Nau speak: Vegas: Van-Camping at Valley of Fire Arch Rock part two

Hello again! Welcome back to my little corner of the internet. Your visit today finds you rewarded with pictures of pretty rocks and fluffy things! It's only appropriate for Valentine's day, isn't it? I'm at a point in my life where, while I appreciate the sentiment behind it, I don't want or need any more stuffed animals. They're cute and I have two from my childhood that I've kept along with a couple others for sentimental value, but I'm satisfied with the collection I've got and feel no need to continue adding to it. What I could always add to? My collection of cute animal photos! Heck to the yeah!

During this camping trip we were really quite popular among the local rodent population, as well as several birds, and an unexpected little dog that came scampering around the corner followed by his human after I whistled at a bird. The fellow above was the first of the ground squirrels to stop over for a visit, and while we were watching he jumped off the rocks sheltering our campsite and ran to our fire pit to steal a bean. That's right, folks, what you see here is an example of the wild Mojave bean thief! Despite his adorably unassuming face, these little critters will gladly clean up your campsite of any foods you happen to leave out and about so please be aware of your supplies. We were enjoying some coffee and snacks at the picnic table when he approached, and we realised we'd forgotten about the can of baked beans we'd attempted to heat but ultimately gave up on the night prior. Between the generously sized steaks, vegetable skewers and s'mores we were too full to really want the beans after dinner and left them to cool in the fire pit when we went to sleep... for all we know the ground squirrels had been pinching beans the whole time, so I'm glad we didn't try to re-heat the already open beans for breakfast. We were grateful for his visit and the photos I was able to take due to his hanging around, but in the future we'll make sure not to leave anything out like that. Some of his buddies popped round later that afternoon, probably lured by the beans their friend had admitted to eating after farting up the burrow. They dropped in after we finished our tie-dye photoshoot, photos of that will be up tomorrow so check back for that if you're interested. For now, the rest of the photos will be from our campsite and morning at Arch Rock campground in Valley of Fire state park!