Week ending Dec 29, 2016 Tucson, Benson

Friday, we drove south to Madera Canyon rec area in the Santa Rita mountains east of Green Valley. There are nearly 10 mi of trails in the canyon, from handicap-accessible to steep expert trails.  There are trail maps available at each of the trail heads showing the routes, and information for each trail.  We did a walk about 1.4 mi along Bog Springs trail, described as a moderate easy trail.  It was a nice walk climbing up through mixed mesquite and evergreen forest.  At several points it had views back down the canyon to the hills behind the retirement community of Green Valley. 

Madera Canyon

With an elevation gain of 1200 ft in this distance, we figured we wouldn't want to try a moderate hike.   Once we got high enough, we could see a large rectangular pool of water.  We encountered a couple coming down, and asked them if they knew what it was.  It is the tailings pond from one of the large copper mines in the valley.  We also got talking about Helvetia, the mining area in the hills near here that has been closed to the public.  Apparently this is due to a plan to reopen the mine, and develop an open pit.   There is a movement to prevent this called 'save the Santa Rita's '.  When we checked this out, we found that the company planning the mine is HudBay from Toronto who acquired controlling interest in a US resource corporation.  HudBay's main activities are 3 mines in the Flin Flon area, one in southern Peru, and a 1.5 billion dollar plan to development this mine.  It is currently stalled since the US Army Corps of Engineers in Los Angeles office recommended that a federal 'clean water' permit be denied.  This was the last major federal permit required to proceed.  Interesting.

Tailing pond in background

Saturday was another cool day.  We spent it inside cleaning up the trailer a bit.  There was another wind storm, and since our closest neighbours were away, John picked up some chairs, tables, coolers and mats that were blowing around, and tucked them back where they would stay put.  Joan chatted with Carol in the afternoon.  Christmas evening, we had a nice Skype chat with Karen and Dominique.

Christmas morning, Joan made a tasty zucchini and maple sausage quiche for breakfast. After Skyping with Trev, Sue, Anthony, Taylor and James, we did a short walk around the fairgrounds.  It was down to about 3C this morning, and wet overnight.  The hills around have a dusting of snow on them, so we had a white Christmas.

Our walk was fairly short, as the wind had a bite to it.  We saw a pretty little bird on a neighbours utility stand.

Vermillion Flycatcher

On Monday, we moved to SKP Saguaro Co-op in Benson.  Neighbours at Pima had given us a coupon for first time visitors to the park for $50 for 1 week, so we couldn't pass up on that.  It was a little cool, just above freezing, in the morning as we got hooked up.  Once we got to the park, we had a choice of a few spots, so the 'parker' drove  John around to select a site.  Once we had settled everything in the office, he led us back to the site.  Instead of insisting on guiding us into the site, he asked if we had a 'process' for backing up, and let Joan guide us in.  He did stick around to make sure we were where we needed to be.   The sites are very wide. 

SKP Saguaro rv site

In fact, a lot of them have 'casitas' on them, in addition to room for an RV.  The 'casitas' are 300 sq ft buildings, with an upper deck. 

Casita

The site next door had an interesting sign.

Please keep off the grass

  
Tuesday morning, we went to visitor info in Benson, intending to pick up the guide to the downtown walking tour.   They didn't have hard-copies, but could print one for us.  However, the version they had was obsolete, as some of the buildings in the list were no longer there, so instead, she recommended we go to the museum to get the guide.   After picking up a few other brochures, we headed to the museum.   They found a guide for us.  As we were wandering through their museum, a fellow said he was curious about the price of the guide.  Turns out that they are $6, so we went back to the desk and paid for the guide.   Most downtown walking guides are one or two sheets of regular paper.  These ones are a booklet with 5 heavy duty  8.5x11 sheets with  color pictures, and a heavier outside sheet, so they cost them a lot more to make.  There are 4 tours described, two walking ones of downtown, one walking or driving tour, and one driving tour.   We did the the two downtown walking tours.  There is lots of detail on who had what business in them from the late 1800's until mid 1900's, and later for the businesses that lasted longer.  It was a typical western town from the history, with a flood in 1896,  many fires, a few shootings, one between a bar owner and his bartender.  Few of the original buildings are still there.     The town has a lot of nice murals.   

