My latest foray into nature

When I went to the zoo a few months ago I was so proud of the pictures I took. I took many many pictures, photoshopped them, then did a series of blog posts about it. But, the reality is...it was a zoo. The animals are all caged. The plants are grown and taken care of by trained botanists. It was a controlled environment.

But this...this is God's work! Pure nature at it's best. Now this I am proud of! These pictures were taken at the Kitchen Creek campground(near Campo/Mountains-high desert) and at In-Ko-Pah(near Jacumba/desert).

 I would have loved for this shot to be in focus. The dragonfly kept moving from branch to branch.

This is a much better focused picture but he moved to a position that was hard to shoot.

Can anyone guess what kind of little bird this is? A couple of hints: they never stay in place for long, their wings are ridiculously fast, I've never seen one land and stay still for such a long period of time(at least a minute or longer). He landed on a branch right above my head. I was stoked! Have you guessed yet? It's a hummingbird!

This is the tower at In-Ko-Pah. Yup, I climbed to the top. Lots of stairs were involved...in the 103 degree heat. The view was worth it. It overlooks the desert below. I have no pictures of the desert because the marine layer was so bad that the pics were all ugly.

This is what the hills around In-Ko-Pah and Jacumba look like. It's quite unique. The rocks are another amazing work from God. I've never seen another desert region look like this.

Proof we were in the desert!

Okay, so not all the rocks are God's work. Man came along and redid some of it. Someone in the 1930's came along and carved a bunch of these rocks to look like different animals. Luckily, this was as close as I got to a snake on this trip.

My mom always falls victim to my camera!

And that concludes my trip into nature...for now anyways!