Spring On The 395

Yet another trip down good ol' highway 395, one of my favorite drives!

It's Spring and the flowers are blooming!  High desert wildflowers are gorgeous, and the bloom extends for miles. Unfortunately, this orange stuff is an invasive species called dodder, and is a tendril-y, parasitic plant that tends to kill it's host.

Don't know what these yellow things were, but the plants had pods.

Dainty little blue flowers.

They all thrive right alongside the highway.

I stopped at the 'Give & Take' sculpture garden near Olancha like always, this little pink paper airplane with 'Allow room to grow' written on it was my mascot the rest of the trip.

The dirt road leading to the sculpture garden has a fun joshua tree on it, it reminds me very much of Poof, my Polish hen, right down to the head crest.  It's even standing up tall and flapping!

...then as you drive by it, you see that's it's actually two joshua trees.  The fun optical illusion is only visible from a specific angle.

Spring in the Owens Valley also means bugs, lots and lots of them.  They get stuck to the front of your car...

...so that every time you stop for gas or anything else., the local sparrows and other birds zip down and glean their lunch from the front of your car. It's very funny to watch the birds hopping from car to car, shopping for their food in a very discerning way.  Inter-species dependence!