Desert at Dawn

(and of course, I had to look at my title, and make sure it was "DESERT" and not "DESSERT", although having dessert at dawn wouldn't be such a hardship if it was something that was rich and decadent and didn't add a single ounce to my ever-so-slowly-declining body mass.)

I had these great ideas to get up at 5am and go up into the mountains on this trail that our concierge had suggested the night before. He'd drawn me a map, and everything, but when it came down to it, I realized that we were barely in the desert for 24 hours, and I didn't want to spend two of them driving in a rental car with limited mileage available. So I didn't set an alarm, and I thought "Let's just relax, and not try to squeeze adventure out of every darned minute."

There were no curtains on the frosted glass in the shower, so when the sky just started to lighten, it made our suite ever-so-slightly less dark. That must have been all I needed, because at 545, I was awake. Nobody else seemed to succumb to the light trigger, so I got up, put the big lens on my camera, and headed out for a walk.

Coming around the first corner, I stumbled upon a murder of crows. Or maybe they were ravens. But I don't know what you'd call a group of them, and I liked typing "murder". I was still a bit groggy, and didn't get the camera all set up until they'd decided they were done with this tree, and were just flying off. But imagine, if you would, a crow on nearly every branch...

(you can just see the last guy leaving in the bottom left Those were big birds, too.)

There were lots of rabbits and hares.

I love how they all do this "If I stand really still, and don't look at her, she won't notice me" thing.

Woo hoo! First roadrunner sighting.

These little hummingbirds were everywhere. They're not particularly bright or showy, but they seem much less skittish than the hummers that we have farther north.

Another roadrunner, who tries to pull the rabbit's trick of "If I stand very still, she won't see me"

After the sun was fully up, I walked back to our place, and replaced the super zoom lens with the super wide-angle one. Nobody was stirring (they're a bunch of sleep lovers, I guess), so I went back outside.

This is our place. There's a lovely little watercourse that babbles down the slope in front of our door. Makes for a nice soothing soundscape.

I went back inside, because it gets hot at 7, and Nate and Kelly were starting to stir. As they were eating breakfast, they looked out back to see a duck in the back yard. "Can we feed her?"

Apparently, ducks like Cheerios.

And then I looked at the kids and said "Who wants to go to the pool?"

And I became the Best Mother EVER!