Dry Creek: Anatomy of a Flood (One of Many Across California Today)

 

After days of gloomy and wet weather, New Year's Day dawned bright and sunny, and we couldn't resist driving out into the California prairie to have a look at the beautiful landscape. The streams across the prairies east of Modesto were full and flowing in a way we haven't seen for a number of years. And that's the problem of course. 

This creek, normally dry, was just one of many dozens of tributaries to Dry Creek, which is itself an unregulated, undammed tributary to the Tuolumne River. This entire area received upwards of five inches of precipitation in the last day or two, and all the water had to go somewhere.

I included a picture of Dry Creek in my post yesterday, when it was flowing at about 600 cubic feet per second (cfs). I am including another picture below, taken at the same time, but from an angle that shows the pasture to the left. I knew that more water would be coming downstream, maybe as much as 1,500 cfs, an amount that would actually be more, by a wide margin, than the main drainage in the area, the Tuolumne River.

That's not quite what happened...

When we crossed the Dry Creek Bridge north of Waterford today, the creek was running at 6,000 cubic feet per second, more than ten times the flow of the previous day. Take a look below at what happened to the pasture (not to mention all the shrubs and brambles at the base of the oak trees).

By the time we arrived in the prairies in the afternoon today, most of the floodwaters had subsided in the upper watershed, but we could see evidence everywhere that a significant flood event had taken place. Rocks were strewn across the roadways, and every watercourse showed evidence of having been feet deeper the previous day. One bridge we crossed would have been four feet underwater during the height of the storm. 

The flood hydrograph below tells the story. The data is taken from a stream gage downstream in Modesto. The bar graph at the top shows the pattern of the rainfall in the storm up in the watershed, and the subsequent rise of Dry Creek. Notice how the rise of the creek lagged behind the precipitation. This so-called lagtime makes sense because it takes time for the water to gather into the tributaries and then to flow the twenty miles or so downstream. Lagtime represents the critical hours that residents downstream can prepare for the oncoming flood.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a government entity that could monitor all rivers and all flood events so that when such events unfold, there could be timely warnings? Perhaps even keeping records of storms over the course of a century or more, so that specific warnings could be made about the timing and the expected intensity of the oncoming flood? Unlike earthquakes, floods can be predicted, and there are in fact government institutions that are tasked with this job, mainly the United States Geological Survey (across the entire US), and the Department of Water Resources specifically in California.

Which brings us to the handy-dandy bottom portion of the hydrograph. The blue line on the graph is what happened already. The pink line is the prediction. We have another intense storm coming on Wednesday, and after dropping to around 300 cfs, Dry Creek is going to rise again to at least 6,000 cfs and maybe more. Isn't it nice that we have several days warning? That's just one huge example of the value of science in our society.

Of course, no one is perfect, and all models and predictions can be affected by unknown and unexpected factors. The storm this week offers one tragic example. Although most streams and rivers behaved more or less as predicted, the Cosumnes River defied the predictions and produced record flooding, well beyond the predicted levels. 

What went wrong? Those who do science fully understand that errors happen, and it their goal is to understand the reason for such errors. The factors in the Cosumnes River flooding are being analyzed and may include an unexpected slowing of the storm front causing increased precipitation, two or three broken levees, and the Caldor Fire of 2021 that ravaged much of the watershed upstream. If you want to follow the analysis, check out the Weather West blog by Daniel Swain (@Weather_West on Twitter).

So, there is my science homily for the day. But we were out to explore some nature, and in any case, we need to appreciate the gifts we have been given. The day, a respite from a long series of expected storms, was beautiful. 

Mountain Bluebirds are not common on the valley floor, but we saw a small flock along the road.

An American Kestrel is a sharp-looking small member of the falcon family. This one remained perched near our car for a few moments.

Bald Eagles are not especially abundant in the region, but we found one. So had an 'unkindness' of Common Ravens, and they were making their displeasure known to the eagle.

And finally, an old horse seemed to appreciate the sunshine. The horses were brought to the continent by the Spaniards in the 1500s, but they actually have a long heritage here. They evolved in North America tens of millions of years ago! They migrated across the Bering Land Strait and spread throughout the world, but for some reason went extinct along with many other large mammal species in North America about 12,000 years ago.

