The Desert is _______.

The Desert is Hot

Annie and I turned a roll of Coolaroo

into sheers for our big windows. VERY GOOD IDEA. It makes a difference.


The Desert is Mysterious

I was determined to find some kind of glyph today, and so we did.  It's very hard to find much about the Quartzsite Intaglios online, and the Chamber of Commerce claims no knowledge of them.

Quartzsite is thataway, more or less.

I won't insult you by telling you what this is.

Supposedly points directly to the Bouse Fisherman

I think it's pointing toward our campsite.

I took the coordinates in case you wanted them, and then our GPS took The Big Nap.  Maybe there's a reason no one talks about these geoglyphs.

A gust of wind came up and my hat and glasses took off into the restricted area.  So, Annie desecrated an archaeological artifact to retrieve them, and this is why Arizona can't have nice things.

We also wanted to see the petroglyphs and grindstone holes that Barbara wrote about so tantalizingly, but we couldn't find them.  HELP US, BarbaraWan Kenobi!  You're our only hope!


The Desert is Brutal

Twenty feet later ...

WHAT.  

The Desert is Beautiful

 

The Desert is Exhausting

Palindromes are Awesome

Here's one: Wasilla: all I saw [that's a Sarah Palindrome]
Here's another one:

The Postman Always Rings Twice and Leaves a Tracking Number.

Our luck ran out and so we drove to Blythe (California) to pick up three UPS packages that wouldn't go to the US Post Office.  It's a mystery every time!  The UPS Customer Service Center is open from 9 AM to 10 AM Monday through Friday.  I repeated the information, just to be sure I heard correctly --


You said: 9 AM to 10 AM?


Yes, ma'am, but only Monday through Friday.


10 AM??  


Yes, ma'am, but only Monday through Friday.


--whereupon Annie and I discussed for 17 minutes whether 10 AM there is later or earlier than 10 AM here.  The sleep-later faction won that argument, thank the time zone gods.  I want to thank the UPS Customer Service Center for stating openly and honestly that there would be a solid hour of UPS Customer Service rendered at that Center, each and every five days out of seven.  I'm a fan of achievable goals and truth in advertising.  And, I will say that the entire time we were there they were centered on serving us, which is all we needed.

Because we could, we stopped to dig an archaeological site.

Annie explained that this gate is to keep cows out, because they're not articulated.

One of the Blythe Intaglios

More of them

I've tried to link these shots to Google Maps for Bob.  Go ahead and click - he'll have to learn to share.*

To encourage you to go see them, I will tell you that one of the figures is anatomically correct, more or less.  [It's the snake.]

[It's not really the snake.]

Colorado River.  Since you came to see naughty intaglios, you might as well see a river, too.

Annie found this life-changing thing and there was no question that we needed to buy it.  Every time she moves the car dolly around she's laid-up for days.  

So easy a simpleton can use it.  [Okay, Annie, that's not funny.]

*I did not succeed. Sorry, Bob. You can Google them, though.

At the top of that mesa lies a big, big man.

I set out to find the Bouse fisherman, and, by golly I succeeded.

snagged from forum.treasurenet.com.  This is how he looks from the air.

For Bob. It's not dramatic like the ones in Blythe.

He looks like this from my camera.  He's really more of an aerial guy.

I was plenty wowwed, though, him being anywhere from a few hundred years old to a few thousand.  Kamastamo is his name, creation is his game.  He is an intaglio (in TAL yo), or a geoglyph if you prefer.  Don't take my word for stuff, here's a sign:

While I was in the middle of I Don't Know Where I Am,  I looked for a geocache.  Do you do this?  It's good, clean fun that I recommend.  I'm "chillyrodent" in those parts.  Don't ask for a Duck;  you won't find me.  And, I didn't find the cache here.

I saw and heard this bird:

Cactus wren?

It's a gate

So I can find The World's Tiniest Cactus again.

"The teddy bear cholla is extremely flammable." ~ Wikipedia

  

I found two of the four geocaches I tried today.  That's 100%!

If you're on the road, what are your hobbies?  If you're beside the road, what do you do?