Random and occasional thoughts on

The Plan. This kind of weather makes it hard to stay inside so I decided to head out for an afternoon hike up in the mountains. My youngest son decided to join me so we grabbed my camera bag and headed out early afternoon. Execution. We headed out to the Superstition mountains and found the trailhead we had selected without any problem. About 3pm, we headed out from the car. We had no rush to set a fast pace and just set out along the trail. We had great weather, mostly clear skies with just a few white puffy clouds floating by. Perfect t-shirt weather. The chart on the right shows the elevation. Pretty gentle till the last section before we turned around where it go a bit steep. The overall pace is surprisingly low, even when you consider that this was the longest my son and I have gone together, but we stopped quite a few times for sight-seeing. There are some amazing views in the Superstition mountains as well as quite a bit of wildlife. Several times we saw several humm...

Last night, my wife told me the dog was acting strange when she went out to say hi to him. I went out to check on him and brought a flashlight to see if there was anything amiss in the yard. Dog was fine but here is what I saw: Do you see it? Almost dead center in the picture, in the rocks, you might see a little critter. Here is a better shot of him: He was amazingly slow to react to my presence and the dog was strangely either unaware of him or uninterested in him. That was out of character since the dog is part Border Collie and Labrador Retriever and typically does not allow any winged creature to land in his yard and will usually chase birds (and planes sometimes) just flying by. After a few pictures as I got closer and closer, the owl flew to the fence and then the dog finally decided to bark at him and he left for the night. After a bit of research, I think he was a burrowing owl , but I would be happy to hear any other ideas as I am not an exterienced bird watcher.

Because everyone else was doing it. Last week I mentioned that I saw a coyote on my way to work. Today I saw the great worm migration of 2008. There were thousands of these guys making their way from one side of the road to the other. It seemed like most of them did not make it from the yellow tint across the road. I stopped to get a closer look and was really surprised at how unique they look. I am always interested to take pictures of animals or places or things that are different from what I usually see.