Neighborhood Tour

With BJ headed for her meet-up for her annual girlfriends trip, I headed out to see what had changed in the neighborhood in the past three months. The sign, which has been there since the valley was a hotbed of pilot training before WWII looks like it may have a fresh coat of paint.

The campground at Usery was nearly empty. Too hot for camping, even with power.

The spindly ocotillo were sporting their green leaves compliments of the monsoon rains, but no bright red blossoms to be found.

It only looks soft and cuddly.

I wandered a bit further and parked at an unmarked pull-off for a short walk to the river. Dam controlled just a couple miles further upstream, the river was flowing nice today. It looked really good for a couple minutes.

It's always fun to watch. In this case, the inattentive kayakers are getting one last picture

before the downstream boat neatly flips in the micro feature locally known as Snaggle Tooth.

Meanwhile, the quiet was no more as a gaggle of tubers rounded the corner. This particular gaggle was formed around twin nuclei - one a floating boom box at full volume, and the other an ice chest which is the normal core to any tubing gaggle.

The shuttle bus at Water Users assured that there were many more gaggles and many more buses on the way.

The mountains south of the river were sporting a green tint from the recent monsoons.

They say it will only hit 102 degrees today but it still is hot enough to make me prickly.