A Perfect Evening

There were some interesting clouds around after work, so I went out to Bulldog Canyon OHV area to get some pictures. The weather was perfect. High 70's, single digit humidity, no wind. The best thing was that I had the whole place to myself. There were no vehicles parked near the entrance. I didn't see or hear another vehicle the whole time I was out there. It was incredible to have all of that spectacular beauty all to myself. It always strikes me as very odd, too, that so many people live at least as close as me to a place like that (at least 10's of thousands), but there is nobody there late on a weekday afternoon and probably less than a hundred on weekends. They must be crazy, which is fine with me. I like having the place to myself.

It was very quiet out there today. No ATVs or dirt bikes zipping around. No Hummers full of loud-mouthed tourists lumbering by. I only heard two planes fly overhead. The clouds were a little lower than usual, and I think that soaks up some sound, too. I heard birds twittering on the way out there and listened to crickets all the way back.

No traffic on the road in the OHV area. I stopped in the middle of the road several times to take pictures and didn't get in any body's way. On most of that road, you have no choice but to stop in the middle (if you're going to stop) because it's only one vehicle wide.

Click below to open a new window with the pictures.

Perfect evening

The first picture is some of the unusual clouds. Looks like virga. In Texas you wouldn't expect to see rain falling out of such wimpy little clouds, but here you see it a lot. The ridge I've been climbing lately is in the picture, but it blends in with the mountains behind it so it's hard to tell exactly where it is.

Every time I drive by the cactus in the next picture, I think, "Crown of thorns". Can't help it.

The next picture might be virga over Four Peaks, and the cloud that produced it is gone. I think the relatively flat area way off in the distance in the next picture is The Rolls. I can see some dirt roads out there, and it's in the right direction, so that must be it.

Last is the sunset. No sunlight was getting to the clouds for most of the sunset, then at the end it broke through and there were deep red clouds all around. It was fantastic. If anybody else in the Phoenix area even noticed it, they watched it through power lines and street lights, accompanied by the sound of traffic. Not me!

I took a few more pictures but I deleted them. As I was almost to the gate leaving the OHV area, I noticed that the Fountain Hills fountain was on and lit up. I hurried to a spot on the side of Usery Pass Road to try to get a picture (the fountain is only on for 15 minutes at a time). I set the tripod up in the bed of the truck so I could see the fountain over palo verdes. I had to take 5 second exposures for the fountain to show up, and was zoomed all the way in. I used the self timer so the camera would stop shaking from my finger pushing the shutter release by the time the shutter opened, but I could feel my legs quivering just a tiny bit. It was enough through the bed of the truck to blur all of the pictures. Next time I'll hike to a good vantage point and put the tripod on a rock.

I also took a picture of my truck, but you won't see it here. I took the picture in order to illustrate why a high clearance vehicle is required to drive through Bulldog Canyon OHV area. However, my skills were not sufficient to capture the immensity of the rock being straddled by my truck. I'll just have to take you out there some time and see if you stomp on the floor trying to hit a brake pedal that isn't on your side, the way my other passengers do. It isn't because I go fast; it's because they're sure I'm going to scrape the oil pan off (they don't know about the skid plate, though, or the fact that my skid plate has only ever touch one rock (gently)).