It's warming up

We had our first day over 100 today. It's kind of late in the season for that. It was 104 when I got out of the truck about 4:15. I was thinking I would hike in the shadow of Lone/One Mountain today, but I went too early. I was in the sun except for when I stopped in the shade of a paloverde or saguaro.

When I started the hike, there were not many gnats bothering me. I think it was because I wasn't fragrant enough, though. After I had been out there about 45 minutes, they moved in.

It didn't seem very hot when I started out. I wondered if my thermometer could be wrong, but my camera felt hot. Then I started to wonder if there might be something wrong with me, but I started sweating and decided I was OK. I felt fine. I decided I had better not hike too far on the first hot day of the season, though.

It was a pretty day. There were lots of birds zipping around. I made a couple of panoramas. When you are taking pictures for a panorama, it's critical to get the pictures lined up correctly. It's also when the camera shrinks the image in the viewfinder by about 50%, which makes it difficult to get the pictures correctly aligned. I don't understand that. The second panorama would look a lot better than the first, except that I didn't get the pictures lined up very good. By the time I was taking those pictures, a couple of gnats had fallen in love with my ears. Made it difficult to concentrate on pictures. Anyway, only the first panorama is in the pictures. Here they are.

BC_2008_05_18