Bullseye

Sometimes I use Google Earth to zoom in on parts of the desert that look like they are probably boring and search around for something interesting. I was doing that a few months ago and found what looked like concentric circles carved into the desert floor. They were faded and barely visible. They were much too circular to have been made by yahoos on ATVs. The outer-most circle is about 0.2 mile in diameter.

Screenshot of Google Earth showing the concentric circles.

Of course, the reason for looking for something like that is so I can go investigate. I went out there the first time on a day that it was too hot to do any climbing. It was almost too hot to walk around on mostly level ground. The temperature was only about 102 when I started out, and it was close to sunset, but I had to drink a lot of water. I misread my GPS receiver and thought I was only half a mile from the center of the circles when I started out. Actually, I was almost 2 miles away. It was close to sunset when I realized my mistake. I was only 0.2 mile from the center then but I figured it could be difficult to find the truck in that flat, featureless area in the dark so I turned back.

I went by a saguaro with a beehive in it.

A droopy saguaro skeleton. Picture taken well after sunset.

I went back about a week later. I went a little earlier and it was cooler and I had a plan for getting closer to the circles before I got out of the truck. It's monsoon season, though. There were some large clouds growing east of my destination. I kept going even though I might not get to the circles again. It would be cool to be in a rainstorm.

Look at the dark wall of rainfall behind this saguaro.

After a while it looked like it was going to rain where I was and since getting there involved driving several miles on dirt roads and because I didn't want to be stuck in mud out there, I turned around when I was about 0.2 mile from the center, again. I could see rain falling on the Superstition Mountains on the way back and stopped with a view of those mountains as the sun set.

The rainbow barely shows up, but I accidentally caught a lightning bolt.

I was there for about 30 minutes getting pictures of the storm and the sunset in the other direction.

It was a very pretty sunset.

The storm was awesome, too.

There was even lightning.

The very next day I made my third attempt to get to the circles. As I walked toward the center of the circles, I imagined that maybe it was some sort of ancient American Indian site, used for astronomy and to predict when crops should be sown or harvested and other such things. The American equivalent of Stonehenge. I would be famous for discovering it.

At 0.1 mile from the center, I saw a couple of pieces of metal and wondered what some cowboys had disposed of out there. I took a few steps and saw some more. Then more and more and more. There were pieces of metal all over the place. Many of the pieces were repeated. Lots of 3 inch pieces of pipe with a nut on one end. Lots of U shaped rods. Lots of sheet metal that looked like it had been formed into a cylinder and then smashed into the ground at high speed. Hmm.

Well, you get the idea. Anyway, after looking at dozens of pieces and remembering that that area is sometimes used by the National Guard for practice, I realized that the circles were a target and all the metal was pieces of practice bombs. For several reasons that I won't get into here, I concluded that the practice bombs didn't contain explosives. Then I proceeded to touch or move nothing, just in case my conclusion was wrong. I walked around gingerly for a little while looking for the circles but couldn't see them from the ground. It was a while before I noticed something a little unusual about the target area.

What's missing from this picture of the Sonoran desert?

What do you not see in this picture, either?

Give up? There are no saguaros. They are everywhere else out there, but I could only find one within the target area. I wonder if they were removed before the target was put there or if they were wiped out by target practice. The other plants there could survive damage or re-populate the area in a few decades. It could be a couple of hundred years before there are many saguaros there, though.

There are lots of pictures if you want to look at them all.

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A short hike

There were some nice fluffy clouds around on Saturday afternoon. I needed to get some pictures of them. I would have to hurry, though, because Suzanne and I were going to a party that evening. Since there was a storm building far off to the east, I decided to go to a place with a view of the Superstitions, so I could get pictures of the mountains and the storm.

A growing storm. Oops, got my shadow.

Fluffy clouds to the north.

I was in the eastern side of Bulldog Canyon. I climbed a hill there so I would have a good view of the Supes. Sometimes, all the other stuff you can see from up high is interesting.

The view of the Superstitions. There's an old open-pit mine in the foreground.

A mine to the south.

Goldfield Ghost town, a popular tourist attraction.

It was noisier that usual out there. There were a couple of helicopters that kept buzzing around the mountains. I don't know if they were involved in rescues or were taking people on scenic tours. One of them that I saw was too small to be a rescue helicopter. One of them was large and white. It's the only one I was able to see with the mountains in the background.

The storm was far enough away that we didn't even get any wind from it.

The storm continued to grow while I was out there. I saw a flash of lightening as I drove away. More storms are forecast for today. Maybe I'll hang out until it gets dark and get some lightning pictures.

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Dodging a storm

When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt a little cool. I wondered it it had cooled off outside. It was 73. Not as cool as I had hoped. In the afternoon, I was laying around being lazy and felt cold and decided to go for a hike to warm up. It was a little cooler outside than it has been; 98. I headed out to the end of Meridian road. Ever since the last time I'd been out there, I have been wanting to hike all the way up to the pass and get pictures of Bulldog Canyon.

During the drive, I saw two small rain showers to the east. Nothing to worry about. Then I saw a bolt of lightening hit the ground. OK, maybe I'll worry a little.

