I feel like I have hit a lot of dead ends in life. But that’s just stinking thinking. The other day I was at the end of a delivery route on the west side of Phoenix and I had to return a package. I don’t know how people travel to work in those conditions several days a week. Every road I thought I might avoid traffic ended up being congested. Eventually I made a left into this dead end thinking it would cut through to the main road. Nope. Not happening. I just parked it in defeat.

I had a couple hours to get back anyway. Life was telling me to chill and remove myself from the problem. It was literally one of those moments looking up seeing some good dust and light at play right at the crack of dawn. It gave the pause needed to get back into the rat race with my head in the clouds and feet on the ground.

Thanks for visiting! Check out Dreamstime for full resolution images.

I carry my camera with me just about everywhere as a professional driver. The final destinations are in some of the most beautiful places like on Tuesday morning outside of Tartesso, an oasis community north of Palo Verde Nuclear Plant. Delivered my last package under an orange glow creeping up from the east and the terminator line of pinks and blues in the west. Then rushed to find the angles and foreground before it all dissipated.

If that range looks familiar its Phoenix International Raceway aka ISM Raceway (Ingenuity Sun Media) . Turn around and the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant was letting off some steam.

Here’s where I fight myself on whats worthy. I have a hard time publishing the imperfect. Call it brand control. Still working towards those lenses that cost more than the camera, but I am able to capture some of what I was seeing and how I was seeing it.

Well just a few pictures made the cut this time. Until next time.

I’ve wanted to get back to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix for some time now. My last visit was when Chihuly had work on display. The weather was just right for a couple hours of exploring a well groomed garden of desert plants.

One of the things that threw me off was The Wild Rising plastic sculpture exhibit throughout the park representing the unnatural presence of plastic in the world. You can’t miss it, which is what I believe is the point of the exhibit. Humans have disposed of so much plastic that it has become apart of land and ocean space as much or more so than the presence of the natural world in some cases. It’s a gaudy display to raise awareness of what humans have done and continue to do to the environment.

Ok moving on. So fall isn’t the best time to see wild flowers in the desert as I walked along concrete and manicured dirt trails there were only a few species in bloom. As one volunteer informed me some species bloom twice, but if you want to see a plethora of flowers come back in March.

Monarch Exhibit

There is also another exhibit that holds one of natures alarms. Monarchs migrate across North America to specific locations in Mexico and California every year as temperatures start dropping up north. We don’t see a massive migration in Phoenix, so this exhibit is an opportunity to observe stages in the Monarch life cycle and behavior. There are several species on exhibit including Gulf Fritillary , Giant Swallow Tail, and Hackberry Emperor to name a few.

Stapelia

Then there’s the rest of the walk with strange and beautiful species from around the world. The volunteers were marveling over Stapelia in its tiger stripe red on light yellow pattern with a putrid smell. “Worse than a dead cat!”, as one person described it. Fortunately you have to stick your nose almost in the flower to smell it.

Plants and People

The history and culture of the Sonoran Desert for the most part has been lost to time. I’ve heard people say Phoenix has no culture, but that is untrue. We just built over it. Buried below our homes and workplaces is a valley of ancient artifacts of the indigenous inhabitants that have been swallowed by tribal and European conquest.

Employees, Visitors, and Volunteers

This trip was also an opportunity to talk with people outside of a work environment. Everyone I talked to had genuine interest in talking about the garden. I even received some great tips on where to find good prices on expensive camera gear.

Random Gallery of Trip