The French Riviera

We are in France for three weeks and our travels here began in Nice. We spent one evening and a day there and found it fairly easy to get around on foot. They also have quite a good bus system, but since we have rented a car fo r the remainder of the trip we didn't make much use of the buses. Here are a few photos of our first couple of days.

First photo: We drove from Nice to the town of Eze. This is typical house construction in Eze.

Second photo: A street scene in Nice.

Third and fourth photos: the beach in Nice and a beach cafe.

Fifth photo: Breakfast at a roadside hotel restaurant on the way to Eze.











Kathyevanna.blogspot.com

 

We Like Red Rocks

As we left the Death Valley are we came upon this spectacular road cut composed of red and black obsidian (volcanic glass) and felsic volcanic ash. Notice the Girl Guide geological field trip. Yay, Girl Guides!

Farther along this road cut was this beautifully exposed fault. Quiz time for geology students--Is this a normal or a reverse fault?

Rapid uplift, lack of vegetation and desert type erosion reveal these zigzag patterns in alternating, inclined light and dark volcanic rock layers.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is about half an hour west of Las Vegas. We took the scenic drive and did a hike in the park. Guess what!? More Triassic dune crossbeds!

Some of the wildlife on the trail. Sune and Fendi found them most interesting, but they were totally non-plussed by our dogs and several others on the trail in this state park without rules that banish dogs from trails. One reason we were given for dog banishment is that bighorn sheep will avoid areas where dogs are. Yeah, right!

Big Horn Sheep

 

California Deserts - Part 2

Joshua Tree National Park is in the Mojave Desert, and as we left there and headed north we noticed that there was a visitor centre marked in another part of the Mojave desert.  On stopping there we discovered an area called the Mojave National Preserve, with camping and hiking trails that allow dogs.  We decided to stay one night there.  To get to the campground we had to drive over about 14 miles of gravel road.  Should be no problem, we're from SK, we thought, but it turned out to be 14 miles of washboard road, and it was about the worst washboard we have ever been on!

The campground had spectacular views to the south, but no trees.  It must be extremely hot in the summer.

There was a hiking trail that led to the visitor centre and then made a loop around a large mesa composed of volcanic ash and agglomerate.  We went on the hike with the dogs.

They did well scrambling up the rocks until we came to the rings.

Some sections up the mesa-cutting canyon trail were so steep that the Park Service had installed iron rings for hikers to hoist themselves up through the crevice.  We had to help the dogs climb those sections. Lack of opposable thumbs, you know!

Evanna on the rings

Our next stop was Death Valley, and it was pretty deadly - 35 degrees C and 50 - 80 mile per hour winds ahead of a 'cold' front.  The place has very little vegetation and none of it is in the campground, which is a large gravel parking lot, wall to wall with RVs.  You can imagine the dust!

But the scenery there is spectacular and we spent an evening and part of the next day on some scenic drives to take pictures of the wonderful colours of the eroded rocks, mostly volcanic.

Zabriskie Point at sunset

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point

Salt deposits in the valley

Colorful rocks on the Artists' Drive

Evanna on the Devil's Golf Course, an eroded salt playa. Note classic alluvial fans at foot of mountains across the valley.

We left Death Valley and stayed one night at Tecopa Hot Springs in the California Land Management campground.  The campground has a hot spring and they have developed two hot pools for men and two for women.  The men and women each have their own building which contains a hot pool, a cooler pool, showers and a change room.  Clothing (i.e.: bathing suits) is not allowed in the pools, hence the segregation.  The water leaves your skin feeling silky but is not fit for drinking due toxic heavy metal contents (including arsenic) and we found the evening soak very relaxing.

One of the campgrounds has a labyrinth which we walked up to contemplate. The water behind the labyrinth is a sewage lagoon that attracted lots of birds, as does any water body in the desert.

