Adventure Date: March 26, 2018
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The hot days seem to have arrived. Pretty soon we need to be gaining altitude and losing latitude. The days need to be about ten degrees cooler for the Teams to be comfortable.
Today we headed over to one of the picnic areas near Diablo East. We looped one of the areas on the road as well as meandered a bit out in the desert. In this area most of the picnic shelters are about a hundred feet from a cliff that goes down into the lake. The lake is about 22 feet low now. When it is full the water would be only a few feet below the top edge of the cliff. The sure footed folks actually walk down that steep slope to play in the water.
As we walked around the area, it was apparent that blossom explosions were happening every day. There were many blossoms to photograph but the OFM held back and photographed only blossoms he could not recall reporting on already.
There were plenty of prickly pear cacti clusters blooming. We risked severe leg stabs to get these next few pictures. Those fresh thorns are SHARP to say it mildly. This cluster was about 50 feet off the road. (Can you say OUCH real loud for us?) But the OFM got the pictures anyway.
All of the blooms we got to were a glowing yellow. That glowing yellow means that they wash out in the sunshine unless heroic measures are taken. What are the heroic measures? It means getting very close to your picture subject. Very close means well within thorn range. Shorts like the OFM had on today are NOT recommended.
Next we eased gently in really close for this macro picture of the interior of the blossom.
There was a pink bloom just starting to open so the OFM went for it. It came out ok and maybe worth the blood shed.
There were hundreds more blossoms available to photograph while searching for better composition. However by now the OFM had at least six long scratched on the front of each leg and he was whimpering pitifully. So we cleared out of the brush for the road.
It was wonderful to stumble along that rough graded caliche and rock road. As luck would have it we found what the OFM recalls as a lantana blooming right by the road so no more scratches were needed to acquire the photograph. YEA!
We got some neat pictures and some exercise the OFM badly needed. Except for the bleeding scratches it was a pretty good time of trying to have tooooo much fun.
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