How are the imagined and real desert alike?  This is what I can sa from my experience of one weekend, to one part of a desert:  It is sandy, warm/hot, has sparse vegetation, cool mountainous areas, but flat besides that, it's so dry that the ground crackles (I just like that word better than cracks), and there are jack rabbits and oasises.  The oasises are like the mirages they depict in movies and such, when you're crawling through the desert and can't handle it much longer- w/ a stream and huge palm trees, so different than the rest of the landscape that it appears as an island.  The water source for these were natural springs, I believe- and there's a cool story about an Arab couple living there before, a while ago.  I think the man had a shot gun.  Wouldn't they get bored w/ just the two of them?  Wouldn't they feel isolated?  Anyways, there are some tiny blue fish that live in the water there that are picky- they die if the water goes below a certain temperature, like 75*.  So they're protected by the government- there's a fence around the whole thing.  But it's to keep big vehicles and 4-wheelers out- people can come in.  The sunset was really beautiful.  And there were a lot of beautiful flowers- I guess a lot of water flowed down from the mountains this winter, and so whatever seeds were waiting around got the boost they needed to grow pretty things.
This afternoon, I'm heading for home, or at least my parents' home.  It will always be home for me.  It's the first time I'll see them since January, and I'm excited.  It's for the weekend.  Midwest: Ready or not, here I come!