A trip to the High Country

As I said in my last blog, my grandmother is in town. She comes through Arizona every year with her manfriend in a motor home to watch the baseball Spring Training games. We've been hanging out a lot, and yesterday we went to Roosevelt Lake, AZ, about 2.5 hours NE of Phoenix. I didn't realize such a great lake was so close, but it was beautiful! (Click to enlarge.)

It still amazes me to see cactus growing just on the bank of a lake... I know they still need water to survive, but seeing huge Saguaros living somewhere other than the dry desert is pretty cool to see!


At the far end of the lake is the Roosevelt Dam, approved by Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900's. It empties every few hours, and in order to keep traffic off the dam, a bridge was built, the Roosevelt Lake Bridge. Apparently it was painted light blue to "blend in" with the sky and water.



I'm not the biggest fan of dams... I mean I know they do a lot of good to humans, providing water for us, and electricity, but there are many controversies with wildlife and dams, especially along rivers where salmon frequent to spawn every year. Fish ladders just don't do the trick, and more and more salmon are dying. This not only destroys the salmon population, but the animals that eat the salmon as well, especially brown bears in Alaska. So I'm not all that "awed" about dams and their appearance. Yes, they do make for a beautiful lake on the other side, but I'd rather have a healthy ecosystem.

We took a 22-mile dirt road on the way back; a little different scenery than the way in. There were really some magnificent crags and canyons along the way. It was incredible.

I heart animals

My grandma on my dad's side is in town, and yesterday we went to the Wildife World Zoo together, in Litchfield, AZ. This place opened just Dec. of '08, so its pretty new. I must say, I liked it better than the Phoenix Zoo, even though it's still hard for me to see animals in cages smaller than that should be in. You can click on the images themselves to make them bigger if you like.

My old friend, the gray kangaroo


Spider monkey

Red-tailed hawk

Meerkat

There's a first time for everything, right? This was my first time hand-feeding a giraffe, and I loved it. I think he liked it too ;)

Tapir, found in South American swamps. They're as large as a small cow!

I loved this little spider monkey. She posed for me so many times.

Now she's just showing off...

Ringtail lemur

Defassa waterbuck

Gardening just for Old People?

The other day I went into Target to buy some more plants cuz they're uber cheap there... and the lady at the desk said "You're probably the youngest person we've had into gardening around here, I give you props." Is it seriously only old women that garden anymore?? I so wish I had a house so I could have a garden! Is that silly? I love plants and enjoy taking care of them and watching things grow from a seed. So does Erik. Besides, it gives me something to do. We have 10 potted plants on our deck, 3 of which are planted key lime seeds to see if we can get lime trees. I know they probably won't produce limes, but it's worth a try! My favorite plant I have, which happens to be my second favorite flower, is an orange hibiscus. (My favorite flower is the plumeria.) They're pretty cool because the flower lasts only a day and a half, then they close up and fall off, and just hours later, new flowers will open up from the next buds, and they just keep going! Sooo pretty.

That's what's great about living in the southern states -- we can get by growing sub-tropical plants like this. They wouldn't last in Oregon because of the cold winters.

Another supercool plant I have is a tiny orange cactus called a "hibotan", also called a "moon cactus" or "ruby ball". It's so cute!!

We also have jades, aloe plant, and more succulents that I don't have to water often. I'll let you know if our lime trees grow ;). Soon I'm going to start growing tomatoes, cilantro, basil, and anything else we use to cook with! I also want "hens and chickens" because they remind me of my Bumper (grandpa), and they produce pretty amazing flowers.

Stargazing

Last week I went to San Tan Mountain for a short hike, and found out that the coming weekend they hosted a stargazing seminar, where a ranger taught us about the constellations and the planets. I invited a group of my friends from down here to go, and we had a lot of fun. The hosts had about 7 telescopes pointed at different stars and planets. It was pretty incredible. Saturn is amazing through a telescope. The rings were very visible, along with two of its moons. Apparently Saturn has a total of 60 moons! I was only able to get a clear shot of the moon and Venus with my camera... can you tell which is which? ;P


Next time there's a full moon I want to get back out there and take some of it rising... so stay tuned!

