March got off to a good start with an early trip to Death Valley.  This is one of our favorite places, though we tend to tell people they probably wouldn't like it. (There are enough people here as it is.)      This year Death Valley is possibly illustrating one of the few good aspects of global climate change.  1998 was the rainest year in Death Valley History, with a record 6.09 inches of rain.  (It's normally pretty dry here.)  This year (beginning in July 2004), the Valley has seen 6.19 inches of rain, already a new annual record.  This means the desert flowers are likely to be great.  Our purpose in coming here was to find out.  Without subjecting you to a lot more palaver (that's a Western expression), I'll let you judge for yourselves.  Here are just a few of the 114 photos I took on the way to the hotel.
	The rain has created some driving obstacles.
The rain and sun create some interesting mud patterns.	After half a day of exploring, we have concluded that Death Valley is still pretty wonderful.  We plan a full day of exploration tomorrow and I'll probably take some pictures to share.  I know some of you are waiting breathlessly for each installment.  (You know who you are.)  I'll try not to disappoint you.

Today began with a Nature Center sponsored flower walk, led by a volunteer.  (Bless the volunteers of the world.)  I won't show you another collection of flowers, since these weren't anything like the ones we saw yesterday, farther south in the valley.  The big news is that our little band of tourists was taped for the Peter Jennings news show, to be aired next Tuesday or a day or so after that.       Re flowers, I did find a sensational Desert Five-Spot, so here it is.

After we completed the nature walk, we headed off to Mosaic Canyon, one of our favorite hikes.  Since it was inundated with Boy Scouts today, we didn't hike too far in, but we got to re-visit the prettiest spots, where the rocks have been rubbed smooth as marble.      Sheila is inclined to stick to the trails but the Boy Scouts and I liked to climb up the sides wherever possible.
View from above.	View from below

A creek in the desert!  Don't drink the water, though.	But mostly, it's desert.
A zebra-tail lizard	Pupfish making more pupfish.

Today saw two adventures if you don't count me trying to commit suicide by cracking my head against the pointy corner of a steel window opened from the restaurant where I was sitting outside on a park bench.  When a woman came by looking for her son's lost wristwatch, I leaned over to help look and buried the window in my forehead.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself (pun intended) (even in my addled state).      We started our adventures with a drive across the floor of the desert on the West Side Drive in search of the road up into Trail Canyon.  As you'll see, the road across was the most interesting portion of the trip, since there is now a lake in the middle of the vast salt flat.

The road up into Trail Canyon (clearly a case of naming impairment) was less than perfect.  It is normally okay, but the 2004/2005 storms have wreaked a little havoc here as elsewhere.  Eventually, we reached a wash across the road that we probably could have made it through, but then again. . .      Statisticians speak of a Type I and Type II error, and there was a parallel here.  The non-errors would be (1) we could make it through the gully and did so or (2) we couldn't make it through and didn't try.  The two errors are (1) we could have made it but didn't try or (2) we couldn't make it but tried. . .and died in the desert, our whitened bones discovered by future adventurers who would have. . .well, the truth is there was another guy nearby who would have given us a ride to the ranger station, but nobody wants to do that.  Besides, I was saving my suicidal tendency for my rendez-vous with a steel window.  So we chose Number (1).	This is the best part of the road.
The gully down there was worse than it looks.	Nice views from up here.  West Side Drive is in the middle of the photo.
Our second adventure (oh yeah, we're only up to the second one) was a walk up Golden Canyon.  By and large it wasn't that exciting, but there were some interesting spots.      My water bottle dropped out at about half a mile but I didn't notice it for another couple of miles (I don't drink much water on hikes.) (I credit wine consumption for that.) (As well as for my creativity and lively wit.)      There was a time when you could drive into Golden Canyon on a paved road.  Although cars have not been allowed for awhile, the last time we were here you could start your hike on a paved road.  The picture to the right shows what the rains did to that paved road.
There are interesting patterns in the rocks around here.   Too bad they don't show up well in this photo.	And interesting shapes.
At last, the Red Cathedral.  Yeah, you could go farther, but then you're looking straight up.	Meanwhile, on the Valley floor, salt devils were blowing up all around.

