I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE "STONE MAN"..SOMEBODY'S JUST TOYING WITH US!!

   Last evening it appeared that there would be a nice sunset..Sometimes it's hard to tell. Just when you think the best color is going to be toward the West, the mountains behind us to the East turn a brilliant rose color. I am not sure how this works...Somehow the sun setting in the West illuminates the mountains in the East...This was one of those gorgeous evenings....

...I took a risk and ran out behind our camper to get these picture...no one arrested me.
  When we got up this morning, we had high wispy clouds and the temp was about 50. After our coffee we took our walk up by the mailbox to mail a couple letters. I was a bit nippy yet at 8:30..I wanted to sit outside and have coffee, but decided to put that off until it warmed up a tad. I came inside and put some rub on a couple pork steaks for dinner tonight..."Grill Man" is cooking.
  On one of our many walks in the desert, I picked up a few neat rocks. There are neat rocks here containing what is called Desert Rose Chalcedony..Sometimes you can find a single small one and sometimes there are a few embedded in a larger stone....like the one I found

..I you notice, it seems like circles (supposedly rose shapes) are growing in the stone..these are the Rose Chalcedony, or so I am told. They make necklaces and earring out of the smaller single stones..I felt like this was quite a find...I wish I had paid more attention to my Geology Science classes in school! This stone is about 4" across.
  I had a couple avocados, so I made some fresh Guacamole for lunch...There is a plentiful supply of great avocados down here and I take advantage of it. After lunch I had a need to see if we could go back out into the desert and find the legendary Stone Man.. Den went with...I won't go out there by myself...scaredy cat!!
  It was slightly overcast and there was a breeze, which made it a good afternoon for a walk..not too sunny and hot. We started out again on one of the trails going South. We knew we had to find the stone cross first. Our well informed source said we were very close last time, when we were at the stone cross. As we walked, I thought I spotted a vehicle way up ahead....Den and I figured it was probably Border Patrol, because only authorized vehicles were allowed in this part of the Sonoran...WRONG! As we got closer, we saw that it was a white Chevy Pick Up...about 2003. No BORDER PATROL written on the side..

.We took the walking trail right by it, and I was wondering if we shouldn't be a little scared..Upon closer examination we saw that the license plates were from Montana, and it was unoccupied. We just kept moving along, giving it a wide berth.. I wondered if maybe they parked it here and were rock climbing or hiking. At any rate, we took off toward the direction of the Stone Cross, or at least we hoped it was the right direction.
  After the trail almost vanished, we did find the stone cross, so we split up and walked off the path into the cactus to see if either one of us could spot Mr. Stone Man. (I made sure I always had Den in view.) To make a long story short, we never found him. We walked all over out there, and he is apparently invisible..OK, that was trip number 2 to find him. Stone Man was becoming as elusive as the burros once were.
  There are tons of neat rock formations out here. I never tire of taking pictures of this amazing desert...

....Notice the beautiful Organ Pipe Cactus growing out of the rocks in this next photo..

We were coming closer to the mountain and I noticed a small cave at the base...It could have been a den for some coyote or who knows what...I took my picture and moved quickly away...

This picture I took looking toward Ajo. That whitish ridge in the distance is part of the mineral overburden on the edge of town...12 miles away. Like I said...wide open spaces!! Admitting we were again defeated by Stone Man, we reversed our walk heading back the way we came.  This meant walking back by the white truck we had seen. I thought we should keep our distance, but Dennis just barged onward and we walked right by it....It was still unoccupied.  Thinking that maybe it might be important, I made a mental note of the license number...OK, so I was brought up with Cagney and Lacey....I could be called upon to testify...well, maybe not. Dennis thought I was over reacting a bit...I AM a "closet" detective...(with apologies to my son-in-law who IS a detective.)We got back to the camper and I wrote the license number down on a post it note...Hey, what can I say????
 This morning I took this picture of the large cave we walked to a few days ago...The one with the stone firepit. I could see it from our camper, about 1 mile East of us...Here it is on ZOOM.

...you can see the cave opening about halfway up...
 As I sit and type this, the campground is getting busy again. I think we are getting neighbors that will no doubt block our back window...again... Oh well....
  I am feeling a little sad for my Hummingbirds...Would you want to drink out of this feeder??

...the nasty little gluttons!!!
  It is clouding over right now, and we are suppose to get some rain tomorrow night and Wednesday. I would love to have a good lightening display embedded in a good thunderstorm...over the mountains...
 Right now it is time to get into my "uniform"...and almost cocktail hour. Don't forget that Border Wars is on tonight on National Geographic channel (if you are interested)...We won't miss it!! Thanks for playing....more tomorrow!!