This is No Thoroughfare Canyon on the Colorado National Monument. I've been up it maybe 30 or 40 times, but this is the first time I'd hiked it in the snow. Very pretty. There's almost never water in the creek, but with the cold weather and recent snowfall, there was an ice flow.
We went over to Moab to go hiking a couple of time.s Here's Nancy as we were climbing up a trail.
Here we are on the first hike in Moab.
Here we are on the second hike in Moab with the La Sals in the background. It was significantly warmer the second day. The rightmost peak is Tukuhnikivatz, which we climbed in the summer of 2005.
Unexpectedly, we came across an amazing collection of petroglyps. There was a gorgeous cliffside, and the petroglyphs stretched on and on for maybe half a mile. That's why we came back to the same spot the second day: the first day, we didn't have time to fully explore the site. The second day, we even found a stone structure on top of a sandstone fin. The glyphs below that were particuarly dense.
These are some of my favorites.
This was a particularly interesting cluster. In the upper left, there's a person inside another person, but the bigger person has an odd head and horns. I wish I could ask the person who made it what it was about.
This is the view up one of the cliffs that had the glyphs on the bottom. The red rock with the deep blue sky resonates with me very well.
This is quite possibly my favorite picture from the trip. That's Nancy on the ridgeline.
An interesting sandstone formation. Each "bubble" is about the size of a quarter.
Another sandstone texture. This one is wind-carved, and each slot is maybe 3 feet long.
The sun was setting as we hurried back to the car (it was hard to leave the petroglyphs, and there were still some places we hadn't explored).
We crested a ridge just in time to catch the pink light on the La Sals.
In Tucson, I watched the hummingbirds on my mom's feeder. This one is an Anna's Hummingbird, I believe (the only hummer in the US with a red crest).
This is a female hummer of some species. She also liked the feeder, but the Anna's hummer was rather territorial and didn't like her . . .
I snapped the shot just in time to catch the Anna's hummer dive bombing the other hummer.
This saguaro lined up with a cloud so that it looked like it had a Truffula tuft from Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax".