Came across these small brushes just off the highway south of Alturas, CA.

Just thought they looked interesting enough to get a picture. Didn't see any tumbleweeds though, hopefully next time!

Another late night post -- working on some new blogging system for the software on this site and others.

This was taken a month or so back, I thought it was an interesting cactus (or succulent, maybe?) - one with little leaves on it. These leave are supposedly for capturing droplets of water for the few times it does rain. They're just big enough to cup the water like a tiny eavestrough/sponge, but small enough they don't take a lot of energy up for the plant.

More to come soon...

(Note - after posting I noticed there's a lot of spots and fuzziness in the photo.. might re-upload it later to Picasa. Sometimes Google's converter isn't so nice to photos when scaling them down to reasonable web-sizes..)

Something interesting observed while playing with the camera - if you take slanted-angle photos of bodies of a large body of water, the curvature of the earth is almost obvious.

It's kinda neat how the human brain works sometimes. We look at a horizon, and see a straight line. We look at the same horizon, wit it tilted a bit, and we see the curvature. Who knows what purpose that might serve, but it is fun to discover accidentally.

I thought these were interesting shots to mess with colours a bit, and get some old-fashioned photography look to them. iPhoto can do some interesting things.

First you'll see an obscure road intersection somewhere between Alturas and Susanville, CA. Somewhere in that three and a half hour stretch...

Our second photo is taken from inside the car, a dry lake nearby Susanville, CA, headed on the road to Reno.

There were many dry lakes out this way, the state was undergoing a bit of a drought at the time, it had been a few weeks since the last rain in that region. North of there, though, it had been raining near daily for a couple weeks.

One of the opportunities I've discovered from the many photos taken on our recent trip to California and Arizona is due to extenuating circumstances, many photos were taken in a rush, or from inside the rental car.

This means we have many photos that have reflections, blurs, blemishes, out of focus -- most of the photos are.

Playing with one of the photos, though, I realized that its a great opportunity to play around with iPhoto and get something out of these photos. Who cares if some aren't perfectly clear! Or are grainy, or dark! There's still plenty of things interesting that can be done with them.

That said, now onto the actual photos. One of the nicest surprises about Palm Springs, which could have been a horrible tourist trap (we didn't know) is that we were pleasantly surprised to see row upon row of wind turbines. I saw this as a good sign -- somewhere that those who determine energy policies realized that the near-constant desert winds were a resource as much as they could also be a nuissance. There really are a LOT of turbines here, I wouldn't even begin to estimate how many.

We were happy to also be in Palm Springs "off-season". Few visit there in June, as its hot, and so's the rest of North America at that time, so why go to a desert tourist town? Free parking, good healthy restaurants, great accommodations at reasonable rates are just a few.

And of course, there's many things to do in the surrounding region -- moreso if you don't live in or are not often in desert regions. The nearby Joshua Tree National Park, for example, where you can see a lot of interesting desert wildlife (lizards, many cacti.. including joshua trees of course). Just make sure you have water with you at such places, and that you drink it. They say most people who are found dehydrated -- dead or alive -- are often found with full or near-full canteens of water, victims of their own rationing.

Upon arriving at a relaxing natural hot springs spa motel, we had an interesting sight to see - clouds overhead with the sun peeking at random spots.

A lot of people get to see this in many places in the world, though its something we don't get often an opportunity to see in the city. Somewhere like this plateau of Surprise Valley in remote north-eastern Califoria gets this sight often I bet, with such wide open spaces, and mountains surrounding in all directions there's probably views more often even better than this.

Hopefully we'll get to go back again soon to more properly get some pictures from this area. Passing through the area in a bit of a rush was somewhat regrettable, though during this trip through California and Arizona, we did see a lot. At least we know now where to go to see or do what!

To the right is probably the first picture I've ever completely removed colour from on this site. Somehow the picture seemed better for it. No combination of tint/temperature adjustments seemed to work right for it.

If you ever happen to be passing through this area (very unlikely, but possible!), drop in to the Surprise Valley Spa. It comes well recommended!

In the distance can be seen the village of Cedarville.. population roughly 100 or so. Like many remote California villages, it doesn't matter how small the community is, you get a sign with elevation and population. Lowest I can seem to recall said 17 for population. Elevation in these pictures were roughly 5,500 feet.