#8: [12-Feb-19]

#7: [18-Oct-18]

#6: [05-Dec-11]

#5: [27-Jul-07]

#4: [11-Dec-05]

#3: [23-Apr-05]

#2: [26-Mar-05]

18-Nov-1999 -- Another meteor shower, another confluence! (See 34N 111W) This time we went northwest into the desert to watch the 1999 edition of the Leonid meteor shower away from the lights of Phoenix, and to visit the confluence at 34N 113W.

A bright moon prevented us from seeing too many meteors early in the evening, and so we napped until about 4:30 AM, after it had set. From then until about 5:50 we got a wonderful show of about 110 meteors, in spite of some clouds and the glow from the still-too-close city.

After another nap and a bit of hot chocolate, we drove around in circles for way too long on roads that didn't exactly match the ones on the map, before finally winding up about a mile south of the confluence. The general area (photo #2) was sparsely vegetated and pool-table flat, and so the hike to the spot was very easy. Along the way we saw a few rabbits and small squirrels keeping their Thursday appointments, along with lots of evidence that some cattle had been out and about recently (photo #6). But no actual cattle. Perhaps they take Thursdays off.

There was nothing especially remarkable about desert right at the confluence (photos #3 and #4) except a very nice example of a cactus we couldn't identify (photo #1) and some little plants with bright yellow berries (photo #3) that we couldn't identify either.

Picture #5 is an aerial photograph of the confluence. This shot shows the confluence looking towards the southeast (and down) from about 3,000 feet above the ground. As near as I can tell, the confluence is just slightly to the left of the center of the photograph. The light green areas on the ground are dry grass, the darker green areas are bushes and small trees, and the brown areas are bare dirt. The three dark spots near the bottom are manmade reservoirs for watering cattle, and if you look very closely, you can see a rectangular corral between the round tank and the bottom of the picture.