Driving to Las Vegas

Our next destination was Las Vegas, where we would stay with Cyndi's Dad and second Mom. It was a long drive through the desert, but we stopped a couple of times to enjoy the environment.

The scenery changed from Saguaro to these Joshua Trees.

Here's an overview.

And, closer up, you can see many kinds of desert plants grow here.

Many of the cacti were in bloom, and Cyndi took a lot of photos!

Here are some of my pictures of the cactus blooms.

This next plant is Bladder Pod, and I later learned that the plant stores carbon dioxide in the pods on the stem, so they can use it whenever they need it.

There were many kinds of wildflowers along the way.

Most exciting for me, though, was noticing this bird ... one I had never seen before, the Harris's Hawk. We stopped and tried to walk back to get a better view of it, but it would have none of that and flew off as we walked along the road.