May 29, 2010 about to leave Benson, AZ

Hi everyone.

We have spent a busy winter, first getting the house that used to belong to Gary's Dad renovated and ready to rent.  Finished that about the first of March but then there was lots to do around the yard, trying to get it in condition so that it would stay looking good.  We planted a little garden, had radishes, lettuce and zucchini.

Yesterday we took Gary's brother and sister-in-law with us on an amazing adventure.  We took off from Benson headed north.  Here are some pictures from the San Pedro River valley.  

We were not doing just riding, we did geocaching along the way.  It is great, keeps you doing enough walking that you don't end up stiff from sitting all day long.  Here Gary is viewing a ranch, out across the desert.  But what I really enjoyed was the beautiful flowers.  Usually we leave AZ before the Saguaros start to bloom.  They aren't completely out but thought these were good enough.

We were all fascinated by this formation, very unusual in this area.  Now we will see some of the close ups of the flowers we got to see because of the geocaches.

See the honey bee, he was black instead of the brown that I'm familiar with but you may not be able to tell that since he was covered with yellow pollen.  He looked like he had been rolling around in the pollen.  On another blossom we saw the little feathery part in the center kept moving, like the coral in the ocean.  When we watched closely we found there were tiny bugs in the bottom moving around.  You couldn't see the bugs so it looked like it was just the flower.

 These are cholla blossoms.  The desert was really alive with blooms. 

The Ocotilla were beautiful too.  It was really interesting to see the varied terrain and what flowers were supported there.  The Ocotilla were much higher than the Saguaros.

We don't know the name of the flowers above but they sure were pretty.  We climbed the back side of Mt Lemmon.  It is a pretty rocky road, you need high clearance vehicles to make this trip.  This was a little canyon that came right down to the road.  Water was running, still coming from the melting slow on the mountain top.  I hope you enjoyed our trip.  The final leg was down the mountain on the Tucson side, terminating at the Boston Market for a bite of dinner.  We had left Benson that morning around 9 a.m. and it was nearly 9 p.m. by the time we got back.  Needless to say we were all whipped and ready for a shower and bed.  

It seems like Blogspot has improved their software and it didn't take nearly as long to upload as in prior sessions.  Maybe we can do a better job of keeping up with it.  Take care and see you soon.