After we returned to the trailer, the Welcome Committee representative knocked on the door.  We had a good chat with him.  We found out that the main purpose of the casitas is to provide a large living room for residents.  Some of them do have a kitchen area as well.  People are supposed to sleep in their RV's, not in the casita's, but they can be used by short term guests for sleeping.    We were curious about the Escapees club, as we have seen several references to it. Most of the people in the park are on 6month or longer leases each year.  The park is owned by the people in the park.  They provide some short term rentals to people like us on sites that haven't been leased or ones that leasors have put into the rental pool while they are away. You have to be a club member to long term lease, so it is more oriented to people who stay for at least the winter and spend most of their time socializing with other people in the park.   There are only about 20 parks scattered from Florida to Washington state, so we don't see a benefit to nomads like ourselves. 

Wednesday morning, we walked up the wash near the trailer.  Soon it went under a bridge through a couple of culverts, which we walked through by stooping a bit. We had to duck lower toward the other end since there was more gravel on the bottom there.   

under-duck

The wash wandered up toward the hills west of the park, splitting off in several places.  A couple of times we spooked hares that dashed off through the scrub. 

 Undercut mesquite tree

Once we got close to the hills, and the wash started to peter out, we climbed up onto one of the hills.  We came across an ATV trail that ran upwards along a ridge.  We decided to go back down at this point rather than heading up.  At the end of the ridge, the trail went back down into one of the branches of the wash.  We followed that wash back down to where it had branched off from the wash on which we came up.  We walked along the edge of the hills on a path.  We came across an area with really shiny, thin bits of mineral scattered around.  It looked like there was a bit of mining on the hill above the mineral.

Desert Christmas Cactus (we think)

Thursday morning we did a reconnaissance trip to Huachuca City (pronounced wachuca) about 30 miles south of Benson to check out Quail Ridge RV Park, which costs $10/night plus electric.  We had picked up the Discover Cochise (County) brochure, which describes lots of attractions in the area.  We had previously planned on coming here.   The park is fine, and we confirmed that we don't need reservations.  It doesn't get busy until the Chochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering from Feb 1 to 5 when they are packed.  It s the 25th anniversary of the event this year.  From there we went to Fort Huachuca, to see if we could get to the Buffalo Soldier Museum on the Army base.  We filled an application for a pass, only to find out that we can't go in without a US citizen in our party.  We later noticed in our Discover Cochise booklet that we can go to the Sierra Vista Visitor Center at least 3 weeks before we want to visit to arrange for someone to accompany us to the museum.  We'll see.  After picking up some groceries, diesel and cash in Sierra Vista, we took Charleston Rd northeast toward Tombstone.  About halfway across it crosses the San Pedro River Riparian National Conservation Area.  We pulled into a parking lot just across the bridge, and went for a short walk along the river.  The San Pedro is the longest undammed river in Arizona, and other than the Colorado, one of the few in which we have seen surface water this year 

San Pedro River

Back on the highway, we noticed some signs on the left side of the road, but missed the turn.  We had to carry on a bit before we found a road into a field where we could turn around.  We returned to a trailhead for the San Pedro River Trail Millville and Petroglyph section.  Since it was a drizzly day (go figure!) we took a few pictures and had lunch in the truck. We will return to do the 2.5 mi walk after we move to Quail Ridge park.  We carried on to Tombstone (see our blog from March of 2014),

Tombstone Courthouse

then back to Benson.   When we got back to the trailer, the temperature inside was down to 62F so we turned on our furnace for a while to get it warm again.

One of our neighbours in the RV Park has an interesting flag on his site, a union jack in the corner, and 8 white red and blue stripes.  A search for the design found the following information.   https://www.britannica.com/topic/Flags-of-the-United-States-1692052 .

