MORMON BATTALION TRAIL AND AN ALLIGATOR-LIZARD

This afternoon Elijah, Braden and I walked along part of the trail that the Mormon Battalion walked. We were looking for branches of Pacific Oak because Braden has taken to teaching me how to whittle "magic wands". Yes. You read that correctly. Today we whittled manzanita wands and now we're going to work on making wands out of Pacific Oak. The manzanita wood is fun because it's beautifully colored and it's also called the Phoenix plant because of its ability to destroy itself in order to resurrect itself from its own debris. Impressive. The Pacific Oak along the Mormon Battalion trail is very very old and therefore, the wands would be fun because of their history. Yea...Braden and I are some kind of odd little soul mates.

As Braden worked on a branch, I found what at first I thought was a wee tee tiny snake. I called Elijah over and he said it was a lizard. He caught it (because he has no fear) and Braden (who is, apparently, an expert on EVERYTHING) said it was an "alligator lizard". He has had several. So, we all trudged back to the car along the trail, under the incredible clouds, and the lightening, next to the dry river bed, and I thought, "Wow, I'm in a lyric from an old 'America' song from the 70s"! Whodda thunk it?

So...here's the alligator lizard-approximately 6 days old.