Fall in California: On the Way to Yosemite Valley

Have you ever felt a sense of joy that could hardly be contained? It doesn't happen much in life, and when it does, don't you wish you could hang onto as long as possible? That's about all I can say after our brief sojourn in one of our most precious national parks these last two days.

Pretty much on a whim Mrs. Geotripper and I decided to take a time out from work and spend a few days out of the Central Valley up in the Sierra Nevada. I hadn't paid too much attention to reports from Yosemite Valley, but I figured being early November that most of the fall colors would have been past their prime, but we figured that one can never really have a bad time in the mountains, no matter the time of year. We headed up Highway 120 towards the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park. The sun put on quite a light show as we passed through the prairies beyond Knights Ferry.

I pretty much forget every year that fall colors are not so much a singular event as much a process that unfolds over many weeks. The Aspens in the high country may have burst into bright gold and shed their leaves, but in the middle-altitude forests the Dogwoods and Black Oaks were just coming into their most colorful time. We were mesmerized and stopped at practically every pullout to stare at the kaleidoscope of colors. 

And as tragic as the California wildfires have been, I learned of at least one benefit that becomes apparent at this time of year. Several stretches of Big Oak Flat Road burned in recent years, removing the thick forest cover of conifers. They've been pretty slow about coming back, but the oaks sprouted from the roots and covered the hillsides with shrubby young trees that had turned bright orange as you can see in the picture below.

A close look at some of the leaves reveals that insects have been busy building fat stores for the coming winter.

We entered the park and continued to stop at every bright display of color. Half the day had passed, and we still hadn't reached Yosemite Valley. We were just SO distracted! I almost missed the first look at the valley because not a single car was parked there. We took a moment to view Half Dome and El Capitan and then continued down the highway into the Merced River canyon.

We continued to be distracted by the colorful displays along the road, but we finally reached the valley floor.

I rarely stop at Fern Spring at the west end of the valley because there's not a whole lot to see because of the thick forest, but the forest turned out to be the attraction this time. I jumped down the slope to the Merced River and something was very different, something that I had never really seen before: the river was flowing! In these dry years by late October the Merced River is flowing at a mere dozen cubic feet per second or so. But not today; the river was splashing along as if it were early spring rather than the end of the most deadly drought year in history. The record-breaking storm of the previous week was still draining out of the high country where two or three feet of snow had fallen. It was an astounding sight, and I realized that our time in valley might be something special.

So we moved on up the road into the valley itself, but that is a story for the next post!

Out on the California Prairies: Taking Stock of California's Most Powerful Storm Ever

There are many ways to describe the power of a storm: monetary damages from flooding, rainfall totals, rise of reservoirs and rivers, and others. So one can argue about which particular storm was the most powerful to ever hit the state. I'm thinking especially of storms like those of 1861-62 that left much of the Central Valley as a vast lake for months, the 1997 floods that overwhelmed some reservoirs in the Sierra, or the 1969 floods that I experienced in Southern California. They were all devastating floods, and yesterday's storm won't be remembered the same way as these disasters, but in two ways this storm apparently was unique. 

The storm was called a "bomb cyclone", a term that meteorologists apparently hate in the same way that geologists hate "supervolcano". In any case, the power of the storm lay in the intense low pressure cyclone spinning in the ocean offshore of California and the Pacific Northwest. The lower the pressure, the higher the pressure gradient force that controls wind speed. The pressure was a record 942 millibars, and this generated hurricane-force winds over the ocean. Inland, vegetation and mountains slowed the gales, but we still had a wild day in the Central Valley, with trees and telephone lines down.

The Tuolumne River at Roberts Ferry Bridge

Storms can be incredibly powerful in terms of winds, but as I've discovered in Death Valley National Park, without a source of moisture, that will be it: powerful winds. But this storm tapped into subtropical moisture from the general vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. This band of moisture, termed an atmospheric river, carries vastly more water than even the Mississippi. This stream of atmospheric moisture was pushed upward as it encountered the frontal system of the cyclone and it produced a prodigious amount of relatively warm precipitation. A number of all-time records for one day storm totals fell across the state, including downtown Sacramento, which got 5.44", breaking a record that stood since 1880. That represents 69% of all the rain the city received in the entire rain year 2020-21. Blue Canyon in the Sierra Nevada got 10.40", which amounted to almost a third of the entire 2020-21 water year. 

