Misty Mountains and the Gates of Mordor

A 50% chance of rain actually happened today and I utterly failed at capturing how intimidating the gloomy mountains looked today. Rugged, towering and shrouded in clouds the mountains loomed over the surrounding desert.

I scuttled my planned hike and drove out Grapevine Hills road and on to Castolon to see the Cottonwood Campground and scope out where I will be living and working come November 1. Very nice! Cottonwood is a small, flat 24 site campground filled with  . . . you guessed it: cottonwood trees. Oddly, camphosts are situated across the main road away from the campers. It will be a change and I will just have to see how it goes. I'm looking forward to exploring the west side of the park for a while. :-)

It was fun to see javelinas again and the area is full of jackrabbits! The whole park this year is teeming with quail, roadrunners, cottontail & jack rabbits. I expect a spike in the population of coyote and other predators given this abundance of prey.

Millipede curled up as soon as I got too close.

I go back on duty Monday through Wednesday! The campground cleared out significantly today with the rain and the fact that folks have to back to work tomorrow. More soon. . .