Baby Goliath is one year old

If I have any regular readers left (maybe a rellie or two ... maybe?), you may remember when we bought a little baby giant sequoia tree on our trip to Sequoia National Park last year.

This is baby Goliath in September of 2012:

And here he is one year later, October 2013:

He won't be terrorizing the neighbourhood from his pot for some time yet, but he sure grew!  The lady at the gift shop said he would double his size every year for the first few years.  He hasn't gained too much in height, but he sure is sprawling outwards a lot.  A well-fed, bouncing baby Giant Sequoia.  Be sure to check back next year for updates ...

Pumpkin Spice M&Ms

Ha, my blog is turning into an M&M review blog.  Good thing they bring out new flavours as often as they do or the internet might never hear from me!  I do have other things on the go other than eating chocolate, but I have been a lazy blogger lately.

Pumpkin Spice M&M's - another good one!  Very vague pumpkin flavour with cinnamon and spices.  Nice and chocolatey, this one is a milk chocolate one.

They have another Halloween flavour out, Candy Corn White Chocolate M&Ms, but I didn't try that one.  It sounded a bit strange, even for someone like me who likes to try all the new stuff.  If I change my mind I'll report back.

White Chocolate M&Ms

Well, I actually do have things to blog about other than chocolate, but my duties as an M&M reviewer keep getting in the way.  And no, I am not sent free samples to review, how I wish I was!  I find my samples free-range in Los Angeles department stores, and shell out my own hard earned money, all in the name of public service.

That said, we have another winner!

These are creamy and very tasty, very white chocolatey.  Recommended!

Raspberry M&Ms

I haven't reviewed any new flavoured M&Ms in a while.  I was happy to stumble across these at the local K-Mart in L.A.  Dark Chocolate Raspberry!

Verdict?  These are good!  I don't eat that many M&Ms, but these would rate buying again.

Salt Creek, Death Valley

This was just a short little walk around an interpretive trail.  It features something you don't see a lot of in Death Valley though ... water!

Here is one of the "100 feet below sea level" signs on the way there.  They have these signs on the highway at sea level and 100 feet below - I don't think they had one for 200 feet below, or if they did maybe it got stolen.

Yep, that's water all right!  We tasted it - just as advertised, it's salty!  In the spring this creek even has a salt-adapted fish that lives in it - they are there year-round but only come out and play in certain months, so we didn't see any.  We were there December 13.

Me on the boardwalk of the trail:

Oooo!  A sunbeam popped out for an instant, and Ed caught these next two photos:

And that was that; like I said, it was short.  Next we'll go visit the site of the old Borax works ...

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley

The weather was overcast on December 13, so these photos might look a little more dull than those on the other days, plus the rocks here were possibly a little more subdued in colour compared to some trails, but not texture.  The narrow mouth of this canyon fills with fast moving water after storms, and the rocks are worn very smooth.

It's another narrow trail:

I'll try not to show you too many photos, but I find the rocks just so darned interesting:

Another plucky desert survivor, this plant growing out of a rock crack:

The trail curves off again to the right into another narrows:

The canyon walls have several different rock formations, but I think it gets it's name, Mosaic Canyon, from these conglomerates:

Eventually the wash opened up here, but it narrows a bit more further down:

I thought these layered rocks were pretty cool too:

This is at the end of the trail, where the canyon ends at a wall that would be a waterfall after a storm.  Ed climbed up beside it and took this photo of me:

I think this is a little side canyon off the main trail, it didn't go anywhere:

Heading back along the same narrows near the mouth of the trail.  It's too bad I'm not in this photo for scale - it's narrow!

More cool rock, this time marble that has been shaped by the water:

And out the mouth of the canyon...

We returned to the car to find this determined and assertive raven pecking at the windshield:

We thought he'd buzz off once we approached, but instead he called in a reinforcement.  Eventually we had to just get in the car and hope the ravens didn't expect us to let them drive.

On the way down the road from the canyon, the light was doing amazing things, Ed got this photo with his zoom lens of the distant Mesquite sand dunes:

More beautiful light along the road:

Next stop, Salt Creek ...

Devil's Cornfield, Death Valley

Can you see a naming theme in play in Death Valley?  I guess Satan claimed this territory, maybe Jesus got Sequoia.

Anyway, the weather was interesting this day, Dec 13, 2012.  Lots of clouds - there was even some rain!  This is the Devil's Cornfield, I guess the plants and spacing evoke the cornfield after the harvest.

Anyway, this was just a stop at the side of the road on our way to Mosaic Canyon, so we're heading there now...

Golden Canyon, Death Valley

This was yet another amazing hike in Death Valley.  It was towards the end of the day, so we got the "golden light" of late afternoon.  Most of these photos are Ed's as his camera handles shadows a lot better than mine does (plus he's a better photographer, but the cameras really do matter!).  Also, as the light got better and better as time went on, most of the photos are from the hike back.  They're not really in order either.

This was towards the furthest point of the hike - we had planned to go further, but it was so windy that it became unsafe, this is me descending from the spot (where the trail meets the horizon) where it just got too windy and steep to continue safely:

That's the peak we'd been at the base of when we turned around:

This is from a little side trail earlier in the hike.  There were all these little narrow sub-canyons you could hike into off the main trail.  I wish we'd had more time to explore more of them.

This formation below is (I think) called the Cathedral:

We found a path (it was fun, through narrow cracks and little tunnels) to take us to the base of it:

Trail on the way back:

If you had any doubts that Death Valley is a breathtaking, amazing landscape, these next photos will convince you:

You can see the trail again in the next ones:

This is almost at the mouth of the canyon.  Believe it or not, until the 1970's, this canyon was paved and cars drove into it!  They had a huge storm and the road was washed out, but a few bits of pavement remain, the two photos below show some remaining chunks of asphalt, going back to nature:

That was all for December 12.  We'll be heading to Mosaic Canyon on the 13th, so c'mon back for that...