As I started up the trail, I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. Still, the storms didn't look very big. I would be disappointed if I aborted the hike because of storms and they fizzled out 30 minutes later. Also, there was no wind from the storms, so they couldn't be too close or very big. Here's what they looked like.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

Early in the hike, I came upon a zebra tailed lizard. I finally got a video of one wagging his tail, though it isn't very good. They only wag their tails after they run, and I had to walk towards him to get him to run, so the video is really shaky.

Here's a picture of him posing. Looks like he has recently regrown his tail.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

I was keeping an eye on the storms. The clouds were spreading towards me, and getting darker. The thunder became a continuous rumble, but it still sounded far away. I wanted to get to the pass and get some pictures, so I walked as fast as I could, which isn't very fast when I'm going uphill. I've seen people run up these trails. I must be a wimp. There was no breeze. Sweat ran down my face and dripped off my nose. When I finally reached the pass, a gentle breeze was coming up the other side. Boy, it felt nice. The edges of the clouds were directly overhead and moving west fast. I sat on a rock to drink water and take pictures. A honey bee was bumping me, which makes me nervous ever since I read about killer bees doing that to decide whether or not to attack. Here's part of the view of Bulldog Canyon OHV area. You can see sun rays from the edge of the clouds.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

Here's the edge of the clouds. The storm is bigger than I thought. It extends north for quite a ways.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

This is the view towards town. It looks pretty peaceful in that direction. One tiny puffy cloud.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

I had been at the pass for less than 10 minutes when the wind started blowing. First, I heard it coming down the mountain to the east, whistling through the palo verde branches and saguaro needles. The clouds were beginning to look ominous.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

I wanted to rest for a while and enjoy the view and the breeze, but I didn't want to be a lightening rod or even get rained on. Oh, I forgot my backpack. It has my rain gear in it. I'm halfway up a mountain with nothing to protect two cameras and a phone from rain, and a storm is approaching. About halfway down the trail, the trail parallels a wash for a while. The wash has hollows carved into its sides, far above where water would flow during most storms. I thought that if I could at least get to there before the rain hits, I could put my stuff in one of those hollows until the storm is over. I started hurrying down. I was in the shadow of the mountains to the west and had a strong breeze now, so it felt cool. Shortly after I got back out into the sun, the clouds covered it again.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

It isn't easy to hurry on the upper part of the trail. It's very rocky. You have to be careful so you don't twist an ankle. Every once in a while I could hear a gust of wind coming down the mountains behind me and I worried that it would bring rain with it. It was a relief when I got to the smoother part of the trail, which also is where it runs next to the wash. Still no rain, though, so I hurried on.

I looked towards the storm once and saw a rainbow. Of course, I had to get pictures. Photomatix (or maybe it's just HDR images) isn't very good at bringing out rainbows, so the rainbow pictures have some HDR images and some plain old vanilla pictures.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

From Meridian_2008_09_27

When I was almost back to the truck, I looked out over the valley and could see dust blowing over it. I was so busy hurrying down the trail, I missed the leading edge of the dust as it covered the valley.

From Meridian_2008_09_27

I made it back to the truck before the rain hit. There was lightening flashing back and forth between the clouds to the east. I put the camera on a tripod and set it up for a 25 second exposure, hoping to catch some lightening. The first shot missed it, then it started to sprinkle. I had barely beat the rain to the truck.

Click below to see all of the pictures. Some of the HDR pictures aren't very good. Photomatix can compensate for camera movement and for movement of objects in the pictures, but my heavy breathing, pounding heart, and windblown ocotillos and palo verdes pushed it beyond its capabilities. Still, the pictures do show the clouds and their colors, which is what I wanted to capture.

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Monsoon thunder

We had some rain last night. Lots of rain. Also, lots of lightening and thunder. During monsoon storms, there seems to be a lot of lightening between clouds. That was the case last night. The lightening was flashing continously, and the thunder was one unending rumble. You can't see much in this video, but be sure and turn the sound up.

Just a brief update...

Kyle and I hiked up to the aluminum bench on the west side of the Superstition Mountains this afternoon. There were storms to the south when we started out, and there was an ominous looking storm by Four Peaks when we started back down. I was worried we wouldn't get back to the truck before it hit. We beat it by at least 10 minutes, though. Here's a picture of the storm when we were about halfway back.

It's late, and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, but I still have a lot of image processing to do. Here are a couple more pictures to tide you over for a while.

Ethan fire

Lightening during yesterday's storms started a fire on the west side of Phoenix. It's called the Ethan fire. This afternoon at work I thought it seemed like it was getting dark outside. I looked out there and the sun was blotted out by the smoke. Reminded me of the fires we drove through in California last year. I decided to climb Lone Mountain and see if I could get some good pictures of the smoke. On the way up, I came across what looks like a buzzard feather. I was tempted to keep it, but left it there. Here are pictures of the smoke and the feather.

 

 

About half way up the mountain, a refreshing breeze started blowing. Then it blew harder. Then it almost blew me over. I looked behind me and there was a small shower in the distance. It sure was generating a lot of wind. I was concerned about it sending some lightening my way. On a mountain is not a good place to be during a thunderstorm so I headed back down. Here's a video I made when the wind started. It's kind of noisy because of the wind.

A storm

We had the first storm of the monsoon rainy season today. There was a little dust and even a little rain. The unusual thing was the thunder. It was coming from a cloud directly overhead and it rumbled continuously for at least 15 minutes. I never saw any lightening. It was all in the clouds.

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