And then I discovered how to work my own camera.

Hello, all. It's a fine evening here in Tucson, Arizona, the destination for my spring break activities. The days are warm, the desert is prickly, and the company is wonderful. Thanks for being such wonderful hosts, Fran and Jim!

Thanks to my techie Uncle Jim, I'm finally able to take the pictures off of my camera and put them somewhere useful, the computer. There's a few here of the desert, its flora, the little desert dwellers that end up at the Wilderness Rehabilitation Center in Tucson, and more.

Welcome to the beautiful Sonoran Desert, which is currently in bloom. Things that look scraggly and brown during the rest of the year are green and lush right now. Lush might be slightly misleading, considering that everything in desert is equipped with a coat of armor, but the flowers are beautiful and bring out the softer side of the cactus family.

Another view of the desert, with a view of the mountains in the distance. The saguaro cacti everywhere make the landscape look very alien. These ones are relative babies. In order to look like the cacti that are commonly drawn in Pictionary, the saguaro needs to grow arms. This process is a long one, and only after about 70 years will baby arms begin to sprout.

'Tis the season for baby bunnies at the Wildlife Rescue Center. Baby cottontails and jackrabbits fill up the shelf space at the center and makes the room seem like a little bunny apartment complex.

There's a big immigration dilemma/discussion/argument/conundrum in Arizona, so I thought I'd see if I couldn't get to the heart of the matter and make the trip across the border myself. Just kidding. It rather looks like I did from this picture, but this is the sorry current state of one of Fran's favorite hiking trails on the outskirts of Tucson. Private property is nibbling away at public land and the little 'trails' that are left are narrow, nearly vertical, and fenced in by barbed wire.