Detail from "Rain Dance," an original quilt by Sherrie Spangler

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Cactus flowers, moon flower and a brewery


I've been going through my 800 photos from a month in the California desert and the road trip home, and decided to dedicate one post to the flowers. So here we go, starting with cactus flowers in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs:








Here are some other blooms from the same area:















The gorgeous tree behind our condo in Indio, CA


"Moon Flower" over the desert, Coachella Valley, CA

Then we packed it up and started the road trip home, via my parents' house near Los Angeles. There was no shortage of flowers there:


Los Angeles


Los Angeles



Los Angeles


My parents' front yard


After our ocean/L.A. visit, we headed toward the California-Nevada border to see Mono Lake and Lake Tahoe. It was COLD, WINDY, and SNOWING much of that leg, but I did spot this statue of a steer with a flowered jacket:



Much of that leg looked like this from my passenger seat:

Eastern Sierra Nevadas, near CA-NV border


After that little detour through the snow, we headed back to the sunshine and the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA, where we parked under the brewery's solar panels near this flowering tree:

Sierra Nevada Brewery's parking lot, Chico, CA
(That's Dave's land-locked kayak)

(The brewery tour guide told us their employees get not only human health insurance, but also pet health insurance, access to massages and acupuncture, and a lot of free beer.)

Sadly for Dave, we left the brewery behind and trucked on up to Oregon, where this field of flowers greeted us the next day at a rest stop:


Rest stop between Medford and Eugene, OR


We met a really nice couple there from Oregon who were on their way back from California, where the wife had picked this bright flower near San Francisco. It was still perky after two days in the dashboard.


By the time we got to Eugene the sky wasn't quite as bright, but this mural provides year-round sunshine and flowers:


Eugene, Oregon
We ended the day back home just in time for dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant -- my way of prolonging the sunshine. I hope you're all having a great spring!

Have a colorful day

2 comments:

Carol said...

Lovely spring flowers, a few of which look familiar. We're going into our tropical autumn, being south of the equator. No beautiful autumn leaves and only a slight drop in temp but getting less humid. Autumn is when we plant vegetables to reap during winter, because it's too hot in summer, and flower annuals. I found this all upside-down to start with but have got used to it now.

Michael said...

Cool photos! I like the cacti.