2010 March 15, from the Santa Lucia mountains in the California Coastal Range Hello, Everybody, After spending Christmas and New Year's in the California Coastal Range between Santa Barbara and Monterey, with some cold and rainy weather, I thought I would escape to the Mojave Desert for warmer and drier weather. The next couple of months were better, but still much wetter and cooler than usual - - finally in March I was back into shorts and tee-shirt, very welcome. Talking to people buried in snow in Colorado and the East Coast made me feel better, however. Over most of the Desert there seems to be increasing publicity about conserving the Desert Tortoise, with many signs and brochures warning people not to approach them closely - - they store water in their bladders, often for months, and if frightened may void their precious water supply. Also to be alert that they like to shelter in the shade under parked vehicles. The species is endangered, partly from habitat destruction, and partly from the increased Raven population following the increased people population - - for the first 4 years the tortoise shell is soft and Ravens can kill and eat them. In the past 6 years in the Mojave I've never seen any of the tortoises, but was pleased this year to find an old shell and later a live one creeping up behind my truck. They are big, 12-14 inches long. I used the town of Barstow for several weeks as a supply home base, exploring and camping on the huge area of BLM land surrounding. The Mojave is very mountainous - - classic 'basin and range' - - and there are lots of old mining and ranching tracks in the mountains as well as across the flat valleys, ideal for back road driving and camping and hiking. And except for the few areas designated specifically for off-highway-vehicle play, very few people around. I'd usually see another vehicle every day or two. I tried to follow one rough road described in a 2003 guidebook, but found a section completely washed out, so badly it would be hard to get dirt-bike through and a Jeep or truck completely impossible. A bit of unexpected adventure. I planned to spend a week or two in the New York Mountains in the Mojave National Preserve, but at 5,000 feet cloudy fog and then rain and snow got a little tiresome, so I abandoned that area and went south for lower elevation and hopefully warmer weather around the Salton Sea, which has good camping and birding areas. The Sea and the surrounding Imperial Valley has an area 100-200 feet below sea level which is very much larger than the more famous area in Death Valley. It's kind of funny to drive for an hour or two through little villages with the GPS showing -150 feet the while. There is a great graded gravel road approaching the Salton Sea from the northeast, the Bradshaw Trail. It is squeezed in between the Chocolate Mountains and the military Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, very scenic and with good camping spots. Bradshaw established the wagon route in 1862 between LA and La Paz AZ near the Colorado River, to serve booming gold mining traffic. The trail links the few springs which could be relied on for water, and these springs are still important for wildlife survival today. One of the best birding areas on the Salton Sea is no more - - Red Hill island/peninsula used to be surrounded by shore birds right next to the dirt road and camping area, making for great photography. The level of the Sea is dropping, and these areas are now quarter mile wide mud-flats with no birds within useful range. Starting to head north to bird northern California and Oregon in April and May, I back-tracked to the Coastal Range again, and was delighted to be greeted by hills of emerald green grass and flowers starting to bloom. The color was startling after several months of the beige and gray colors in the Desert. The new slideshow is: 10 01 02 03 Jan Feb Mar Mojave.exe The server address is: http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~ before the john part) Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm and SpybotSearch&Destroy to be sure the .exe files are malware free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe> files'. Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to download these large files on a phone line please let me know, as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2009 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a Windows computer and broadband internet connection. None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the better. Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com