Wet weather

The dew point has been in the 60's and 70's this weekend. I feel damp just sitting here. My milk glass is covered with condensation by the time I take it from the counter to the table. There were showers moving around the valley all day yesterday. The temperature was only in the 90's, but it was too muggy to hike and I didn't want to get caught in a downpour. Higher altitudes were having lots of rain, too, so I didn't plan on doing any hiking. I think it's going to be just as wet today.

I had to get out of the house, though. I drove out to Tortilla Flat to get an ice cream cone. The walls of the store that sells the ice cream are papered with dollar bills.

Dollar bill wallpaper. It didn't cost the store anything but staples because customers donate the bills.

I was surprised to see that water wasn't even close to flowing over the road at Tortilla Flat. I drove on out Apache Trail to where the pavement ends and got out to take a few pictures.

The ocotillos are covered with green leaves. There should be flowers soon.

No sunshine.

Agave flowers.

Click below to see all the pictures from this trip. Scroll down to see a Google Swivel experiment.

2010_07_31

Google Swivel is introduced as something to enable cool looking 360 degree views of something, but it can be used on any group of pictures. I use it here to display a time sequence. Left-click and drag left and right on the viewer below to see how it works.

Tortilla Creek in the daytime

I made it to Tortilla Flat before it got too dark after work on Friday. A guy there that has lived in the area all his life told me that he has never seen so much water in that creek. There was a lot less water than there had been the night before, though, and there was evidence it had been much higher during the night.

Tortilla Creek is almost low enough to drive across now.

There must be a shortage of signs. Maybe the "Fresh Oil" sign will stop people, though.

It isn't quite so windy today. The waterfalls are only a little sideways.

2010_01_22

Amazing sights

Too bad it was too dark to take pictures.

We've had some wild weather lately. Lots of wind and rain. Sometimes very heavy rain. It rained almost almost all night last night. It rained off and on all day today. Around noon, the wind started blowing. It's been blowing like it does during a monsoon storm, except that it just keeps blowing. When I left work, it was raining. The wind was blowing my truck and other vehicles back and forth across the freeway. My house is about 20 miles from where I work. It stopped raining when I was about halfway home. The sky up ahead looked strange. It was fuzzy as if blurred by rain, but it was the wrong color. It wasn't gray like rain. It was tan, like ... dust!

We must have had at least a couple of inches of rain by then. Everything was saturated. It was dust, though. As I drove through it, it sprinkled now and then. The raindrops left dusty spots as they dried. Maybe it blew in from Mexico.

The freeway has some of those update-able traffic information signs. One of them said that Apache Trail was closed at Tortilla Flat. I figured it must be because Tortilla Creek was over the road. I decided to drive out there and see.

It was getting kind of dark by the time I got out to Canyon Lake. Just past the second one lane bridge, there are some cliffs to the left. I've known for a long time that there are sometimes waterfalls there because of the black streaks they leave on the rock. Before today, though, I had never seen the water.

One of the smaller waterfalls. Sorry about the poor quality. It was dark.

The waterfalls were doing strange stuff today. Remember the wind? It was blowing the water back up over the cliffs.

Waterfall being blown back up the cliff. It was a long exposure, so the spray doesn't show up much.

It was getting very dark by the time I got to Tortilla Flat. The shortest exposure I got was 4 seconds. I couldn't get the camera focused; I just set it to infinity. The creek was a roaring torrent.

Tortilla Creek. That's a lot of water.

Tortilla Flat. I was the only one there.

If anybody has any suggestions on how to focus in the dark, please let me know.

2010_01_21