Love-Day Weekend

Erik and I 'celebrated' Valentines Day yesterday since he had to work the day of. We spent the morning watching movies in our pjs and in the afternoon played tennis with a couple friends, Rushi and Emily. Afterward, Erik took me to a beautiful Cheesecake Factory for dinner, where we feasted on delicious pasta and, of course, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, my favorite desert in the whole wide world! It was heaven in every bite. We had a most excellent date night.

The actual day of Valentines Day, I went hiking with a new friend, Alynda. She has the cutest, spunkiest Beagle named Charlie who joined us on the hike, and I had more fun taking pictures of him than our surroundings!

I also baked 24 red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting... my favorite cupcake ;). But why I made 24 I don't know, because now there are currently 15 cupcakes residing in our fridge. I had friends Emily and Ray over for some Scatagories, and luckily they were happy to take some cupcakes home with them. I don't know why, but every holiday, I'm in the mood to bake dozens of sweets, more than I can eat myself!

Today Erik and I went hiking up a mountain I haven't had the chance to hike yet near our apartments, and it was much fun. The weather was perfect. I didn't bring my camera with its zoom lense for once, so I told Erik that we were going to see wildlife since I did NOT have it with me. And of course, along the way we saw something amazing. What I believe were fallow deer! Something very rare to see, and my first time seeing them ever. They are not very common around here, and I never thought I would even see ANY deer around here because of how hot it gets here in the summer! But they (a buck and a doe) were on the side of the road, grazing on the grasses. Luckily, Erik had his little point-and-shoot camera, which turned out to be ok ;).

Fallow deer are native to the Mediterranean and SE China, but were brought over to North America long ago. They're the only deer I could make them out to be... Fallow deer are more known for their spots even as adults, but being winter, I've been told the spots are not as prominent.

The rest of our hike we only saw tiny lizards, so, 'tsall good. Nothing else along the way to feel guilty about not having my zoom lense. Just Erik being goofy and some amazing views from the top!

Stormy day

If you're still wondering whether or not I got that vet clinic job, well... it's still in the process. It's been about 3 weeks and I'm still waiting, ha! I had interviewed at 2 clinics, and then went back again for shadows, but both clinics are still interviewing other people, some probably more qualified than I am. I would say "I'll probably know in a few days", but that's what I have been saying every week and then the same thing happends. I get a call, or I call them, and they say "well, we're interviewing one more person this week so we'll get back to you". So I'm not going to make any guesses this time, and I'm not going to wait by the phone like I have been the past 3 weeks either. I'll let you know as soon as I do.

On other news, it snowed in the mountains around Pheonix! Something I didn't think I would see... But the past 3 days have been cold and stormy, and this morning we looked out the window and there was snow lightly dusted on the mountains. Pretty cool sight to see when there are desert cacti within an arms length away from you.

Birds, birds, birds

Lately I've been spotting a lot of really cool birds down here. The most frequent are Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons, both so incredably prehistoric-looking. I'm just so intrigued by them! Both are very large birds, being the largest of the egret and heron species. There are a lot of man-made ponds and lakes around here, and occasionally you will find them standing along the waterline watching for fish, and they always look fake. Below is a Great Egret that just perched itself on a palm tree overlooking the pond.

Apparently, when Great Blue Herons are fishing, they try to be as sneaky as possible, and literally "tip-toes" up on the fish. It does a little side-step move, moving closer and closer to the fish, and when it grabs the fish it barelly has to even rush. It just swoops right in and there is this nice fishy in the mouth, its life already flashing before its eyes.

"Gulp!"

Neotropic Cormorants also frequent here this time of year. I have only ever seen cormorants on the coast and thought they were strictly coastal birds... Shows how much I know about birds...