The Phoenician, Scottsdale Arizona.

We (Janine) are about done with our website updates from our winter / spring travels.  We now have a separate section just for Scottsdale Arizona.  This popular tourist destination certainly warrants it’s own section. 

In addition, we also have a separate section for Fountain Hills, Arizona.  Fountain Hills isn’t nearly as famous as the neighboring Scottsdale, but if you are like me and prefer to avoid the crowds, Fountain Hills is a good alternative.

McDowell Mountain Regional Park, near Phoenix, Arizona.

We had enough coverage of this little gem to warrant its own section on our website here:  McDowell Mountain Regional Park Photos.  I don’t think too many people have heard of this regional park, I bet most people living in Phoenix haven’t visited it, but they should!  This place has a lot of diversity – it is surprising to find such a place so close to a city like Phoenix.  And, it has some killer mountain biking trails!

These fireworks at the end of an Arizona Diamondback’s game in Phoenix this spring is about the closest thing I have to a 4th of July photo! 

Back-lit ocotillo against a shadowed hillside.   These guys were really getting bright red!

A Gila Woodpecker tends to a nest cavity in a Saguaro Cactus – McDowell Mountain Regional Park, Arizona.

Gila Woodpeckers sometimes reuse their nest cavity, but often build a new one.  This seems to be inefficient, but you know what is really cool; their old cavities are used by all kinds of birds and even snakes – animals that aren’t able to dig their own cavity.  It is just one of the millions of little things that constantly amazes me about nature.  Every creature plays a role in our world.

Saturday we returned to Anza Borrego.  Janine has some family business in OC, and I thought this seemed like a good place to spend a few more days before returning back to Alaska.

Here are more bird photos.

Owl’s Clover.

This Owl’s Clover really has nothing to do with our web server – we were adjusting a few photos from earlier in the trip for a customer, and I thought it was kinda purdy, so I went with it.

Our main photo website seems to grow in spurts, and lately it has really been spurting.  According to Webalizer, we had over 336,000 visitors last month!  This month is even busier.  I believe Webalizer counts spiders and repeat visitors, so that number is probably a bit overstated , but even if you reduce it by a third, it is still a lot of great activity.

That’s the good news, now the bad. 

We have been jumping back in forth between shared and dedicated servers the last few years, but it seems those days are over, and we will need to move to a fully dedicated server.  Our bandwidth is approaching 300 gb a month, and our search feature uses a lot of server resources.  It seems having a fancy computer in a high-tech data center in a large city isn’t cheap!  I could make payments on a very fancy car for what this thing will cost.  Fortunately, I really don’t have a need for a fancy car.

I must say, it is exciting to see how far we have come.  When we started our website almost 10 years ago it was just a couple of pages put together with Frontpage.  Unfortunately, our expertise hasn’t grown as fast as our bandwidth .  Well, these are good problems to have.

I think cholla cactus look great when back-lit.  I can speak from experience, these things are no fun to remove from an arm!  I now give them a wide berth.

Last night in downtown Phoenix. Arizona.

This is one of the few sunsets we have had here in Phoenix.  I would have loved to had a sky like this for one of my wildflower landscapes earlier this month!

Here are more Phoenix photos.

I stuck my head into this sculpture in Scottsdale, Arizona near the Fashion Square, thinking I could use it to frame a composition.  I was surprised to find the inside to be nothing but mirrors.  So I stepped inside to see if there was a photo, and music began to play!  There must be some kind of motion detector – I thought that was kinda cool.

I tried, but couldn’t come up with a composition in which I didn’t appear in at least one of the mirrors, so I decided to do this multi-portrait.

We watched a photographed some of the Ford Ironman in Tempe Arizona yesterday.  What amazing athletes!  They swim 2.4 miles, then bike a 112 miles, and finish with a marathon – 26.2 miles of running.  All this with afternoon temperatures in the mid 90’s.  Wow!

The athletes had to qualify to enter this race, and from here, 80 participants will qualify for the Hawaiian Ironman.  Every state and a 30 countries were represented at this event.

Below is the eventual 4th place finisher James Bonney leaving the bike transition area and beginning the marathon.

This is looking down from the summit at a hiker making her way down the ridge on the Cholla Trail on Camelback Mountain.  I liked how the last light of day was lighting just the sharp ridge line, leaving a dark shadow behind the ridge. 

