I don't feel like using a song title this time

I have a ton of photos that I'm trying to get through and it seems to be taking forever. I was very anxious to get to the California Condor and Turkey Vulture photos, so I skipped ahead and worked on those. I finished them off yesterday and posted them on flickr.com and my facebook fan page. Some of them came out really well.

This is one of my favorites:









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Stardrowned

It's been a while since I posted something. I've been meaning to do so for the past couple of weeks, but then I get distracted. I seem to be distracted easily quite a bit lately. As a matter of fact, right now I'm in the middle of processing some pics and realized I wanted to update my blog...

Anyway, it's been pretty hot around Phoenix, so my girlfriend and I have been taking trips on the weekend up north; places like Prescott, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon. I absolutely love living so close to such beautiful places. We haven't gone to Sedona recently, other than when we drove home from Flagstaff and took a detour through there. There are so many places to photograph.

Granite Mountain, just east of Prescott, is a very beautiful place. I saw my first raven while we were eating lunch before our hike. I also took lots of butterfly pics. Oh, and the agave flowers were gorgeous.

Red Mountain, between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, is now one of my favorite hikes. The trail is only about 1.5 miles and it goes right into a volcanic cinder cone. The mountains scattered about Flagstaff are pretty much all former volcanoes and this one particular one has a huge chunk removed from it's side. You hike right into it!! I was going to surprise Mary and take her to the Grand Canyon because it was only another 40 miles north, but on the way I saw that it's $25 to get in and I didn't have enough money. We decided to go the following weekend. On the way home though, we detoured through Oak Creek Canyon. You take a windy road down into the canyon and then follow it out to the red rocks of Sedona. Very beautiful. We stopped and took some pictures. We also made it to a rest stop along I-17 called Sunset Point just before sunset. It was perfect. The sunset was beautiful and we took lots of pics.

We didn't end up going to the Grand Canyon the following weekend, but we did go last weekend. Mary has never been before, so she was quite excited. I stopped and bought a better camera for her for her birthday, which is this coming weekend. Other than getting rained on a little, it was very nice. I took some cool pictures of California Condors. Very cool. On the way home, I spotted some turkey vultures sitting in a dead tree along the highway that goes to Flagstaff. I stopped to take some pictures and then spotted another dead tree with several more turkey vultures. I've never seen so many in one place. I'm assuming it's because it was close to sunset. But then, I saw a whole bunch more in another tree that wasn't dead. There was probably close to 20 all together. That is just insane. I got some nice shots.

So now I have to go and process them all... ;-)