Week ending Dec 22, 2016 Tucson

Friday, we went to the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum.  It is a world-class zoo, botanical garden and natural history museum, all in one.  Even at $18.50 each, it was well worth the visit.   We usually don't spend more than an hour in a museum, but this one was primarily outdoors, so we got a 2 mile walk as a bonus.   There are is a desert loop, with various residents on display.  Below are just a few of them. 

Javelina resting

a cute little fox

Owl

 From the amphibian display. 

Toad

One of the beautiful birds in the hummingbird aviary.

Hummingbird

 Mountain woodland with deer, mountain lion and and a mexican wolf. 

There is an aviary with some quails and cardinals.   A pollination garden explaining the roles of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.    Prairie dogs from the desert grassland section.


Canyon country bighorn.

Bighorn

There is also an Ancient Arizona section  with mineral displays, dinosaur bones, and a cave to walk through.

Saturday, Joan did her Christmas baking.

Sunday morning, Joan's computer wouldn't boot up.  It had a break in the charging cable.  We stopped at Best Buy where we got excellent service selecting the correct replacement charger. 

Then we went to Kitt Peak National Observatory.   There are 26 telescopes and other pieces of equipment for viewing the universe.  There are some excellent displays describing many aspects of the stellar universe.  We chose not to do the guided tour.  

Some of the observatories

Sundial

Click image see how the sundial adjusts for different months

Being at the top of a 7000 ft mountain, it also has great views from many points on the 8% grade 10 mile drive.

view from Kitt Peak

Tuesday, we found a nice website (www.experience-az.com) which has sections for 4wd, biking, hiking, and quick trips.  We discovered it while looking for information about the Helvetia site in the hills south of Tucson.  There was a mine there, and some ruins are left, but the mining company has closed the access road to the public.  When we looked at the hiking section of the website above, we found a hike in Honey Bee Canyon Park in Oro Valley, on the Northwest corner of Tucson, which we decided to do. Fortunately Joan had done a google-map directions check, and found out there was an accident on the freeway between the junction next us, and the next one west.  So we were able to avoid the problem, with only a short slowdown due to the volume of traffic being rerouted around the it.  The website for the hike had GPS locations for 7 points on the hike, which John put into our etrex-20.  They turned out to be somewhat confusing to use, because the trails did not go straight to the next point, but looped around a bit, so at a couple of points, it wasn't clear which trail to follow at a junction.  However, we had taken a picture on our phone of the trail directions, which clarified which way to go.  The trail starts at a little park with a couple of ramadas and restrooms.  It starts by going south to a rock dam that you can walk  through to get into a neat little canyon. 

Rock dam

It opens up to views of the St. Catalina Mountains.  Then you walk back up the wash, under the highway to a smaller rock dam north of the road.  There is a boulder just past the dam with petroglyphs done by the Hohokam people (450 to 1200 AD).  Apparently there is a site nearby with mounds, pit structures, plazas, ball court and other rooms.  The site is being kept a secret while the town of Oro Valley is attempting to create a Honey Bee Village preserve. 

 Canyon

Woodpecker or Cactuspecker?

Petroglyphs

The rest of the week our mornings were sort of warm  but felt chilly due to the moisture in the air from periodic rain and steady wind.

Week ending Dec 15, 2016 Tucson

Friday, we went to Tucson Mountain Park to do the David Yetman Trail.  The drive to the west trailhead was quite scenic, a windy road up the mountain over Gates Pass.  The trailhead was at a scenic overlook about halfway down the other side of the hill.  We had to wait a few minutes for some of the people taking pictures of the valley to free up a space to park.  The first part of the hike was up over a saddle between two peaks.  Once we got to the top, we could see down the valley formed by a row of hills between us and Tucson. 

The only wildlife we saw was a few birds.  The hillsides were covered in saguaro, ocitillo, cholla and prickly pear cactus along with palo verde and mesquite trees in the slightly damper washes.

Variety of desert plants

We walked about a mile down the valley toward a residential area where we did a small loop before climbing back up the hill. 

Saturday, we drove north to Picacho State Park. 

