Joe and Mary Ann's personal web site

Mary Ann’s sister, niece, and great nephew were in town. We went with Teresa to the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch (RPWR) in Gilbert. This post has some photos from there, as well as some unusual birds in our yard, and a few people pictures.

This is the third and final post of our southern California trip, this one covering our time in the Joshua Tree National Park, on January 15 and 16, 2020. For an overview of the trip, and a map, see here.

This is the second post of our southern California trip, this one covering our time at the Salton Sea, on January 14 and 15. For an overview of the trip, and a map, see here.

Mark, Fr. Charlie, and I made a 4 day driving trip to the Southern California desert. We went to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, the Salton Sea (including the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge), and Joshua Tree National Park.

Mary Ann and I visited Mary Ann’s family in Wichita. This post has a few family pictures. I also included pictures from the hail storm when we got home, and a Cooper’s Hawk on our street light pole.

The next stop on our trip to southern Utah was Bryce Canyon National Park (my previous post was for Zion NP). Bryce Canyon was amazing. We were overwhelmed by the number and beauty of the thousands of rock formations. Everywhere you turn is another sight to behold!

Mary Ann and I have been talking about going to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks for many years, and we finally went. They are gorgeous – why did we wait so long? This post is for Zion, and I’ll follow up with another one for Bryce Canyon.

Mark, Father Charlie, and I went up north to the ‘Arizona Strip’ on October 7-9. It was a photography trip, in search of fall colors, and vistas from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Fr. Charlie and I went to Woods Canyon Lake on the Mogollon Rim. We wanted to try our luck photographing the Ospreys and Bald Eagles. We left on Monday, Aug 26th, at around 7:00 AM, and got there around 9:00 AM.

Fr. Charlie and I went to Mt. Ord on August 6, 2019. We got to Forest Road (FR) 1688 at about 8 am (after a 1 hour drive). The weather was overcast, with some sprinkles. There were reports on ebird.org of quite a few birds on Mt. Ord, but we didn’t see many. I only got photos of a couple of common birds. We had an expert bird guide once at Boyce Thompson who told us that the birds aren’t as active in overcast conditions. I was skeptical about that, but it was true that day, because when the sun came out, so did the birds. Could it be why we didn’t see many birds on this trip?