I'm creating a new song..."OH, I got desert pin stripes, desert pin stripes on my truck..." That is creosote brush beside the truck. It almost grows in the road in some places scratching the truck on both sides, as we did about 35 miles of 4X4 road through the KOFA National Wildlife Refuge. It was a beautiful drive! The desert is really greening up. The creosote brush is fully leaved out as are the ocotillo (walking stick cactus). The cholla and another small cactus is budding and will be in bloom soon. The saquaro didn't appear to have any buds, but I did notice some small new arms forming on a few.
This was a stunning view across the King Valley with the Kofa Mountains in the distance. We did some exciting 4-wheeling sections over rocks and up some steep but short climbs. And laughed about the cars that had tried to make the road and found it necessary to turn around. One followed us quite a ways.
We stopped several times and poked around looking at rocks, cactus and a tiny lizard, the only wildlife we saw other than birds. We found a huge (three foot across?) obsidian boulder, which surprised us. Most of the rocks do not look like the volcanic type to us. We're told this whole part of the desert was once a huge sea, and shells or shell fossils can be found. But we found none.
We began our trek at the Dome Valley museum/ghost town. It's the re-created town of Dome Valley that served the hundreds of mines/miners in the area in the late 1800's and early 1900's. At one time it was bigger than Yuma. It was a fun stop and worth the fee. An easy drive for cars over a well-graded dirt road.
This was a great day that began with me waking up grumpy "wanting to go home, NOW".
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