Picacho

It is famous for a couple of difficult trails going to the peak (gloves are recommended to hang on to cables along a ledge at the bottom of a cliff face).  We opted for a short but steep.7 mi hike up to another saddle to a view back over the freeway and the valley.  Joan had a bit of a mishap using a saguaro cactus for balance.  She had to pick a few thorns out of her hand.  Near the top we encountered a couple from California with a small dog wearing socks to protect its feet from the sharp rocks.  We had a fairly long chat with them about their and our experiences RVing.  They are recently retired, but have been RVing for about 3 months per year for a while.   On the way down, we almost stepped on a little snake that scurried under a bush, but peaked out to keep an eye on us.

Picacho Pass was the location of a Civil War skirmish between Confederate and Union troops.  The Confederacy was attempting to establish a link to California, after the Union had recalled troops in the west for battle in the east. The Confederates won the skirmish here, but shortly after the Union captured Tucson. 

Monday we moved across Tucson to the Pima County Fairgrounds.  This is a quiet time of year for them, so it is used by snowbirds.  No reservations or time limits, but when an event is here (the Fair, concerts, gem show, etc.) they clear out the RVers to make room for people putting on the events.      We did the 1.3mi TimberForm Fitness Trail, which has exercise stations for sit-ups, leg lifts, knee flexes, chin-ups, hop-overs and beam walks.  On the way back through the park we stopped to visit with a lady from Maine who had a large cage next to her trailer with 3 birds in it, a Maximilian's pionus (parrot),  a cockatiel and a parakeet. 

Maxamilian's Pionus

Cockatiel

 Parakeet

Later in the day, John got talking to one of our neighbours, and he asked us if we knew about the pack rats.  Apparently pack rats live in the oleandar hedge behind the trailer. He recommended getting some Home Defense insect repellent and spray it on all of the points on the trailer touching the ground.  We headed out to pick some up, and got everything sprayed just before dark.

Tuesday, we went to Sabino Canyon Recreation Area.  This Rec Area has a large variety of trails.   We chose to do the 7 Falls Trail, a 4.1 mile route up Bear Canyon to the 7 Falls.  A volunteer warned us that at this time the falls are only a trickle.  There is a shuttle that runs about once an hour, so we decided to walk the mile to the trailhead.   This turned out to be a bad choice, as the shuttle arrived just as we were getting to the trailhead.  We enjoyed the walk up the canyon, but found that the frequent locations with large steps, took too much effort, so we turned back about .7 miles short of the falls.  We did see some nice little pools along the way. 

The scenery was still beautiful, and it was a bit different seeing leaves turning yellow in the desert.  Amazing what a little water will do for diversity.

At a rest point, a nice male phainopepla posed for us.

 
Wednesday we did the Sky Islands Scenic Byway, 26 miles up a winding road into the Santa Catalina Mountains on the northeast corner of Tucson.

Click for Map of Byway

The hills are referred to as Sky Islands because they rise like islands in a desert sea.  Several people recommended the trip, and that it was essential to download the University of Arizona's  Mt Lemmon App.  We put it on Joan's tablet, and listened to a description of the science of the region, from the Sonoran Desert at the base to Grasslands, to Alpine forest at the top.  The description had 6 sections, covering the following subjects:  Sky Islands, Rocks, Life Zones, Water, Forest, Fire.  Even without the trip, this would interesting to listen to.  Several main scientific principles were developed at the University here in Tucson, particularly the formation of the mountains based on the collisions of the continental plates, and the use of the rings in trees identifying the time frame of climate events, including fires.  The byway starts at 2400 feet in Tucson to 8300 feet at the base of the Mt. Lemmon ski hill.  Consequently it covers an amazing transition of life zones that interpretive signs compare to going from Mexico to Canada.

The scenery is fantastic.   

At one point, there is a viewpoint on the road that looks out at the 7 falls.  We could see the pools that are still there even though there was very little water flowing.   

When we got to the ski hill, we discovered that the restaurant is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday.   There was snow at the top, which is fairly recent, but there isn't enough for the ski hill to be operating.

