Some more views of the courtyard gardens and their flowers:
Checking the overlook of the Little Colorado River below the trading post, I could see some of the tamarisks already browning from the tamarisk beetles (Diorhabda carinulata) that were released as biological control by agencies to combat the invasive tamarisks along rivers. The beetles were supposed to only stay at the parallel of latitude that lies across southern Utah, but they have since expanded down across the Grand Canyon region and starting up the Little Colorado River drainage. The beetles have also become a concern because they defoliate the tamarisks where the endangered 'Southwestern' willow flycatcher breeds in southern Nevada and Utah.
"They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could,
that they didn't stop to think if they should."
A common side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana):
Stopping at the Navajo Bridge over Marble Canyon, I was unable to see any of the reintroduced condors but took a view scenery shots anyways. The tamarisks along the river below were also heavily browning from the beetle activity:
Upon reaching the Kaibab Plateau, I headed south from Jacob's Lake to scout for camping spots and take in the scenery. I ended up driving ~20 miles down the road to the Kaibab Lodge area, which is nestled in a gorgeous sprawling meadow valley with surrounding spruce-fir-aspen forest. On the drive down, I was amazed to spot a PORCUPINE foraging right along the side of the road! I was able to snap a few pics before it crawled into a culvert under the road:
The valley along the road was covered with larkspurs (Delphinium nelsonii, Family Ranunculaceae), with scattered patches of phlox (Phlox hoodsii?, Family Polemoniaceae) making for even more beautiful scenery:
It was interesting to see a patch of aspens across the meadow that had lots of downed trees. It didn't appear to be an avalanche spot, so unless humans cut them it seems that some wind event must have fell them. I wonder if the string of tornadic activity that affected Flagstaff this past winter/spring reached up here too?
As the evening neared, the sunset colors became increasingly more spectacular with the clouds moving through over the plateau, as the next series of photos demonstrates:
After night fell, I ended up heading back up the highway towards Jacob's Lake to find a forest road to camp off of that would be closer towards Fredonia and Colorado City where I would have to head early the next morning to conduct my bird survey. I tried one road south of Jacob's Lake where I found a spot, but that was a little too far down the road and isolated. So, after eating dinner there I headed up the road further and ended up settling on a spot down FR 248 just north of the established campground at Jacob Lake. Since I would have to get up really early, I didn't want to pay for site so I decided to just car camp at a primitive spot. While trying to fall asleep, I listened out the cracked window for owls or nightjars as the full moon rose, only hearing a couple of Common Poorwills before passing out. However, car camping proved very uncomfortable even with the seat leaned back and I barely got two hours of sleep. I decided at 2:30am that trying to sleep more was futile, since I would have to leave for Colorado City between 3:30 and 4:00am. So, I turned the heater on a bit to warm up and was able to pick up a rock station from St. George while I ate breakfast. THEN, I noticed that about 70 feet down the road from my car that there was a silhouette of something below the branch of a small pine tree. When my sleep-deprived mind finally realized that it was in fact an animal standing there I quickly woke up more. It was standing completely still in the shadows created under the branch in the bright moonlight and had not moved for (at least) the 15-20 minutes I had noticed the shape under the branch. At that point, my curiosity was piqued and I grabbed up my headlamp to figure out what exactly had been watching me. Shining the light out the window, I was stunned to see two huge, widely spaced green eyes reflected back at me. The MOUNTAIN LION then quickly slunk down into the small ravine below the road where I continued to see its eyeshine. For a couple of minutes as I shined my headlamp at it, I could see the green eyes moving side to side, shifting its head to see what the source of the light was I was projecting at it. I tried reaching for my camera, but when my hand jerked the light as my body moved, the eyeshine disappeared as the animal moved away somewhere else. That encounter sure woke my ass up more than the two Starbuck's expresso shots I had downed before the incident! I think that it must have been around the area earlier in the night, but was probably intrigued by the smells of food (and me) from my car and the noises from the radio station I had picked up. I was sure glad I had decided to just sleep in the car that night, despite the lack of sleep! A cool encounter nonetheless, as that was only the third time I had seen a mountain lion in the wild. An animal like that definitely makes you feel smaller on the order of the food chain.
Making bathroom breaks on the way to Colorado City, I heard a few coyotes singing/yipping away in the lingering moonlight even as the sky lightened off to the east. I reached the town by around 5:00am, just in time to start the BBS route (which you are supposed to technically start a half-hour before dawn). The road was in good condition, which was great considering I was doing the route this time in my Corolla (two years ago my parents and joined me on the route and we used their high-clearance SUV). The birds encountered were predictable, although it was nice to see two families of Sage Thrashers and a couple of Bendire's Thrashers. Horned Larks and Black-throated Sparrows were by far the most numerous, which matched our results from two years ago. Despite the desolateness of the high desert habitat, the landscape does have rugged beauty which makes the Navajo Trail a nice drive. In the first photo below, you can see the Pine Valley Mountains in the distance, which St. George sits at the base of. The last two scenery shots show views of the Virgin Mountains, which Mesquite, Nevada lies on the other side of (Mesquite was one of the places I did field work the previous two summers). Ah, nostalgia!
Sage Thrasher family:
white-tailed antelope-squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus):
Loggerhead Shrike:
prince's plume (Stanleya pinnata, Family Brassicaceae):
After the survey, I headed north on another road into St. George and then ate lunch in Hurricane (which, based on the way it was said by locals on the radio stations, is pronounced "hurr-ih-cun"). On the way back to the Kaibab Plateau I stopped in Fredonia to photograph one of my favorite signs, which has been up at the Chevron station for the last three years that I have driven down these highways. All the essentials the locals need out here in God's country:
The rest of the day I planned on visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon 44 miles south of Jacob's Lake. Before heading there, I made a brief detour back to my old camping spot off FR 248 to see if the mountain lion had left any tracks in the dirt where it had been watching me. I searched around and found a couple of tracks that may have belonged to it, but had been slightly trampled by other vehicles that had gone down that road since that morning. Other than that, there were some deer tracks around where I had seen the lion, suggesting that maybe it had been tracking some deer before it stopped to check me out. Who knows?! Here are some shots of where it had been standing:
The first photo is from my vantage point where my car had been parked that night; in the second photo, focus on the small tree on the right side of the road; the low branch on the left was what it was standing in the shadow of that morning:
Here's a view from below the branch with my car in the distance, showing approximately how far away it had been from me:
Photos and stories from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in my next post. Stay tuned....
SO COOL! The pics and the lion story are epic! Wish I could have gone :/
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