Palo Verde Mountain Wilderness – Pictures!

Outside Blythe, California lies a vast desert.  Go further abound explore your world.  But you need to have a SUV or Four Wheel Drive vehicle.  The payoff solitude and if you lucky geodes, or thunderbird eggs. Below is a picture from the DesertUSA.com website.  I found nothing.

 Welcome to the desert.  

Rule one there will be wind. This is a sand storm five minutes earlier it was a couple clouds of dust. It drifts across the road like snow.

The area around Palo Verde is sparsely populated. The roads are mostly gravel. The sides are between three and ten feet high on both sides.

Road signs are a plus here. The first one is thirteen miles in. The second five more. But notice the difference. You have ti get out of car to read it. The idea of a cross on these roads are usually memorials to people who pasted away.

Why go here? Views are eighty miles one way and fifty miles to the north. Only thirty to the east, but a mile high set of mountains are there.

The crown jewel of the desert, the ocotilla. They are usually solo. This is about ten feet tall. It dances in the wind. September they are loaded with red or orange blooms tight against their stems.

Cactus are what most think of in the desert. The white pieces are what’s left of the blooms. This guy off about four feet across.

Here is the Arroyo. Below water cut a channel. It’s presence provides life for grasses, scrubs and trees. The rabbits and roadrunners live here.

Three separate ridges in view.

Did I mention spiders? This lonely tarantula was waiting for his close up.