Desert Beauties

I love the colorful Collared Lizards that live in the desert. I remembered where I'd seen a pair at this time last year so I made that my bike ride destination one day. Believe it or not, a male and female Collared Lizard pair was in that spot!

The male is more blue than the female. This guy was pretty shy and hid soon after I arrived. Both of them were big, perhaps about 10" long, including their tails.

To my surprise, the female seemed curious about me. She kept walking so close to my feet that I couldn't even focus my camera on her at times.

Finally, she perched on some rocks near me to keep an eye on me.

She really did keep track of me.

It was fun to see her so closeup. You can see her nostrils, her ear holes, and the details around her eyes that almost look like eyelashes.

Apparently, this species is among the longest lived wild lizard species. They don't reproduce until they're 2-3 years old, and then they produce two clutches of eggs each year. I'm guessing that this male-female pair was together at the same time and same place as last year for a reason!

Finally, I feared that I was stressing out the female so I took off to finish my ride, leaving her on her rocky perch.

That was our last full day at K's Rock, playing around in the sunshine. Do you see the Runner peeking at me from the top of K's Rock? Apparently, it's a fairly easy scramble to get to the top when you start from the other side... but even easy scrambling was too much for my spine so I stayed on the ground.

In fact, I get scared when the Runner is up there so I distract myself by looking at other things like flowers. A Prickly Pear cactus...

And, taking pictures of our canines is another good distraction.

That evening, the clouds rolled in, looking very threatening but it didn't rain.

We gave thanks for a wonderful time in this familiar and gorgeous spot as we mentally prepared to leave the next day.

It was a peaceful and healing stay at K's Rock but it was time to move along to a new place in the desert. My back was feeling substantially better after our days of lazing around in this idyllic campsite.

We'll be back at K's Rock after the summer!