I headed out onto the prairies of the Great Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills this afternoon to see what the atmospheric storm did to the grasslands. My first stop was to check out the Tuolumne River at Roberts Ferry Bridge (above). The river hadn't changed much, as it takes time for the waters to gather the storm runoff and move downstream, but the river is also controlled by the huge dam at Don Pedro Reservoir, and they'll hold onto as much water as they can. It's currently at 48% of capacity, which is bad, but not as bad as most other Northern California reservoirs (Lake Shasta is at 22% or so).

The biggest effect on the Tuolumne will be in downtown Modesto where Dry Creek joins the bigger river. Dry Creek is a normally...well...dry creek that has headwaters in the foothills north of Modesto Reservoir. It is undammed, so it can occasionally produce large floods that can back up into some residential neighborhoods. It had a minimal flow over the last few weeks of a few cubic feet per second. But I could see that a lot of water was gathering out in the prairie. The picture above shows one of the small tributaries to Dry Creek, and channels like this are present all over the region. By tomorrow Dry Creek may be flowing at close to 900 cubic feet per second.

The prairie for the most part was certainly wet, but there were few visual reminders that a vast amount of rain had fallen overnight. The vernal pools held water and creeks were flowing. But little flooding and soil loss had taken place, with one glaring exception. Tens of thousands of acres of prairie have been uprooted to be be replaced by almond groves. These groves have been planted in nice neat rows up and down the hillsides, providing a convenient avenue for floodwaters to cause intense soil erosion. I passed numerous scenes like that above where mud from the orchards had flowed down the road. It's hard to believe in this day and age that the farmers would be making the kind of mistakes that led to the Dust Bowl in the 1920s in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas.

Away from the almond groves, the grass roots held the soil in place, and the water was infiltrating underground and flowing gently in the recently dry creek beds to gather and eventually drain into the Tuolumne River. The birds and other life seemed enervated by the moisture and were very active throughout the afternoon. I saw lots of Brewer's Blackbirds, Western Meadowlarks, Savannah Sparrows, Red-tailed and Ferruginous Hawks, American Kestrels, and Ravens. I loved coming across the small herd of horses; I was reminded that horses evolved on these prairies millions of years ago before migrating into Asia. They later became extinct here in North America only to be 'returned' by the Spaniards in the 1500s.

The final thought about today's storm is knowing that after the warm rains that snow would be falling in the high country of the Sierra Nevada. In the webcam from the Yosemite Conservancy we can see that upper Yosemite Valley is now mantled with the cold white stuff. Many wishes that this could be the start of a good water year with a chance to recover somewhat from our devastating drought.

The Prairies of California: the Most Extraordinary Landscape (and Ecosystem) in California

The Tuolumne River on the east side of the Great Valley

I admit this statement is a hard sell, especially among those who live here, but hear me out: the Great Valley prairie is the most extraordinary landscape and ecosystem in California. 

The Great Valley prairie remnant east of Modesto

"But", they will say, "the valley is boring. It is just one long flat plain full of farms, feedlots, oil derricks, and urban hellscapes. It's dusty and the air is bad. And there is nothing to do." And from their point of view, their statement is valid. But that's not the part that I am talking about. I'm talking about the valley that once was, and more importantly, the 5% of the valley that is not given over to agriculture and urban development. It is that small bit that teaches us what once was. 

I was thinking a lot about the original valley today.

Prairie and wetlands at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge south of Turlock

The occasion was World Migratory Bird Day, Global Bird Weekend, and eBird's October Big Day. The purpose of the day is to gain a one-day snapshot of the world of birds, and birdwatchers all over the world contributed observations. For myself, I decided I wanted to capture as much of the primeval Great Valley prairie as I could, so I selected three habitats for the day: the valley wetlands and marshes, the riparian environment, and the dryland prairies that once filled the spaces between the rivers and wetlands. In the end Mrs. Geotripper and I explored the Merced National Wildlife Refuge and the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, and in the afternoon I walked the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail (as I often do). As the sun began to set I took a drive through the prairies between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers east of Modesto. In all we saw nearly 60 species of birds.

