Today was a long day I took Jaime up on his offer of joining the group he was taking to the Monarch Butterfly Reserve. It was a 7am start he obviously doesn't know that retired people don't normally get up at that time!. The group was 3 American ladies and 1 Canadian lady and away we went. It was a 3 hour drive to the reserve and when we arrived it was thrilling to see the Native people and how they had developed the area. the walk to the Reserve from the entrance was about 1 mile and at very high altitude around 10,000 feet. Horses were available for rent and most of the people visiting took advantage of this service. Once at the reserve it was truly quite amazing to see all these trees with their branches bending so far over from the weight of the butterflies.
Jaime was very knowledgeable and I had no idea of the lifestyle of these insects including that the males die after impregnating the female and the females die after birth.
The only slight dis-appointment was that the weather was cool, overcast and not sunny, hence the butterflies, apart from one or two did not fly. We sat and waited maybe 45 minutes and the sun shone for a few seconds and then more clouds came in.
Jaime told us this does not happen very often and when they do fly the scene is incredible.
It was a good long day and something I am glad I did not miss......have a great weekend.