Ben Avery campgrounds

Click on the yellow pics of things that are taking over the campground.

Last night's sunset refused to cooperate, the clouds were just too thick.

Another cloudy day today but at least it didn't rain. Everything around here is incredibly green, it looks more like Miami Florida than the desert.

I found out why it's so crowded here at the campground, there's some kind of a shooting competition going on which should be over in a few more days, so the campground should clear out and look more normal then.

I was really surprised to see more than three or four RVs here when I checked in yesterday, Ben Avery is a place where I can show up anytime I want and always have a place to camp without a bunch of reservations and schedules to live by.

Even though this is a big deal competition and the hookup sites are full, the boondocking sites, which I prefer, are only about half full, and there's a total of roughly 100 campsites in all where I'm at. And they've still got two overflow areas with nobody in them. And if that fills up there's still two more RV parks at Ben Avery's, one at the mounted shooting arenas where the horse people usually stay, with 20 or 30 full hookup sites, and one at the Clay Target Center where the trap and skeet shooters hang out which has about 200 sites. So in all the years I've been coming here I've always had a place to stay no matter when I show up.

Cloudy day boondocking.

Purple flowers intertwined with a long dead Stag-horn Cactus, the seemingly never-ending Arizona rains still dripping from the stems.

Desert sunflowers.

What are they called? Where did they come from? How did they get here? These and many other questions remain unanswered, and linger as a mystery even today.

More information is obviously needed so I have dedicated the entire day tomorrow to getting an accurate count on the number of these mysterious yellow objects. How many there are is the first step to solving this mystery to determine if these things need to be stopped before the situation gets out of hand.

I looked them up on the Internet and I still don't know what these things are called. I found something that looked like this but they were much bigger, these are about the size of the fingernail on my little finger. Whatever they are they cover most of the ground around here with a beautiful yellow carpet.

I'm thinking this could be where they grow golf balls. I know yellow is a strange color for a golf ball, but I think I've seen some yellow golf balls at a driving range before.

I may have to wait until there finished growing and see if they get bigger and harden up like a golf ball normally would.

I've always wondered where golf balls come from, I figured golf balls stopped growing before they became  baseballs. So maybe before I leave here I'll have an answer to that age-old question.