Barbra, I love the last pix of your hibiscus -- so pretty! Sorry Diane, I didn't see your post asking what was the purple flower. Kylie asked what was the last picture so that's why I directed the answer to her. Shirley, thanks for the name of the cactus. I did check it out and once it blooms, I will be able to confirm that it is Santa Rita and not some other. Love your canna from Siam via Barbra! Whoa Kylie, that is some snake! From what I recall in AZ, copperheads are poisonous, right? Do you ever get those snakes that "milk" cows -- read this somewhere? Karyn, love your blooming plants! That one in your 2nd set of pix that looks like snap dragons, made me laugh because I could see them being used in a cartoon talking! O.k. so I'm nuts, lol!

Cactus, Yes, now that I'm becoming more familiar with the myriad array of succulents, I'm seeing them EVERYWHERE! :) It's quite fun. I'm still working on putting Part 2 together - I think I'm going to divide that up further to make a Part 3: Cannery Row (proper), because there's just too many still for one post. And I'm still itching to go back and take more! There were plants outside the hotel we stayed at that I didn't get to shoot because my battery died; and I had wanted to take pics at that State Park halfway between the hotel and Cannery Row. (It's only about 600 miles from where I live... I can make that drive in a few days, camp out in my car, live off of granola bars for a while...) *teehee* Interesting you say Portulaca, because I can totally see the Portulaca in it now. :) I'm jealous - I've always wanted to go to the DLI; my husband was pondering it while we were up there, too. I don't know that I could settle on one single language, though. I've always wanted to learn Russian; but my Mandarin needs a lot of work (hubby's side of the family is Chinese, and I want to be able to converse with his dad & stepmother); Japanese is a beautiful language; but my side of the family is Arabic (at least in part), and I've always wanted to be able to speak with my grandmother in her native tongue. Oh, choices! (All of which are moot, since I'm not attending the school.) Ok, back to work on Part 2! CG

It's a brand new FujiFilm FinePix A345, very inexpensive (under $200), I bought it to do close-up macro shots on roses, which it does very well. The macro setting (1 - 30" focal distance) captures colors, light, and fine detail beautifully when the subject is relatively still or using a tripod and it has exposure level settings to help control saturation and brightness. You can't get close enough to hummingbirds to use the macro capability, in my experience. This is a macro shot taken from about two feet away and digitally zoomed, but otherwise not adjusted by software. It's just an entry-level camera, and you can't set your own F-stops or exposure times, though you can force flashes and/or choose from several "modes" for sports, portraits, landscapes, etc... It also has white balance settings for various light conditions, and it will take video clips. The software reports all the exposure details but the camera doesn't (while you're shooting). I don't recommend it for bird-watching or landscapes because the wide-angle (meaning anything but the macro setting) capabilities are lousy. It only works on auto-focus, and you can't see well enough on the LCD screen to tell if you really have the right object focused at a distance, though you can snap the photo then zoom in on the saved image to see if you got what you wanted. The viewfinder is totally useless. It takes most outdoor daytime photos at 1/30th of a second, and at that shutter speed, moving hummingbirds are invisible in the saved images. The 'sports' setting reduces the shutter speed to 1/60, which is almost as useless. The fastest shutter speed it's ever managed is 1/909 in the photo below, but most in the series were 1/400 - 1/600 and those still aren't fast enough for hummingbirds, imo, even if you could force it to use the faster speeds. I'd say it's a good value for the price, but you can do much better if you spend more on one that allows 100% manual control.

8/5--Had my best snake day of the trip. Saw a nice adult Black-Tailed Rattlesnake crossing a road at 1:35PM at 5800 feet elevation. It had ten buttons and was a good 3 feet long. We followed it into the woods and continued snapping pictures of it. Two female rangers happened upon our vehicle blocking the road and saw that we were taking pictures of a snake. They were very friendly and said they had seen another one of similar size and color about ten minutes up the road. At 5:05PM we came across a Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake at 7800 feet elevation. It was a gorgeous snake. I t was unusually fiesty too. It bit me repeatedly in rapid succession and musked me in my brief attempts to keep it in range for pictures. I was amazed at the speed in which it struck and its personality seemed more like that of a arcer or coachwhip. Possibly my favorite snake of the trip. Believe it or not, I've only been bitten by 3 snakes in my life and so any snake that bites me gets special recognition. That night I roadcruised from 7:30-9:30 and found two nice Western Diamondbacks. The first was an impressive 43 inch specimen at 8:20PM. The second was a 31 inch Western Diamondback at 8:50PM. The lengths are approximate. I didn't hold them out to a tape measure. Both snakes were unaggressive and merely went about their foraging as though we weren't even there. 8/6-Spotted a modest sized adult Black-Tailed Rattlesnake under a rock 3 minutes into a hiking trail in the mountains. Also saw several Yarrow's Spiny Lizards. The snake was still basking under the rock when we returned from our hike at 10:45AM. We brought Keith out that afternoon and the snake was still there. He learned that its hard to get a good snake picture with a disposable camera. As he leaned to get up close to the snake eye to eye it zipped under a rock and rattled its tail in retreat. We saw a cool mountain short horned lizard on our hike. It did let me lay down for some eye to eye shots with a point and click digital. The snakes were on the move that night. I spotted a Mojave and a Western Diamondback from the car and missed seeing a Western Diamondback that moved across the road swiftly while I was looking for a road sign. Also saw a DOR Mojave. 8/7--Didn't do much herping in the day because Rachel wanted to see Bisbee. We drove there and at one point watched the temp drop 30 degrees in 15 miles. Decided to road cruise the mountains at evening and early night but the rains had made things very cool and nothing was stirring. Cruised the flats for half an hour as a consolation and saw two juvie Mojaves back to back at 8:30 and 8:33PM.