A Morning Rain

Very cool at the start

It was raining gently early this morning, but it had stopped by the time we got out to Tortugas Mountain. At first all the ingredients were in place for a cool hike:  cloud cover, high humidity and a constant breeze.  The humidity makes you sweat, the breeze blows across the perspiration making for perfect evaporative cooling, and there's no desert sun beating down on you.  However, when the cloud cover lifts, the sun shows up to bludgeon you, and the breeze disappears you've got troubles.  That's what happened this morning to Becca and me, and we were damned uncomfortable for the entire second half of our trek.

But humid

Partial rainbow to the west

Heavy cloud cover to the southeast

More blue sky evident the higher we climb

The broad view

Becca hurrying down the single-track ahead of me

The rainbow lasted for quite a long time

Wait!

She did

The desert almost always appreciates rain

Clearing this way

This way through the desert

Organ Mountains

This arroyo is wet, but probably had no running water this morning

Yellow buds

Clearing up

Devil's Head from ground level

Picacho Peak

The way back to Tortugas

Long road across the desert

Further along the same road

Heading into the hills west of the Organs

Queen of the hill

On the road back to Tortugas

How many Ocotillos in the desert?

More Ocotillos

Long way around

Now we've got mostly blue sky

More Barrel Cactus buds