One of the most extraordinary facts about the prairie lands of California is that they ever existed at all. The Great Valley is 400 miles long and 30-40 miles wide, and with the exception of a single volcanic center at Sutter Buttes, is as flat as any place on Earth. The entire American West is characterized by rugged mountainous topography, including the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada of California between which the Great Valley is sandwiched. Such a large mostly flat region is akin to finding a serene quiet lake surface in the midst of an intense hurricane.

The origin of the Great Valley lies in the violent tectonics of the subduction zone that existed off the coast of California for at least 200 million years. A region of oceanic crust was being driving beneath the western edge of the North American continent, forming a trench and a deformed mass of sediment called an accretionary wedge. Parts of the accretionary wedge were buoyed upwards to become the core of California's Coast Ranges.

As the slab of ocean crust sank into the Earth's mantle, portions of the plate melted and formed vast plutons of magma that melted their way through the overlying continental crust, forming an extensive volcanic chain called a magmatic arc. The deeper parts of the magmatic arc eventually cooled to become the granitic rocks of the Sierra Nevada.

Between the geologically violent wedge and arc though was a shallow sea that simply collected sediments washed off the land. This sedimentary trough is known as a forearc basin. As the sediments accumulated, they pressed the crust downwards, providing room for additional sediments. Eventually these silt and sand layers reached a thickness of 25,000 feet or more. These sediments became the floor of the Great Valley.

Source: National Park Service

The valley was below sea level for most of its first 140 million years, but in the last four or five million years the floor of the valley was lifted slightly above sea level to become the plain it is today. It is dry in large part because the adjacent Coast Ranges act as a barrier to incoming storms from the Pacific Ocean. It is literally a desert in the southern portions from Fresno to Bakersfield, but the dry plain is crossed by numerous rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada.

In antiquity the valley was a vast prairie, a grassland stretching 400 miles from what is now Bakersfield to Redding. The drylands were broken up by a system of rivers, marshes and wetlands that supported groves of oak, cottonwood, and sycamore and vast thickets of willows and shrubs. These plants supported a rich fauna.

Until roughly 12,000 years ago, the prairies were populated by millions of grazing animals including horses, camels, deer, elk, bison, and even elephant species like mammoths and mastodons. This megafauna was preyed upon by a terrifying roster of predators including saber-tooth cats, 
lions, cheetahs, dire wolves, and bears, including the California Grizzly and the even larger short-faced bear. The cause of the extinction of most of these species is still debated, but the prime suspects are climate change and overhunting by newly-arrived humans. A minority view argues for an asteroid impact that primarily affected North America.

Sandhill Crane and Great Egret at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

In the aftermath of the extinctions, the valley still supported a robust ecosystem. The mild winters provided shelter for millions of migratory birds, and the grasslands were grazed by elk, deer, and antelope. Predators included wolves, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, and bears. The Tule Elk were thought to have been hunted to extinction in the years after the Gold Rush, but a small remnant of the species survived on a single ranch at the south end of the valley. The California grizzly and wolves were eliminated in the early 1900s. 

Tule Elk bull at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. We didn't see any today so I borrowed a shot I took in 2016

Today the remaining original prairie and wetlands environments are present due to sheer luck, and from concerted efforts by many environmental organizations and government agencies. A series of national wildlife refuges have been established like a string of pearls up and down the valley to provide habitat for the millions of migrating cranes, geese, swans and other species.

The White-faced Ibis is a tropical species that looks almost black until the sun shines on the iridescent feathers. The white face appears in the breeding season.

Some grass prairies are preserved in state parks and national monuments (most notably Carrizo Plains National Monument). But most persist because they are on cattle ranch property. These private lands are threatened by the rapid expansion of almond groves into the foothills. In my county alone, tens of thousands of acres have been planted, with no secure irrigation sources for the thirsty trees. I'm pretty sure they'll be abandoned within a decade or so as the groundwater they are using dries up.

Dry Creek, shown here, has earned its name this year, although it is capable of serious flooding in wet years. An invading and misguided almond orchard can be seen at upper right.

