Some fun days

After a quiet week last week, this week we did some fun things on Monday and Wednesday. 

On Monday, we took a long day trip to Chiricahua National Monument, about 1.75 hours from here. This was a fun drive out through small AZ towns and scenery.

Our Route from Sierra Vista

Curvy road

 

This place is City of Rocks on steroids. There's a nice visitor center, small campground and a hair raising drive up about 6 miles, limited length vehicles. We parked and hiked only about a mile total, but enough to get the gist. It had been snowing when we left Sierra Vista, and the temperature and wind combined to keep us chilly. Elevation is close to 7,000 feet where we were hiking, temps in the mid 40's. Amazing rock formations, incredible views. We saw two animals indigenous to this area - a sub-species of white tail deer called a Coues' deer, and the Goulds Turkey! Steve's photos, of course. 

Fire Tower up top

The Grottoes

Grottoe

Distant snow capped peaks

Goulds Turkey - white butt!

Coues' deer - small like a big dog

Acorn Woodpecker

On the way home we stopped at Whitewater Draw Natural area, to see thousands of Sandhill Cranes, like 20-25,000 of them!  It was snowing on the mountain tops to make for some dramatic skies on the way, and it did start to rain while we were there. I wish I was able to record the sound of these cranes, but it was too windy.

A small section of the thousands of cranes

 

 

Then, for our third stop of the day, we stopped at the Old Bisbee Brewing Company for some Mayan Stout and brats and chili for dinner. It was definitely snowing in Bisbee! But the brewery was full of folks enjoying a brew and some local comradery.  All in all a very fun day. It was good to have Beth and Aaron at home to let the dogs out when they got home. And it was great to get back to a nice warm house after being outside for most of the day. Thanks to Karen Edelstein and Sheary Clough Suitor for the heads up on these places. 

Made from local Juniper berries

 

Mayan Stout. yum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stories of crazy Bisbee

 

 

 

 

 

Dramatic Sky

Tuesday night it actually snowed overnight. It was colder in Sierra Vista than in Ithaca for once. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday (today) we met up with Nard and Sheary in Tucson. They have been touring around the area, and we have been near each other but not exactly in the same place at the same time. If you want to read about their travels, you can follow them at Sheary's Polarsteps page. They find more off the beaten path locations than we do. Super interesting (you will have to create an account in Polarsteps, fyi).

We met them at the Fourth street historic district, and walked to the Barrio Viejo district where we had an excellent lunch at El Minuto. Then walked back. It was sunny and near 50. Perfect walking temps. We had such a good day spending time with them. Some of our sights of the day.

The Locks thing

The Hut

 

 

Mural

 

Koi

 

 

 

Historic Fox Theatre

 

 

 

 

Historic marker

h

The Wishing Shrine

 

Beer can art

 

St Augustine's Church

El Minuto with Steve and Nard

 

Street Owl

 

One of the oldest Hispanic Theatres

We head to Patagonia Lakes Sate Park tomorrow. Nard and Sheary are heading to Organ Pipe where we just were. Maybe we will catch up with them again before they head back to Colorado Springs. Good Friends!

Finally, here's a video of the local Gambel's quail. They live in the shrubbery and  front yards of Beth and Aaron's neighborhood and they are a riot. Enjoy.

 

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobe....I mean Sierra Vista

 Not a lot exciting to report this week. We spent a quiet week with Beth and Aaron, running errands, doing some Bubbles cleaning and maintenance (she got washed and waxed!) and generally taking it easy. We even had a day where we did....NOTHING! 😊

We did take two half day hikes, one at San Pedro House Riparian National Conservation area and one to Brown Canyon Ranch.

There's water in the San Pedro river, which was nice to see, but we didn't see too many birds or anything. The hike into Brown Canyon is lovely, an easy grade up into the canyon with plants changing from mesquite and yucca to juniper, cottonwood and live oak. I would like to take another longer hike there soon.

On Sunday we went to Bisbee with Beth and Aaron, always a fun time.

 We are supposed to depart for Patagonia Lake State Park on Tuesday but the weather early in the week has highs in the upper 30's...brrrr!  So we will stay here longer (Thanks Beth and Aaron!) and go to Patagonia on Thursday. Yes, we are wimps....but if we can stay in a nice warm house, why leave it for cold camping....just to test our mettle? 

 Thanks again to Beth and Aaron for putting up with us!

 

Bought myself a new hat in Bisbee.

Lowell, AZ has a collection of old vehicles.

