Our neighbour Martin told us about the remains of a homestead across Clark Dry Lake Bed. The homestead is hidden behind a grove off Tamarisk trees. He said that there were Great Horned Owls there too.
We didn’t decide to walk across the lake bed until noon,we packed a back pack and off we went.
The lakebed from our site, the Tamarisk trees are barely visible against the mountain
It was a long walk from the motorhome to the lake bed where we could get a good look at the Tamarisk Grove
There was water on the lakebed in several places.
There are signs everywhere saying not to drive on the lakebed but I guess some people can’t read.
There are several of these structures on the lakebed, we have no idea what they are.
As we neared the other side of the lakebed there were small hills and sand dunes.
And finally the Trees
The Trees were beautiful, some half covered with the drifting sand. It took us almost two hours to reach our destination, we had to count on two hours going back, which didn’t leave us a lot of time to look around.
We walked around the grove and saw some evidence of a homestead. Apiece of tin roofing.
As I was taking this picture of a dead tree I liked
there was a great fluttering of wings and I looked up to see a bird with a huge wingspan flying out of the tree. Skip was so excited until he realized I didn’t get a picture of the owls, he said there were eight to ten owls and he couldn’t believe I hadn’t got a picture of them.
I gave him the camera and I went to the other side of the grove to see if they would fly back towards him. I did see one leave the trees, he was just beautiful as he flew over my head. We walked around the grove several times but the owls were just to well hidden, or they were smarter than we were, Perhaps both.
We had to leave the trees and head back to our motorhome, we had had a long walk and we sure didn’t want to be trying to find our way in the dark.
We came across this interesting footprint on the way back. someone is pretty brave.
We were glad to finally see our campsite
We saw Martin when we got back he said it was four or five mile walk to the trees, so we walked almost four hours, between eight and ten miles and didn’t get a picture of the owls or see what’s left of the homestead.
Guess we’ll have to go again.
Jean
sometimes the pictures in your mind are just as good as photograph!
ReplyDeleteDistances can be very deceiving there. We once set out for something on the Clark Dry Lake Bed and seemed to walk forever without ever reaching our destination. That whole lake bed and down the canyon was once a firing range for aircraft. That object in the distance could have been one of the concrete targets we have heard about. It's not unusual to find 50mm machine gun shells on the ground. We found 2so far. Nice Tamarisk grove and the Owls would have been great to see. You sure are getting some great exercise.
ReplyDeleteThat was a major hike, not a walk!! Well done.
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting day you had. Seems strange to find so many owls in one place out in the middle of Nowhere'sville.
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