The last of the vacation pics (hurrah!)

Here's the last set of pictures from our excursion out west.

What's a western themed vacation without cacti? We drove through Saguaro National Park in Arizona on the way to see my mom. Here's a close-up view of a saguaro cactus:



This particular one was busy reaching for the sky and didn't pay me any mind as I snapped its picture:

There were lots of other cactus accounted for in Saguaro National Park, like ocotillo, cholla, prickly pear, barrel etc.:

The skies were beautiful, storms all around us in the distance and in the mountains:

I've forgotten where along the way I took this picture. I think it was past Phoenix on our way toward Petrified Forest National Park. Anyway, it was a beautiful canyon in some mountains that we were driving through. Maybe it's the Salt River. It was red with sediment:

At the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park, the trees aren't standing upright as in a real forest. They're lying down, scattered all over the place. They're the remains of trees which fell into a huge river eons ago and were covered by sediment. The organic material eventually was replaced by minerals, preserving the trees so that they look as though they've just been felled and cut up. If you click on the picture below, you can see a bit of a rainbow in the right 1/4 of the sky:

The skies wherever we went were fascinating. Storms in can be seen miles away when there aren't any real trees in the way:

Doesn't this look like a fallen tree that's been cut up to clear a hiking path? Amazing that it's now stone:

Still looks like wood:

Here's my son wandering along one of the trails through the park:

In the painted desert, the earth sometimes mimics the colors of the sky:

As the sun set, a storm was approaching. My husband and son are watching and photographing. What you can't see is the wind and the dust blowing in the plains below:

The dark, distant mass between the clouds and the land is the rain pouring down from the heavens. That's my husband trying to capture the lighting bolts on (digital) film. He did catch a beautiful shot, click here to see it. Below you can see him steadying his tripod in the strong winds:

And finally, a little video clip of the storm:

We had lots of adventures on our trip, but it's awfully nice to be home again. Have you had any adventures this summer?