Roll Out the Barrow

The “featured” image up top prompted bad puns and misheard lyrics. I couldn’t resist.

Fair warning: there’s a bunch of photos and groan-worthy puns in this entry. My current server loads faster than the old one. The photo count today may test the limits of how fast.

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After so many decades of virtually nonexistant summer monsoon seasons, it’s been an amazing summer here in the desert. We’re still getting rain every few days, sometimes multiple times a day, and the forecast calls for yet more stretching at least through the rest of the week. It’s also keeping temperatures down. Compared to our normal 110ºF and up – last year broke the record for the most sequential days over 110 – this summer we’ve hovered around and under 100º. For this part of the world, it’s been phenomenal.

We didn’t go to the river this weekened because rain was a given. Mother Nature didn’t disappoint, either.

G was adamant he didn’t want to go anywhere Friday, because the forecast and the skies promised take-no-prisoners downpours. However, we had to drop my laptop off at FedEx. It’s on its way to Dell for either a fix or a funeral. I won’t be brokenhearted either way. In the interim I’m using my seven-year-old workhorse.

On our way out, I yelled for G to bring my camera. I told him even if he didn’t want to take pictures, I planned to do so. We brought my camera – and only my camera.

Which G proceeded to use more than I did.

The lighting and the skies were simply magnificent, as compared to our usual diamond-hard skies. Unfortunately one thing I can’t do is gauge exposure with this laptop. The display is highly directional: look one angle and you see dark, from another angle you see light. G warned me some of these taken Friday are too dark. I have Affinity Photo installed on the old girl, which would’ve let me lighten them up – but I don’t mind them a bit on the darker side, long as they’re not too dark to see.

I nearly insisted G bring along his own cameras, but figured he’d argue the point. I also knew he’d get involved soon as we hit the road, and he did. I know his modus operandi inside-out.

This is Sawtooth Ridge, down the main drag from us. All these before the divider were taken Friday and in our proverbial back yard.

This one’s dark – but so were the skies. I love it when there’s rain on the way!

This is one of countless intermittent streams/creeks/rivers throughout the state. I moved from living along a Midwestern RIVER – the Cedar River, one of the larger northern tributaries to the Mississippi. I thought all rivers were equally big. I also never heard of a river without water in it, not until we moved to Arizona.

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Yesterday morning the skies looked even more ominous. It was relatively cool – the low 80s. G didn’t pretend not to want to get out with his camera. Soon as we were awake enough, we were off! (Oh, and we went to take pictures, too!)

I lightened these a bit more, while leaving one at original depth for comparison. It’s more typical to reduce exposure levels for the hard desert light, not increase them. For the record, I’m impressed at how well this old laptop manages with Affinity Photo. Still learning to use the program, which is a poor man’s Photoshop. I have to admit, the software compares better than I expected, and if I can muster enough expertise I might switch over, especially if Adobe keeps its promise to spike prices.

We headed into new territory, taking lots of back roads we’d never traveled before. Nothing like risking flash floods on a rainy day, right? A lot of those dips in the road still held a few inches of sand from the last time water washed through, and the signs of water along the sides of the road were everywhere. The dips in the road, not the ones driving on it. At the first trickle of water I saw in the road, I’d have started rolling uphill fast, even if it meant going cross-country. (Thank goodness for 4WD!)

You could see columns of rain all around, like this pillar coming down on the mountains. This was one of three that merged before we drove into the resulting downpour. Other than one short span where it got tough to see, we love the rain.

Saw a deer Deere by the side of the road.

More misheard lyrics: Cottonwood Crow, vs Cotton-Eyed Joe. (G’s photo taken with my camera, since I had the longer lens.) Not sure it was actually crows in the cottonwood tree. Whatever they were, those were some BIG birds. I’ll skip the Sesame Street jokes. You’re welcome.

No, we didn’t go in, darn it. But I think we’re going back to check out the museum. I need to see the li’l cars.

This lonesome fireplace was out in the middle of nowhere, seemingly grown from the desert itself. There was no crumbling foundation or other evidence there was ever a house to go with it. G took this shot using my camera, since it entailed a hike a ways back from the road. The sun even sorta came out for a minute for this shot.

It wasn’t all dreariness yesterday. We found this bench half-hidden among the bird-of-paradise bushes.

You used to see ocotillos all over. The drought has all but eradicated them in the wild, sad to say. It’s the tall plant in the foreground. In spring they’re covered by flowers the color of fire. Gorgeous, large, thorny fire. They get to be easily 10-15 feet tall.

As promised, the unedited picture.

More silhouette than anything else in this picture, the area was a proverbial saguaro forest. Saguaros have also been dying out due to the prolonged drought. This year’s rain alone won’t bring them all back, but here’s hoping for more years like it and a resurgence of the population.

You can just see the leading edge of the rain to the left of this image, yet the ridges behind are still hit by sunlight. I’m a sucker for layers-deep mountain ranges.

No, that’s not paint on the tilted water tower: it’s rust. I’m not sure if it’s still in use, but wouldn’t surprise me either way. This was at a farm along the road near Stanfield, Arizona. I know this isn’t my sharpest photo but figured it was still worth including.

This is another of G’s shots taken with my camera. It was a pretty straight shot side-to-side but a mini-rollercoaster in a vertical sense. The rain had already come and gone, leaving behind a haze in the air. I like what it does to the mountains here.

And we come to the last photo I’ll inflict on you today. The park was about as fancy as the sign here implies: rocks, tough desert scrub, and a few picnic tables. But it’s got a closer view of the mountains from the previous picture, and a much closer view of big rigs driving down the I-8.