Occupation of Independence

  Springerville, AZ. Ahh, there's nothing like your RV camper facing the sunrise, especially when you're looking into the smoke of the Whitewater-Baldy fire. (This photo has been moved to my "sky,weather" photo album.)

Springerville AZ. My fellow camper and I were finding so many RV boondocking sites that it was almost embarrassing. We were having so much fun with the drive that we climbed above the ponderosa pine and hit cheerful aspen and (ugly) spruce/fir.  Large yellow/black butterflies made use of clumps of pale blue/purple flowers. (Moved to my animals Picasa photo album.) Perhaps my fellow camper was surprised that cynical ol' Boonie would stop for 20 minutes just to photograph butterflies and flowers.   Is it a Western Tiger swallowtail alighting on a columbine? I wish somebody would correct me. I do have a desire to know the names of things that I encounter at the moment of observation and inspiration, but you can act on this impulse only if you have a field guide, or these days, some kind of gadget and app. By the time you get home the impulse disappears. We chose a patch of ponderosa forest (8500 feet) that belied my previous assertion that timber harvesting was a thin