Saturday, March 15…Soak Up The Sun (Sheryl Crow)

 

   Last night I hit a wall of tiredness…could be because I stayed up very late Thursday night checking out the lunar eclipse, woke up early Friday morning and continued with my day as normal.  But, whoa, last night sitting at the table writing my journal was rough. I couldn’t concentrate and kept trying to fall asleep sitting up. My father-in-law used to do at the supper table, and I always marveled at his ability to stay upright, like it was a special skill or something.  Seems anybody can do it if they’re tired enough. Anyway, I did the journal thing then hauled my butt off to bed an hour or so earlier than normal and true to form, woke up when the sky started getting lighter. Kim wanted to finish a movie, so he was an hour behind me coming to bed.  I quietly got out of bed to let him sleep in, got dressed and went outside to take in the morning…and to put a frozen piggy cookie on the picnic table so the sun could warm it up.

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   I wasn’t out there long before Kim got up. It was partly sunny, slightly breezy and forecasted to only hit the high 50’s…perfect day to go to Agua Caliente Park and walk. The paths are out in the open and a walk out there can get quite oppressive in the heat. It’s over an hour’s drive to get there so we were on the road before 8:30 a.m. to take advantage of the weather.

   The computerized signs along the highway warned of high winds and blowing dust as we headed toward Tucson but we didn’t see any dust along the horizon. I have to say that reading those words after Thursday’s dust storm made my heart skip a beat.  But I checked the weather forecast (again!) and so no sign of wind, so I tried to put it out of my mind.  There were dust devils kicking up in the fields but they didn’t come near the highway.

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    Spent a couple of hours walking around the park, looking for birds, turtles, lizards, whatever we could see. The water in front pond was stirred up, maybe from the recent rain or breeze, so we didn’t see so many turtles swimming in the water this time.  But we saw many red-eared turtles up on logs, stones and along the shoreline sunning themselves, all striking the same pose…necks extended and heads up at an angle. I know turtles are cold-blooded, the sun warms them and all that jazz. But why the head up in the air?  Couldn’t find a specific answer to my questions but did find the following: Turtles bask in the sun so that they can warm their bodies up. When they get too cold from the water, they need to raise their body temperature. They also need UV-A and UV-B rays from the sun so that they can produce vitamin D3 and keep their shell and bones healthy.  I surmise that the extension of the neck and the angling upward of the head simply gives the turtles more surface area to catch the sun.

   We walked around all the back ponds, and we saw only a couple of grebes and ring-necked ducks, a vermilion flycatcher and a turtle. We were just heading back to the main area when a great egret flew over. Turned around to see where it landed; then headed back to the pond to get a picture. It was so graceful as it slowly walked along the shoreline looking for food…those legs are so long and there wasn’t any splashing as it picked each leg up and set it down. Not like the two grebes I watched earlier…one snagged a small fish and the other one did it’s noisy best to take it away. Nothing graceful about those two but they were fun to watch. J

   Saw koi fish (or is it just koi?) in the front pond today, along with a rather large goldfish. Haven’t seen these colorful fish on our previous trips to the park.  Either they weren’t there before, or they were hiding.   

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   Stopped at an Outback Steakhouse for lunch. The Blooming Onion was good and the number of Blooming Shrimp was plentiful but I like the price of a food truck quesadilla better.

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   It was on the cool side and breezy when we got back to camp, so I sat outside to read and soak up the warmth of the sun.  I also had my eye on three cottontails playing in the yard; I named them Flopsy, Mopsy and Peter but can’t tell them apart.  They worked their way over by the fence where they started fighting over what I thought was a leaf but later realized it was a prickly pear cactus pad. Interesting. Rabbits eat cactus?   Several sites online affirmed that yes, rabbits will eat the lower pads of a prickly pear, especially during times of drought or when other food sources are scarce.  Well, they’ve been eating the rabbit food we’ve been putting out, so I don’t think food scarcity is the issue.

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   I finished two more gnomes yesterday, one wearing orange boots and hat and one wearing teal. Finley and Leland were next up in the Name a Gnome game. The orange gnome is named Coca-Cola and the teal gnome is Camo.  They joined the rest of the crew on the shelf.

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   Kim really didn’t plan on doing any imaging tonight despite the clear sky; making sure everything was working was the primary goal tonight.  He came in all smiles, so I figured all was good with his equipment.  It was better than good…he was able to get the guiding scope to go back to the nebula he was imaging the last time he was out there, and the camera was taking pictures.  Yahoo! As it turned out, he only got a little over an hour’s worth of data because clouds started showing up.  But on the next clear night, he’ll be getting more data on the Dolphin Head.