Lowell is where the Bisbee Breakfast Club is. Yum.

Ranch house at Brown Canyon Ranch.

Mesquite Mistletoe

Ft. Huachuca surveillance balloon, grounded all week due to wind.

 

Organ Pipe Catus National Monument

We spent three days in Sierra Vista with Steve's daughter and son in law, Beth and Aaron. Aaron is stationed at Ft. Huachuca in Sierra Vista. They have a lovely home, an adorable dog named Dexter and two silly cats. Everyone gets along fine, thankfully, and our dogs were happy to have a yard to walk around in again. As you can see, Ben made himself right at home.

Ben on the beanbag chair

All three days were spent making repairs and monkeying with the solar panel, which Steve finally was able to get working correctly again after several trips back and forth to Harbor Freight. Sierra Vista is about 4,600 ft elevation, but the Huachuca mountains are higher, and were getting snow while it was 61° down in the valley.

Snow on the Huachuca mountains

We departed Sierra Vista on Feb 2 and headed west for OPCNM. This is a little over 200 mile drive mostly through the Tohono O'odham reservation. It is again a beautiful but stark environment. We arrived at the park around 3pm and got all set up.

This park is the northern range for Organ pipe cactus. They do not tolerate cold well at all, so you are pretty much guaranteed to not have any freezing temps here in winter. Winter is one of the two rainy seasons at the park, but we did not experience any rain during our visit. It has been sunny and warm - 60's to high 70's during the days, 40's at night. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets and the full moon over the mountains is stunning. 

Sunrise

Sunset

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are also lots of Saguaro cactus here, as well as several kinds of mesquite, creosote bush and lots more plant life. It is pretty green for a desert! These yellow flowers are Brittlebush. The plant growing in this mesquite is mesquite mistletoe, and man does it smell good!

Organ Pipe cactus

Saguaro forest

 

Ocotillo starting to flower

 

 

 

 

 

Brittlebush in flower

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palo Verde, state tree of AZ

Mesquite Mistletoe in flower

 

We took a couple of hikes, one day to an old ranch and one day to an old mine. There was gold and silver mining in these hills. There's a HUGE gold mine pit in the nearby town of Ajo. Mine closed in the 1980's but it is still a big mess. Not much going on in Ajo these days.

Their view!

History of the area

Ranch building built of adobe brick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mine building built of stone

Mine shafts. Don't fall in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We thought about driving to Puerto Penasco, at the northern edge of the Sea of Cortez but it is a 75 mile drive each way and that is too long to leave the dogs alone in the camper. We did head into Mexico today, just to say we did. Drove around a little and came right back to the good old US.

 

Full moon rising over mountains

Our campsite

A very green desert

Structure of buckhorn cholla

Hedgehog cactus

Barrel cactus

    

Saguaro spines!

Buckhorn Cholla. looks fuzzy but not

Organ pipe and Saguaro nursery

Interior of Saguaro - cellulose!

 

Cactus Wren singing

Today is our last day here. We drove out to Quitobiquito, one of the only natural springs in the whole Sonoran desert. Beautiful oasis. There is two endangered species there, a pupfish (little bigger than a guppy) and a mud turtle. We did see the pupfish! If you expand this photo you should be able to see them.

Endangered Dessert Pupfish

The drive to the spring runs right along The Wall. The border of the park is The Border, and there is a Mexican highway just the other side of it. I guess it would have been easy enough to walk over before the wall, but then you had miles and miles of Sonoran desert to walk through first....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stats for those interested: $10/night with Golden Age pass. Unheated bathrooms, solar hot water showers only, no hot water in sinks. Solar showers not so hot in the morning....and gets used up quickly in the afternoon. Works maybe in theory but not so much in practice. 

I have to say, these national parks do not make it easy. You have to be prepared to camp here with all the boondocking gadgets - solar panels, propane heaters, generator, etc. I can't see families doing this and there are no families here. So they have to stay in the more expensive RV parks in the areas if they want to visit. I know the NPS is woefully behind in their maintenance - but this seems more of a structural issue to me. Was there ever electric and water at national parks and they have been let go? Or is it now too expensive to add that infrastructure in? Or maybe they keep it this way on purpose so that only those prepared for these conditions camp here?  Not sure, but either way it is a more difficult camping experience. I am sure some prefer this, but I for one do not mind my creature comforts of water and electricity. 

Tomorrow we head back to Sierra Vista and Beth and Aaron's for a week of hiking and biking around the area.  Thanks for traveling with us!