Timing

I’ve lived in Arizona most of my life – since 1972, to be exact. Throughout all that time I’ve traveled across a hefty chunk of the state.

And yet, I’m still surprised from time to time, finding hidden corners I never knew existed.

When I was in high school, I was in the so-called “gifted” program. I was fortunate enough to get good grades, and I’m not fool enough to pretend I’m a super-genius because of it. But it meant we had occasional perks countless other kids didn’t get, including field trips. My high school was the butthole of American education, so trust me when I say field trips were a BIG. DEAL.

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Anyway…

One of the places I visited in high school was the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. It was cool, but I had moved from the Midwest recently enough, and I was young enough, I didn’t fully appreciate everything it represented. Despite passing it on on the road many a time, I’d never gone back.

Until yesterday, when G and I decided we were due.

Mother Nature has been exceptionally kind to Arizona this year. It’s topped 100º in March some years. This year we’re in the second week of April and we’ve had a rainy winter – which led to a superbloom of wildflowers statewide – and in the low deserts, the thermometer is stopping when it gets to the low 80s (even lower some days.) All this means the visit yesterday was probably the optimal for us, ever.

Our primary concern was accessibility. I recalled a lot of steep and narrow trails — not ideal for someone in a mobility device. And there were definitely places I couldn’t go, because stairs. I also headed up some places I probably shouldn’t have, because they were steep enough to do a number on my power-chair’s battery. Running low on juice would have challenged me to make it back to Stormtrooper. Running out would’ve been worse.

Just to clarify: I’d do it again in a heartbeat, because this:

Not all cactus were in bloom. In fact, most weren’t. I meant it when I said we lucked out on the timing, overall. Lots of wildflowers are still blooming and some of the cactus were. That’s a happy balance.

I never noticed an agave bears more than a passing resemblance to Cthulhu before, though.

All it takes is looking at its base at eye-level, I guess.

Some cactus species carry color in places other than their blooms, by the way. I believe this is a barrel cactus.

There are several types of cactus with red spines, and several with a similar shape. The arboretum reminded me of how many kinds there really are.

For the record, this isn’t a cactus, it’s a shrub. We see them all the time in landscaping and for the life of me I can’t remember what they’re called. I’m not even sure I ever knew what they’re called – only that they have some of the most unique blooms I’ve ever seen.

It was heavenly – including the birdsong. It’s a bird sanctuary, as well as a botanical garden. I posted this on Facebook to give folks an idea of the size of this eucalyptus – but was also tickled to capture the birds singing.

There were blooms everywhere, and birds everywhere. I saw so many hummingbirds, and at least one cardinal. But those buggers are too fast to photograph, at least for me.

Not for lack of trying.

This hummer was super close, just over the shoulder of another photographer G was talking to. I took umpteen shots. And my camera wouldn’t ever focus on it, no matter how many times I tried. I suspect part of the problem is I was just too close. This little flyer was buzzing maybe 7-8 feet away, and I had the zoom fully extended. I already knew the camera wouldn’t focus well when I tried a close-up with the zoom out all the way. The camera tried hard to focus on the flowers, rather than the hummers. Oh well.

There were so many wildflowers in bloom, we didn’t spot a single bird or bee at any of the feeders scattered throughout the area.

We couldn’t cover the whole park, not only because of accessibility. The arboretum encompasses 372 acres. After a little over three hours, both G and I simply ran out of steam and decided to head for Globe-Miami and vicinity.

We got in some snaps there too. Not as vividly colored, but still a few interesting ones, like this no-I’m-sure-it’s-not-haunted-really-I’m-sure creepy remnant of a house.

And the overlook capturing part of Miami, Arizona, below.

There are a number of pictures overlooking Globe, but I haven’t really seen any others overlooking Miami, so I’ll claim credit for one of the few, if not the first.

Miami is one of a handful of third-world pockets inside the USA. I swear some of the houses are built from cardboard, and I’ve lived there before, so I know.

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Then today, after finding almost no garage sales (it’s a holiday weekend so not a big surprise), we decided to hit a couple of spots where I knew there had been a crazy carpet of wildflowers a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately the flower-plosion was mostly faded by now. We pulled over a couple of times for photos, before meandering along the back roads in search of… whatever we could find, like always.

One of our backroad excursions pointed out we were near the Eloy airport. Y’all, I had no clue Eloy had an airport. It’s an itty bitty place. But we figured precisely if it was a small airport, we might get in some aircraft pictures, possibly getting close enough to get a lucky shot of planes directly overhead.

What we never expected was to get shots like these:

We were there probably an hour and if we weren’t already tired, I have no doubt we could’ve kept snapping for another couple of hours. G had recently bumped into one of their instructors and he’d invited us to come check them out. We simply had no idea how large the skydiving project is at the location. They can handle over 500 jumpers per hour!

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It was an amazing weekend for photos. I took over 700 total – probably closer to 800, especially if you count the videos I took with my phone.

The best part about all my pictures turning out as well as they did? Virtually every single one was a handheld shot. No tripod. No propped against the car window to steady my hand. On the next-to-the-last skydiver photo above, at full size, you can see the details on the diver’s glasses. God knows how, but the only blurry shots I took all weekend were the hummingbird shots and a couple where I tried to take macro (extreme closeup) shots with a zoom lens.

I have to stop. Between the photos and the video, it’s already going to take forever for this page to load, so I’m calling this done.