps. It isn’t infallible.

Dirt-road trips mean farm machinery like this tractor (below and left) is everywhere you look.

I wanted to keep the color for the final version. But the red of the tractor didn’t pop on sepia; and in full color, there were so many bright hues they competed for attention. So I stuck with my photography “comfort food” of sepia.

Stumbling across a tow truck in the middle of nowhere is far less common than seeing a tractor — especially discovering a decommissioned beauty like this one (below).

Gorgeous weather in the low desert means there’s often snow in the high country. The snow-capped mountain in the distance (below) is Bassett Peak, elevation 7600ft. It’s the highest point in the Galiuro Mountains, in the middle of nowhere. They’re beautiful, rugged, and nearly inaccessible.

To the right in this shot is the back side of Picacho Peak, for comparison. Its uppermost peak is 3,374ft. The many-armed saguaro at the left side may be 200 years old. Scientists aren’t 100% sure how old they get to be. However old they can get, this one’s on up there.

You can see why I kept the color in the above capture. It was a spectacular day. Every few minutes we’d see a breathtaking panorama open between the brush.

We stumbled across another skeletal irrigation pump assembly (above). For this one you could also see one of the discharge pipes, still with some vivid red paint intact.

The pond above is most likely seasonal. It’s 3-4 times larger than I could photograph, not including a large arm extending to the other side of the road (there’s a culvert “bridge” connecting them). Even though it’s not huge, I couldn’t get angled to capture everything, not from the driver’s seat.

That’s Bassett Peak in the background again, from a slighly different angle than the previous shot. Once more, the subject demanded color and crisp focus.

Last picture for this entry – I promise.

We drove back through the tiny dot called Red Rock. This corner is the most interesting place there. The bar might’ve been a nice photo, except for all the cars and trucks nosed up against its walls. Next door is an abandoned gas station. There’s a school, fire station, Dollar General, and not much else. A few businesses are listed on Google Maps – and when you zoom in, every one is a residence.

With so many of the tiny spots in Arizona little more than ghost towns and ruins, it was weird for us to drive through such an out-of-the-way residential area built in the last ten years or so. In fact, the newer builds were the only homes we saw in Red Rock. I assume we missed something, because the bar, vacant gas station, and school all looked older.