The riparian habitats have their own problems. The river woodlands are among the least-affected environments as attempts to develop them as farmlands tended to fail because of repeated flooding. Still, much damage was done in the attempt, and current efforts are directed at replanting native species in floodplains that have reverted to government or conservancy ownership.

The Tuolumne River near the Sierra Nevada foothills.

It is the rivers themselves that face the biggest challenges. There is no more contentious issue in the Great Valley than water use and distribution, especially in severe drought years. All of the major rivers are dammed and strictly controlled except for the occasional exceptional flood. The Tuolumne has been kept at a minimal flow, enough to maintain a string of river water into the delta. The slow-moving water is subject to warming to a dangerous level for river species, and the expansion of invasive species like river hyacinth. Through it all the river is a beautiful walk at all times of the year.

Sandhill Cranes at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

It was a serene day, but it was also the calm before the storm. The migratory birds are beginning to arrive in greater numbers, and soon these pools will be filled with Snow and Ross's Geese, Tundra Swans, and Aleutian Cackling Geese. There is nothing quite like seeing a flock of 10,000 geese take off all at once. It becomes so easy to imagine what once was in this most extraordinary place.

California's Rarest Ecosystems: The Prairies and Vernal Pools (Part One of a Two-part Miniseries)

The lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada are one of the most unique and almost universally ignored parts of California. Caught between the famous and heavily-visited forests and alpine regions of Yosemite's high country and the utilitarian agricultural fields of the Great Valley, the lower foothills are made of soils too poor to be developed, and too "plain" to be noticed by people rushing up the highways to the mountain resorts. For much of the year they seem barren and lifeless. But these prairies are one of the most precious of California's diverse ecosystems.

The prairies of California once extended the length of the Great Valley, a 400-mile-long grassland supporting millions of grazing animals, birds, and predators, including Tule Elk, Pronghorn, Deer, Grizzly Bear, Mountain Lions, Coyotes, Foxes, and numerous rodents, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects. In earlier times (more than 10,000 years ago) there were camels, horses, bison, giant ground sloths, Columbian Mammoths, Saber-tooth Cats, and Dire Wolves.

There were also modern-day wolves, and it is ironic and coincidental that a wolf returned this week to the Great Valley for the first time in a century. It is a young male from Oregon who made an epic journey through Modoc County into the Sierra Nevada near Yosemite Valley, and then into the Sierra foothills of Fresno County, and across the Great Valley (including two freeway crossings). At last report it's now in Monterey County (it's wearing a radio transmitter). 

The prairies were covered with native grasses that were quickly replaced by invasive species when European colonizers arrived and started herding sheep and cattle. Farms eventually replaced the ranches, and the remaining prairies, no more than 5% of the original land cover, were relegated to the fringes where the soils were poor and no water was available for irrigation. Those remaining prairies form a belt through the foothills of Sierra Nevada.  A narrow remnant can be found along the Coast Ranges and the Carrizo Plains west of Bakersfield.

The prairie soils in the Sierra Nevada foothills are notably poor in nutrients because they have not been part of an active floodplain in tens of thousands of years, and the fertile components have been leached away, leaving behind reddish iron oxides and thick clays. Differential settling and wind deflation has left small hollows and depressions that collect rainfall during the relatively rare winter storms. The clay prevents the water from seeping underground, so pools will persist for weeks or months at a time. These pools are the basis for one of California's rarest ecosystems, the vernal pools.

The vernal pools are islands of diverse life in the otherwise barren grasslands. Numerous species of plants and wildflowers, amphibians, and invertebrates have evolved to survive the weeks of water and the months of dryness. As the waters evaporate away, one species of plant after another germinates, grows, and goes to seed. The pools are often rimmed in colorful zones of different flowers.

I'm writing about the vernal pools today because the limitations of travel in the times of a pandemic have kept me pretty close to home. I live on the edge of the prairie between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers and I was out there today. A few pools are left, and flowers are blooming across the region. The views are expansive, extending to the snow-capped peaks of the High Sierra.

The pools and plants provide food and cover for multitudes of bugs and other wiggly organisms, so the pools are trafficked by a large variety of birds, and dozens of species can be identified by discerning and observant individuals, and occasionally by me as well. 