Week ending Dec 8, 2016 Gila Bend to Tucson

Friday, we went for a drive about 30 mi west to Agua Caliente (Spanish for Hot Water).   It is listed on the Arizona Ghost Towns site. In the little town of Sentinel, where we left the interstate, we saw an interesting yard decoration.  There was a wide branched tree with pots hanging from it (the pot tree).  We didn't see it soon enough to take a picture, so we thought we would take it when we came back.  However, we returned on a different route. 

On the drive north to Agua Caliente, we saw a coyote cross the road.  A few miles north, a roadrunner crossed.  We crossed the Gila River, but couldn't see any water in it.  We don't know whether the reservoir at Painted Rock is low, or if the river is running below the surface in the gravel.    Agua Caliente site was started as a ranch, and in 1897 a hotel was built to house visitors to the hot springs.  The hotel is pretty much intact, but the ranch buildings are crumbling.  Eventually, the ranch used too much water from the springs, and they dried up. 

Agua Caliente Pioneer Cemetary

Agua Caliente Ranch Building

We carried on a bit north to another ghost town, Hyder.  The business there is for sale, if anyone is interested.  It is located on the Union Pacific train line between Yuma and Phoenix. 

From Hyder, we followed the rail line for a few miles before taking Rocky Point Road, a decent gravel road that crosses the rises towards the Painted Rock Pictographs which we visited in the spring.   We crossed the Gila River again, and there wasn't even a bridge at this point.

Sunday we headed for Maggies Cove trail in Sonoran Desert National Monument.  The trail head is north of Gila Bend off highway 85. We had picked up the BLM map of the Monument that shows all of the road numbers.  The road to the trailhead goes through a gap in the hills.  We found a spot that looked like it was in the right place based on the hills.   We were expecting to see a BLM road number sign, but the only sign we saw where we exited was the one below, which looked like it was to an ATV trail.   

Trail Directions

We headed a bit north, and were soon out of the BLM area, so we returned to the spot.  We followed the Trail north along the fence line for about 400m, but couldn't see where it headed towards the hills.   The trail didn't look attractive to drive on, so we decided to just walk to the gap in the hills.   Close to the hills, we picked up the road.  Signs along the edge said that a recent court order prohibited target practice in the area.  We carried along the road until we go to the gap, about 4.3 k from the truck.  After having lunch, we decided to carry along the road back to the highway.  It hit the fence about 800 m north of the truck so we had walked about halfway to the turn.  As well, about halfway to the hills, there were signs where the road crossed the power line welcoming us to the National Monument, and confirming that this was the correct road number to get to the trailhead.   By the time we got back to the truck. we had gone about 8.6 km so figured that was enough hiking for the day.  As well, there weren't a lot of places for two vehicles to pass one another on the route, and it was a bit sandy.  But, we didn't see any places where it looked like vehicles had to move onto the edges to pass one another.

Sonoran Desert National Monument

Monday we moved to Whispering Palms RV Park in Tucson, and paid for a week with  Passport America discount.

Tuesday, we drove to Pima County Fairgrounds near Tucson and verified it would be an okay place to stay for a while.  We stopped at the Visitor Center (sort of) in downtown Tucson.  They had moved to a new location due to construction making access difficult, but still had some info for us. 

Thursday we did the downtown Tucson walking tour, the Turquoise Trail.   They have kindly painted a turquoise line along the route to make it easy to follow, and even have the numbers of some of the points of interest painted next to them.

Tucson's Turquoise Trail

Old Barrio Steetscape

Many of the older buildings have drain spouts projected from the area on the roof. These were put out far enough to prevent the water from eroding the adobe walls of the houses.

One of the downspouts

El Tiradito Wishing Shrine

Part way through the walk, we were distracted by an RV Show at the Convention Center.

Modern Tucson

In a nice little park, there was a monument to the Mormon Battalion. The Battalion stopped in Tucson in 1846 on their way to California to fight in the Mexican War.

Mormon Battalion Monument