Our Last ATV Trip of the Winter Season

What a great day it was today. Sunny and warm and a great day for one final trip into the desert! We wanted to visit our baby owls and see all the flowering cacti one last time. We met up with Ann & Trent out at our old RV park where we store our ATV and we were out on the trails just after 1 pm today. I couldn't believe all the cacti that were flowering. This is the best year so far for us. The colors were tremendous

 A field full of Engelmann Prickly Pear cacti flowering. They have a lovely yellow flower

 We visited one of the Great Horned Owls' nests. You can see one of the babies peeking down on us. It has grown so big in just a week!

 The Mom is in the nest with the two babies, you can see the second baby just to the right of the larger baby and right in front of the Mom. They are so cute! I just downloaded Doug's pictures and he got a couple of fantastic pictures of the baby owls

You can really see the Mom and two babies in this picture
 

I can't believe how big the babies have gotten
 

 If looks could kill.........

When we got the the first nest we had found, the Momma owl flew away immediately. There is only the one owlet in this nest and you can only see the top of his head in the nest. He must have been sleeping or he is a younger owl and the nest is deep
 

You can barely see the head over the top of the nest

 Flowering Buckhorn Cholla cactus flower. They can range from brick color to pink and orange or yellow. We saw every color today

 The Strawberry Hedgehog Cactus are still flowering

 This one is a Staghorn Cholla cactus. They have a bright scarlet flower only

 A yellow Buckhorn Cholla

 A close up of a yellow Engelmann Prickly Pear cactus flower

 Staghorn Cholla cactus

 Burgundy Buckhorn Cholla - I told you them came in many colors!

 I was so excited when I saw this Gila Monster cross the road right in front of our ATV! The are one of only 2 very venomous lizards in the Sonoran desert and very rarely seen

 He/she was a very healthy specimen

 Its colors and designs on his skin were quite remarkable

 Of course I am reminding Doug to not get too close as they can move quite fast and they have a very nasty bite - along with being venomous!

 Creepy looking eh? It really made my day to see it though

 More cactus flowers, they are so breath taking

 We went down to the Harris's Hawk nest to see if we could see the babies yet. Last week when we were there with Kathleen and Brad, the Mom was on the nest and we could hear the baby(s) chirping but didn't see them. Well today there was nobody in the nest and the parents and one immature hawk were soaring above the nest. We couldn't believe the little one was flying already. This is one of the adult hawks

 This was the other adult hawk

 One of the adults landed on a dead tree

 The young hawk landed on top of a saguaro cactus and waited for its parents to tell it what to do

One of the adults taking off from atop a saguaro.

It was a great trip, we saw so much today. It was bitter sweet coming back to the park knowing it was our last ride of this winter season! We had Ann & Trent over for dinner tonight to help us eat up some of our food so I can get the fridge and freezer cleaned in the next two days. We are down to 2 more days leaving Wednesday morning for home. Boy did this winter go fast, it was a great winter, with wonderful friends and lots of company