Blooming desert

Went East of Bend  to a trailhead (nope, don't remember the name, need to take pictures of these)
There had been an article in the paper about the flowers blooming after the rains we have had, so had to go see them.  as did not get to see the SUPERbloom in California...

 And we had a pretty good showing i thought.  Took Luci with me...  and that did not work out so great as it was too hot for her and she is right next to the ground, she started panting really hard and stumbled a couple times, thought she had stickers in her feet, so picked her up, no stickers. BUT had probably gone 1/4 mile and had to carry her back.. good thing she only weighs 17#!!
Am going to split these pictures into trees and flowers and then there is a huge dandelion thing that got some fair pics of, so i have something for a couple days of blogs, and do not get any one too horribly long.... I took the ancient tree turn off, and there were soooo many great juniper trees!!!! growing right out of rocks! Such stories they could tell... An article a couple years ago said there were trees out there that are over 400 years old....

 So many different kinds of flowers, and it made the floor of the desert all purple of yellow, with splotches of white here and there...

 These flowers were especially sweet..

Luci was really glad to get back in the air conditioned car.  Don't know what i was thinking really, but did not seem that warm out there to me.  She stopped with the heavy panting after a couple of minutes of being held and was very content to let me do all the walking..

There was all of that stupid cheet grass too, was afraid it would get in her ears or toes...

Can you sort of see the purple there? flowers!!!  It was much more vivid in person, the camera does not pick it up very good, i just have a little point and shot.. it does pretty good for what i use it for, but there are times when i wish i could get really,, really close and still be in focus or like this where the depth of field could get to be better...
It was a good outing even tho it did not last very long... Will have to go back for more tree pictures w/o the dog or on a cooler/cold day.
There were about 10 cars parked there and two different ones were breaking out lawn chairs and one was even cooking lunch... Don't know, think i could have found a better place that in the middle of no where in a dusty rocky parking lot.... oh well, to each their own.
People were very friendly, wishing a good day when meeting on the trail, it was nice..
Take Care and God Bless