Snowbird Migration

We have been at our winter destination for one week. Finally, I am settled enough to play Blog Catch-up. We put in some long days while traveling and some busy days since we have arrived. The sun is shining, the rain has stopped, AND I saw poppies blooming between the east and west lanes of highway 60 yesterday. I have not seen any poppies bloom in January, early January, in the 11 years we have been here. The winter rains should produce an abundance of flora color this spring. I can hardly wait!

We left our SD home about noon on January 4th. This is what greeted us as we traveled south:

Sometimes the frost was on the north sides of the trees; sometimes only the south side of the trees were covered.

It was a very pretty sight under the clear, blue sky.

We enjoyed the sunrise in Kansas on Tuesday morning. Neither the iPhone nor camera did justice to the colors.

The hill and three crosses appear soon after entering New Mexico.

A windmill in the pastures of New Mexico, on one of the many ranches along highway 54.

The clouds at the base (or so it seemed) of the mountains indicated our weather could be changing. We KNEW it would be changing along our 'usual' route, so we headed to the southwest corner of New Mexico.

 Fog, often very dense, as we drove through those mountains in the previous photo.

This was the sunset as we got out of the mountains and headed south.

We grabbed a couple of geocaches in NM the next morning. This one was at a truck stop exit.

 It was a drizzly drive to Tucson.

Again, the clouds made for interesting photos as they moved along the mountain ranges.

I happened to 'catch' this hawk in one of my photos.

The mountain peak is Picacho Peak, one that Hubby has climbed three times. He said there won't be a fourth. This is the one that has cables to help one get to the top...and back down. It does have some amazing views of the valley north of Tucson. At this point, we were about an hour from 'home'.