Day 181-187: Nature Calls?

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend! I was extremely lazy, and darn proud of it. Yesterday, Tony and I went on a mini road trip out into southeastern California. First we stopped by Julian, and were overwhelmed by the crowds. They had an Americana festival that we should have been expecting, given that Julian is an old prospector/settler town that bleeds America. Of course they were going to have a dang parade!

Needless to say, we didn't stop for pie. It was scary.

We continued on, towards the Cleveland National forest, and ultimately the Borrego desert. I cannot imagine how people in wagons crossed the mountains and deserts to reach California. I am such a baby about my air conditioning. The roads were winding, and the scenery was outstanding. Here are a few photos of some stops we made along the way. Most of the other photos I took this week were of my sick tomato plants, and of my hideous sunless tanning fiasco, which I will not tell y'all about. Let's just say that there are streaks, and plenty of them.

I thought y'all would appreciate the scenery as much as we did :).

There were dragonflies at a lake we stopped at, and boy howdy, they were fast and hard to photograph. This is the least blurry picture...

When we first moved to southern California, I was really expecting it to be flat and arid, kind of like Texas. I was so wrong. There are mountains as far as the eye can see.

Obligatory self couple shot:

"You feelin' lucky, punk?"

Bees were definitely doing their job on Saturday, and thankfully left me alone.

I like this picture. Tony's a bit more creative than I am in terms of moving the frame of the photo. Ah, artistic vision. Too bad the right side of my brain dominates.

The landscape was definitely my favorite part of the trip. I will never get used to how beautiful southern California is!

Bonus: How cool are these flowers!?! I didn't even notice the pink stamen (Is that right? Probably not. I was never good at plant biology, nor do I have the desire to look it up. I'll just let Amber correct me tomorrow).