Another Fire....this one is worse, and a lot closer...

This fire started around 11am I think, its been burning and spreading for over 3 hours.
This fire is visible from our backyard but is thankfully on the south side of I-80, which it
will have to cross before it threatens our house.  The Reno PD and FD have 4th street
blocked west of McCarran and it doesn't look good for structures in that area.  We took
a drive to see how close we could get to the fire....

FIRE

Another fire in the mountains.  This one is much closer.  The planes and helicopters are flying
 over our house and dumping water and fire retardant on the mountainside...

EGG > TADPOLE > POLYWOG > FROG (OR TOAD)

These tads were netted at the park yesterday.  I know there are at least 2 different species here, but
maybe up to 4.  If it is only 2, we have some sort of toad (black ones) and some sort of frog (greenish
ones).  I plan to care for them until they turn into froglets, and then release them from were they came.
I was very surprised to find these tadpoles in a shallow stream that is drying up at a nearby park where
we walk CeCe. Being mostly high desert, I didn't think the ecosystem here could even support
amphibians.  After I gathered them up in a net and brought them home, I noticed there was one dead one.
Within about 15 minutes, the other tadpoles canibalized the dead one.  It was COMPLETELY gone in about
20 minutes...pretty amazing.

Quick Animal Update

Linda took this photo of Meana and Tuna entangled today.
I have never seen them this snuggled before.
Ridiculous, and ridiculously cute at the same time.

Memorial Day at Plumas-Eureka State Park

On Monday we drove about 1 hour NW of Reno to Plumas-Eureka State Park.  It turned out to be
a very nice spot, and we hiked for about 6 miles.  We were all pretty tired from the day before
(including CeCe) but we managed to do serveral hours of hiking, much of what was up some
pretty steep inclines along very rocky terrain.  Supposedly we were in heavy Black Bear country
but we did not have any encounters, which was probably good...

Fordyce Lake - 05-27-07

On Sunday we went about 1 hour west into California to find some trails to Fordyce Lake.  The spot was pretty
cool, but there were a lot of other people there with everything from dirt bikes to rock crawling rigs in the way on
the trail as we drove in.  Other than that, the scenery was beautiful and we got in a good hike.  This spot would
make a great camping/canoeing destination.  There were several of these colorful moths on the trail around
the watery spots.

BRD...

My pops is in town this weekend and today we went to the Black Rock Desert (just north of Reno
about 2 hours).  Its a huge dry lake bed.  We took some photos there, here are a few: