Saguaro portraits, and balloons

There are some areas in and around the Goldfield Mountains that I haven't seen yet. The reason I haven't seen most of those is because they are difficult to get to. There was one spot in the middle of a flat (compared to a mountain) area that I hadn't been to. That's where I went on Saturday.

Maybe one reason I haven't been there before is that there isn't a lot to see.

As might be expected, there isn't a whole lot to see in the middle of a large flat area. I wound up taking lots of pictures of saguaros.

This saguaro looks like it has a funny face.

There weren't a lot of flowers in that area, either. Well, there were a couple of spots carpeted by tiny yellow flowers. I could see that the northeast side of Lone Mountain was covered in Mexican Gold Poppies. The other side looks like it doesn't have any.

Mexican Gold Poppies on Lone Mountain.

There are a few really big saguaros out there.

I found a total of 4 mylar balloons out there. Actually, I found more, but one was shredded so I didn't pick up all the pieces. It was easy walking for half of the hike. Then I turned around and started heading back uphill to the truck. That's when I really missed the lunch I had forgotten to eat. Well, I had a big breakfast and never felt hungry at lunchtime.

I use saguaros to tell when I have my pictures level. Sometimes they aren't vertical, though. Also, if they are uphill or downhill from the photographer, you need to take parallax into account. After I take a picture with saguaros in it, I look at the scene so I can remember which saguaros were vertical when I'm working on pictures later.

It's warmed up some. I think it was close to 90 out there. It felt good. Click below for all of the pictures. Oh, I went back out there (slightly different spot) Sunday and took lots of pictures of flowers. I haven't uploaded them yet and won't be blogging about that trip, so you're on your own to find them.

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