Magnificent scenery in the Navajo Bridge area....

One of the locals watching on...

On our way back we managed to squeeze in return visits to a couple of earlier stops to hopefully get the plants in flower... One was the Pediocactus paradinei site

And I was especially glad we saw the Utahia again as we did catch them in full flower...

You can find Cacti in the strangest places...this was at a water treatment plant on the outskirts of a small town...

And we were looking for Sclerocactus schlesseri and we found it! Unfortunately we were a bit early in the day for the flowers...

So as we were hurtling along a highway pretty much in the middle of nowhere we spotted some massive Echinocereus clumps on a hillside along the road. Well worth the stop....

Close up...

We were getting closer and closer to Vegas now and what would be our return leg home.. but time enough to search for another Sclerocactus outside the town of Tonapah...

It took us a while to get our "eyes in", but one we did we found that we'd probably walked past a number of these little beauties...Sclerocactus nyensis

Lovely plants....such vivid flowers...

Things were coming to an end...we'd now got to our last day in the field and what would be our last stop... We were looking for another Sclerocactus. This time Sclerocactus polyancistrus...after a bit of searching we found our first example, a nice big plant but it was a little dull.....

And we wanted something better....

Because we really wanted to go out with a BANG...and good old Sclerocactus polyancistrus was happy to oblige. Seeing these big guys in full flower was yet another highlight of a great trip !!

The Echonocereus that were here were no slouches either...intersting that the flower color on both these plants is about the same...appealing to the same pollinator perhaps ??