So, today, we left Death Valley.  This is the view as we drove into the Panamint Mountains above Stovepipe Wells.      The road and view down the other side was different. . .and impressive.
On the way back to civilization, we stopped off at Ballarat, a ghost town.  This still serves as a staging point for hikes and off-roading adventures.      All things considered, they're still pretty up to date.
Motel 0.6	Hurts Wagon Rental
One of the big adventures of the trip was when we got backed up at a railroad crossing.  We watched the VERY long train go through, and the gates never opened.      We all waited and waited and waited.      Then, we began zig-zagging through the gates, with the red lights flashing.      It was pretty exciting.      Eventually, we were home again.  It was a great trip.

Well, here we are in Temecula, California, a relatively new wine country in a state that has grown famous for the nectar of the gods.    We were originally scheduled to make the trip with friends, but due to a last-minute family concern they had  to cancel, so we pressed on by ourselves.  So far, it has proven successful.    From Anaheim, you travel 15-20 minutes toward NYC and turn right toward Mexico (I like to think big).  Then it's another half hour or so to Temecula.  Since we got a fairly early start and couldn't check into the hotel until around 4:00, we decided to do our wine-tashting onna way.  We hit four or five, in the warm company of 88,000 other tourists.  God, I hate the tourists (except for us, of course).  The typical pattern now is that you pay for the wine-tasting, but you get to keep the glass, which carries an advertisement for the winery.  (It's a win-drink arrangement.)

Oh, yeah, Sheila wanted to check out the casinos for possible future trips.  I don't think you're supposed to take picture in here, but. . .  We both decided to opt for root canal instead.

Santa Margarita is a hole-in-the-wall family winery that was one of our favorites.

Needless to say, this photo doesn't do justice, but this is very pretty country.

After a great dinner last night, we slept in a bit.  (I didn't get up till 7:00.)  We packed up and headed across the freeway to Old Town Temecula for some breakfast.  To our surprise, we found the town inundated by a biker rally.      Although we weren't all that intimidated, we decided not to get tatoos.  I felt I should be a little careful taking photos, but I did get shots of parked bikes and this picture of a pretty scary biker chick.

The biggest part of our return was spent in an unexpectedly long hike in a Natural Conservancy park.  We've contributed to the Natural Conservancy for years, but this is perhaps the first time we've seen their work first-hand.  (The Conservancy buys up land and keeps it undeveloped.)        The highlight of the hike was the Vernal Pools that go through an annual cycle in which the Winter snows melt and are joined by Spring rains to fill in depressions to form pools.  The floors of the pools are clay, and the water somehow causes the clay to seal more than normal and capture the water.  Over time, the water evaporates and the pools become beds of flowers.  Add birds, bugs, and other fauna, and you have. . .the circle of life.

Even though we were lost much of the time, the area we walked through was bucolic to say the least.

March 27

We decided to do something a little different for our Sunday hike/walk today. Instead of slipping down the hill to Yorba Park, we thought we'd go to the slightly farther-away Irvine Regional Park. As we neared the entrance of the park, the mass of cars, traffic cones, and police were all I needed to suspect something was up. I stopped in the "don't even consider turning left" lane and asked what was up. The nearest policeman said, "Don't even think of going in there unless you absolutely have to." Welcome to Easter in Orange County, I guess. When we came back through the area a few hours later, there were many people walking toward the entrance of the park, and we got a glimpse of an "overflow" parking area in a field that already had a few hundred cars.

We went to O'Neill park for a hike and then drove around the canyons in the vicinity, stopping to look for flowers or wildlife. Here, in no particular order is some of what we saw.

The results of the recent rains are still evident.	Turns out we weren't even supposed to be in this private, gated ranch. . .
. . .and didn't know the combination to the gate. Fortunately, the stronger of us. . .found the button that needed to be pushed to open it from the inside.	We eventually found wildlife.