Picnic Table Peak

A couple of days ago I hiked up Picnic Table Peak on the south side of Lake Havasu City, AZ shown to the left.

...and from a bit to the left of the pic above.

Lots of great views on the way up!

And as promised a picnic table at the top.

Engraved plate on the table top.

And my first sighting of desert lupine on the return hike.

Lake Havasu sunset.

We're having some great sunsets here over Lake Havasu, AZ. Not being much of a morning person I can't remember the last time I saw a sunrise, and it's not exactly early here either, but have been trying to make it a point since I've been here in Havasu to see the sunset everyday. Most of them have looked pretty much like this. I never get tired of it...

Feb 23, 2012

Feb 24, 2012

More Desert Plants & Flowers

I've finally identified this for sure as a Brittlebush.  They're nearly as common as creosote bushes here around Havasu.


Brittlebush is a medium-sized rounded shrub. It has long, oval, silver-gray leaves that are somewhat fuzzy. The branches are brittle and woody, and contain a fragrant resin. In the late winter and early spring small yellow flowers form on long stalks well above the leafy stems. It is found throughout the Sonoran Desert and in the warmer areas of the Mojave Desert. It also can be found growing in the coastal chaparral and interior valleys of southern California. Brittlebush is found throughout the Sonoran Desert and in the warmer areas of the Mojave Desert.  It can live as long as 20 years.

 This is another very common plant here and I'm not sure what it is yet. 





















[ 27Feb12 note: as it turns out the orange stuff is actually a parasitic plant, similar to mistletoe called dodder or cuscuta.  You can read more about it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscuta

 After it rained the other day I ran across this flower on a creosote bush.  It was the first time I'd seen a flower on a creosote bush.

It's just money... a random collection of thoughts on the subject.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.”

Pretty much everything I understand about economics came from Paul Krugman...

This from Paul Krugman's August 23, 2009 column "All the President's Zombies":

"Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good."

"Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming."

"...the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years."

"...most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains."

"...politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came."

Per capita United States GDP-2008: $47,000. [ CIA - World Fact Book https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html ]
...so that's like $188,000 for a family of four-- or about 9 times the poverty level.    So how can we not be able to "afford" health care for everyone?

Some old thinking that's still relevant today:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Havasu Visitors

My brother Dave and his wife Jan stopped to visit me here in Havasu for a few days.  We took three hikes while they were here.

We actually did the hardest hike on the first day out.  It was about three miles long and went through a very cool narrows which is a dry creek bed, usually that is, and involved going down a number of dry water falls.  The biggest one of which is shown to the left.

 So we survived the narrows and took the high trail back so as not to have to retrace our steps through the narrows.

The next day we hiked to Pittsburg Mine in the foot hills to the east of Lake Havasu City.  This mine was first discovered and developed in about 1879 and was then worked again in the early 1900's.  This is what remains of the main mine shaft, which has been mostly filled in.

 The trail to the mine mostly required walking up a dry wash with several waterfalls.  They tend to be easier to go up that to come down.

NME Online Magazine Award Winning Video...

I'm not really sure why but... NME Online Magazine thinks this video of my friend Phil and I playing 'Deed I Do could be award worthy-- you can watch it at:  http://www.youtube.com