It is awesome to find such a great mountain trail in the middle of a giant city like Phoenix!  If I lived here, I would do it all the time.  As you can see, it isn’t just a walk in the park, it is fairly steep, with places that have sharp drops on either side.  I can see why there are lots of rescues – when we hiked up, there were definitely some people up there who were completely out of place and really didn’t belong. 

The Cholla Trail is a little over a mile and a half each way, but it does climb about 1,200 feet.  The trail is fairly easy up to the saddle area between the two “humps”.  After that, it gets steeper, and a little more tricky.  The top photo is of one of the more difficult stretches.  The view from the saddle is very nice, and probably an ideal destination for many hikers. 

Maybe the biggest challenge hiking the Cholla Trail is finding a parking spot – at least on the weekends.  We went mid week, and it wasn’t a problem, but that isn’t true for the weekends.  The trail starts from Cholla Lane, but there isn’t any on street parking on this street.  You need to park on Invergordon / 64th  Street and walk to the trail head.  The actual street name in this area is Invergordon, but a short distance away it turns into 64th Street.  There is some parking available on this street, but it is limited.

On a hot day, the Cholla Trail is a great route in the afternoon and evening since this trail heads up the East side of Camelback Mountain, much of it is in the shade.  There is a second trail up Cammelback known as the Summit Trail or Echo Canyon Trail – we haven’t hiked this trail. 

The photo above is from the actual summit looking down on Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix.  The mounds in the distance are in Papago Park.

At least for one of them.  This is a Common King Snake attacking what I think is a Western Shovel-Nosed Snake.  It might be a Sonoran Coralsnake.  This was really something to see.  They were still battling when it got dark, but clearly the much larger King Snake was winning.  It will be interesting to see if there is any sign of them in the morning.

I had been wanting to explore along the Verde River, and choose tonight to venture into the thick brush because it was cool, and I didn’t think I would have to worry about any snakes – so much for that thinking! 

I thought Camelback Mountain made a nice backdrop to the 9th hole at the Canyon Course at the Phoenician is Scottsdale, Arizona.

Here are more Scottsdale, Arizona photos

Canyon Golf Course at The Phoenician, Scottsdale, Arizona.

My time in the Phoenix area wouldn’t be complete without some coverage of the resorts in the area – resorts like these, along with the weather are really why most people visit this area.  I gotta say this is a pretty easy place to photograph!  I didn’t get scratched by a single cactus, or even bitten by any bugs, although I do seem a little more at home getting bitten and scratched out in the desert somewhere.

Here are more Scottsdale photos.

Sunridge Canyon Golf Course, Fountain Hills, Arizona.

I don’t play golf, but secretly, I have always wanted to drive one of those electric golf carts. 

Here are more Fountain Hills photos.

2008 NOVA National Stage Mountain Bike Race, McDowell Competitive Track, Arizona.

Our favorite mountain biking / running trails looked more like a NASCAR race this past weekend with trailers and booths for all the major mountain bike race teams.  You see, this was second location in a series of six that will help determine who represents the U.S. in the Olympics.  In other-words, as it was explained to me, these are some of the best riders in the world.

I didn’t know about these races before we arrived here, but it turned out to be a fun photo opportunity!  These are the pro men competing on the final event of Sunday – a 30 mile cross-country race.

Here are more mountain biking photos.

The leaves and colors of this plant caught my eye, I though they made a cool pattern. 

A visitor enjoying artwork Thursday night while taking part of the Scottsdale Art Walk, Scottsdale, Arizona. 

The Art Walk is held on Thursdays from 7 to 9 pm in the Downtown Scottsdale Art District.  Scottsdale is home to over 100 art galleries, and the Art Walk has been a tradition for over 30 years.

Here is our gallery of Scottsdale photos.

Fountain Hills, Arizona.

This was a colorful cluster of wildflowers.  The desert globe mallow (orange flowers) were just starting to bloom.  The brittlebush (yellow) and the chuparosa (red) flowers were sure looking great!  This was shortly before sunrise.

Before the wildflowers fade and are gone – which won’t be long, I have been playing around with some close-ups.  This is brittle-bush with owl’s-clover in the background.

Here are more flower photos.