Near Tecopa Hot Springs we visited a date farm called China Ranch. We purchased some dates, muffins and date loaf, and went on one of the hikes on the property. The current owners have opened the historic property to hikers and birdwatchers. There is a spring-fed perennial stream that supports relatively lush vegetation. That makes it an obvious magnet for migrating and wintering birds. The hills in the photo are cut into Plio-Pleistocene lacustrine deposits that have been faulted somewhat by very recent tectonics. Gypsum was mined here in the early part of the last century.

Hiking at China Ranch

On to Nevada Next!

California Deserts

We got home to Regina Apr. 7th and have spent the time since then seeing friends, doing our taxes, fixing our computer, doing laundry and seeing to our bathroom renovation before we go to southern France on Apr. 23rd.  We finally got all the photos from our US trip loaded on the computer and we will give you a tour through the second half of our time in the south west USA.

We crossed into California at Yuma, making our way toward Thousand Palms.  We turned north shortly after entering California and having all of our citrus fruit confiscated by the Agriculture Department at their enormous check-point just inside the California Arizona border.  The area we drove through was pure desert, very little vegetation save creosote and mesquite trees, some ocotillo and a few cacti.

We could see the Imperial sand dunes off in the distance, and eventually we drove right through them.  The dunes on the north side of the highway are protected, but the dunes south of the highway are open for OHV access (Off-highway vehicle).  There are hundreds of RV's camped in the desert near access points to the dunes.  Some of them are in established camping clearings (not what we would call a campground) and some are just parked in a solid clear spot in the desert.  The Bureau of Land Management allows camping on their lands in the desert as long as you are a specified distance form a water source and from a road.

Sand hills in south eastern California

Evanna and dogs climbing the dune

We stopped in at a bird sanctuary on the east side of the Salton Sea, a huge inland lake that is also used for recreation.  It was quite hot that day so our hike was short, but we did see a roadrunner.  Very exciting!

Roadrunner

Gambel's Quail

In Thousand Palms we visited Kathy's Uncle Jim, and went with him to the Living Desert Park, a combination zoo and botanical gardens.

Jim and Kathy by the palms

Anza Borrego Desert State Park is about an hour and a half drive south west of Thousand Palms.  We spent a couple of days there doing driving tours as they have the ridiculous rule that no dogs are allowed on hiking trails.  There was one trail from the campground to the Visitor Centre that allowed dogs, so we walked it daily.

It was a nature trail and had information about the flora and fauna of the desert.  The Ocotillo were starting to bloom and a few cacti had flowers just beginning to open.

Ocotillo

Ocotillo flowers

You were allowed to walk your dogs on the roads, so we walked up a road to see if we could see the view at the end.  The Yuccas were also beginning to blossom.

Yucca blossom

Our camp site at Anza-Borrego. Note that we are eating grapefruit purchased from the local orchard for $3 a big bag. Also note the native California fan Palms

The desert around the adjacent town of Borrego Springs contains numerous large welded metal sculptures. Dennis Avery, the owner of Galleta Meadows Estates in Borrego Springs, commissioned these sculptures by artist /welder Ricardo Breceda.  Many of them are of prehistoric creatures that have been excavated from the Plio-Pleistocene sediments of the park area.   Some of them depict the human  history of the area, and some are just for fun!

An hour or less north of Thousand Palms is Joshua Tree National Park, where we spent a couple of days (another place with no dogs rules on the trails).  We did some driving tours, we each did a solo hike while the other person stayed with the dogs, and we waked on some roads with the dogs, so we had a good visit there.  It is a beautiful place, with the Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) and the huge granite boulders and outcrops.

Joshua Tree

Driving through the Joshua Tree Forest

Blossom on the Joshua Tree

In the park there were two desert environments, the lower elevation zone had wild flowers and cacti, such as the Opuntia and Cholla.  The higher elevation had the Joshua Trees and the Mojave Yucca.

Opuntia Cactus in bloom

Sune and Fendi

The campground was situated in the spheroidally weathered granite outcrops so was a fascinating place to do evening photography.

Sunset