I saw a half-dozen American Avocets in one pond a few weeks ago.

The prairies are one of the best places to see the rare and threatened Burrowing Owls. The area around Crabtree, Willms, and Cooperstown Roads are among the most dependable places to see them in our region.

Savannah Sparrows are a common species, and they'll occasionally cooperate with photographers.

The Western Kingbirds seemed to arrive from their winter homes in Mexico all at once last week. I saw none a week ago, and dozens today, including this one that hung about long enough for a picture.

I have no picture, but I came upon a Gopher Snake in the road that was in serious danger of being run over. I stopped, looked at it carefully to make sure it wasn't a rattlesnake, and then I picked it up to put it in a safer spot. I was suddenly reminded of how Gopher Snakes sometime pretend to be rattlers! They can flatten their normally narrow heads into the triangle shape of a rattler, and will strike in a similar manner. I didn't hold it for long...how do you explain to the EMTs that you picked up a rattlesnake that you thought was something else?

If you are lucky enough to live near a California prairie, this is a good time of year to explore them. If you tend to rush through this unique part of the Sierra Nevada and the Great Valley on your way to Yosemite or some other mountain destination, slow down and give these precious and unique lands a quick look. You won't be disappointed.
 

Tales from the Semi-Super Bloom Tour, Part 5: Coming Home

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning..."

T.S. Eliot

I'm a bit behind, what with the end of the semester and all that, but there was a bit of unfinished business from a few weeks ago...the end of our Semi-Super-Bloom tour. Yes, most of the flowers throughout the west have faded and shriveled as April turned out to be very dry. In this wet year many parts of California were covered by flowers in a way not seen in a decade or more. It was a spectacle and hundreds of thousands of people converged on places like Anza-Borrego, or Elsinore, or the Grapevine in Southern California. Among the crowds there were the stupid and ignorant who trampled the flowers and in one instance landed a helicopter in a field of flowers.

Around six weeks ago, Mrs. Geotripper and I set out to find some of the less crowded places, the spots where the flowers were blooming, but they weren't quite at the level of the Super-Bloom. Our journeys carried us through the Mojave Desert, Death Valley National Park, the Merced River Canyon downstream of Yosemite, and the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern. But it was our final journey of the tour that was so illuminating: we were home. And it was a beautiful place.

We live at a nexus point, the boundary between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Valley of California. Our town is surrounded by agricultural fields, but as we drive east, the fields and orchards give way to one of the few remaining prairies in the state of California. Although large portions are being plowed over for almond orchards, the grasslands still exist in the low foothills of the Mother Lode.

The soils are old and deeply weathered, and are generally nutrient poor. It's only a few feet to bedrock as a rule, so water is not often available for plant growth, and so for most of the year the hills are covered with a brown (some say "golden") veneer of dead grasses.  But in the spring of wet years, the prairie comes alive with color. One of the unique habitats of our grasslands are the vernal pools, the hollows where water stands for a few short weeks or months in the spring. Because they are flooded part of the year and dry for the rest, they are a crucible for the evolution of unique plants and animals adapted to the harsh environment. Many of California's endemic plants are found there. There are hundreds of these vernal pools scattered across the prairie. And that's where we saw much of the color as we drove through a few weeks ago.

We were traveling on Willms Road south of Knight's Ferry on the Stanislaus River when we spotted one of California's near-endemic bird species. Red-winged Blackbirds are a familiar sight across much of North America, but there is a closely related species called the Tricolored Blackbird that is mostly found in the Great Valley and in the prairies of the foothills (they have a white stripe below their red wing spots). The birds are endangered because of an unfortunate habit they have of nesting in large colonies in the middle of grassy prairies. The problem is that they don't make a distinction between a tall-grass prairie and an alfalfa field, and thus thousands of nests and their occupants have been destroyed in an afternoon as farmers cutting and harvesting the alfalfa. Efforts are being made to reimburse farmers who wait a few weeks to harvest, giving the young birds a chance to mature and fly away.

We were home, and we found exploring the back roads just beyond our backyard to be just as colorful and wondrous as our thousand mile journeys into the deserts and beyond. Never stop exploring, and never be trapped into thinking that you have to go vast distances to see wondrous things.