sweet home arizona

I love the place where I live. Over the past couple of weeks, this feeling has been settling in my heart. Absolutely every single day I notice a piece of beauty inherent in the landscape.

Today I drove up to Flagstaff for work. Here are a couple of pictures from my day.


Morning Clouds


View from a rest stop in McGuiresville


Nopal

Nopales are my most favorite cactus these days. I watched them today thriving in the craziest conditions. They are the one cactus that grows continuously through the 4,500 foot altitude change from Phoenix almost all the way up to Flag. They grow in the hard-packed desert sand, on rocky cliffs and crags, in the middle of dry grass meadows. We're just scratching the surface here with the Nopal cactus. There will be more, much more.


Do you see the crazy bird-like shadow careening across the picture? Weird...
This is Humphrey's Peak, the tallest mountain in the state of Arizona at just over 12,000 feet. At the top is a bowl in which one can participate in any variety of winter sports, providing it snows. It snowed very little there last year. I think lifts were only in operation for two or three days. Let's pray it dumps snow up there this year. I have a good feeling about it.


This strapping, shirtless, axe-wielding woodsman is NAU's official mascot, the lumberjack.


Blurry sunset.

I was taking pictures today with my little Sony Cybershot. It takes great close-up pictures with it's 7.2 megapixles but it's hard to capture clear landscape shots. I think part of that is the lense and the other part is my ineptitude with camera skills. I really need to learn what all these dials and doolallies do.