This week, we completed a new hike to the top of Silver Peak. (We’d attempted this before but not reached the summit.) It’s in the Chiricahua Mountains, near Portal, about a half hour from our house.
It’s a fairly strenuous hike. About 10 miles round trip and 3,000 feet gain in elevation. (Yes, Brad is better.)
Here’s the view from the top. (There was even a log book there. That’s neat.)
And a few other pics.
At the top of this thing, there are about 4 flights of stairs to the observation platform.
Brad at the top
me at the top
Clicking on this will take you to a detailed map of this hike. (click satellite in upper right for the best view )
We took a spontaneous camping trip this weekend.We didn’t want to spend too long away from home with lots of new seedlings in the garden and hot weather predicted (drip irrigation isn’t running yet), so we decided to camp nearby up in the national monument.
It was really nice to unplug for a few days and enjoy all the unexpected beauty that nature has to share.
We knew there would be many spring blooms this time of year, but hadn’t ever seen a cactus flower this color.
We were able to do several hikes that we hadn’t done before including one that ended with a view of this natural bridge.
The most unexpected thing from this trip was unfortunately one I wasn’t able to photograph. After dark, a wild turkey circled our camp, calling out all the way. “Gobble, gobble, gobble. Gobble, gobble, gobble.” It was delightful. Brad thought maybe we should try to get some to hang around the house. I think not.
Today, we took in a deep drink of the beauty here — the golds, fuschias, and scarlets of the wild flowers; the huge, towering rocks hoodoos; the music of mountain streams swelled from the monsoons; the company of good friends; the exhilaration of knowing that life is sometimes very good.
With a friend visiting, we drove through the mountains to the Chiricahua National Monument. It’s a short trip we’ve made several times without ever ceasing to be amazed at the surrounding beauty. The land changes radically with the season, the amount of rainfall, the light, and even our moods and the company we have along. Always, it makes me pause and wonder why I spend so much time worrying about things that don’t really matter.
Truly, this kind of beauty, the people we share our lives with, and the stewardship we exercise over both are the things that are essential.
Oh, and today I saw my first bear in Coronado. I’ve heard many stories about how plentiful bears are here. I’ve wanted to see a bear for a long time. This morning, I decided today would be the day. And thanks to Brad’s eagle eyes, we saw a bear.
It was a magnificent bear. Seen through the trees and across a small stream, it was just the distance from which I’d like a see a bear — close enough to get a good look, far enough to make both me and him reasonably comfortable. It was a large bear, larger than I’d expected, with a full, healthy coat and a solid rump. He looked at us, loped a little further up the hill, and then turned to take another look.
This weekend was the annual local Heritage Days event here. As we’ve done in previous years, Brad and I put together the kids’ activities, which were a big hit. (More on that here if you’re interested.)
This year, Heritage Days included a field day hike to some local Indian rock paintings. The beginning of this hike was just about 30 minutes from our house. The hike up to the rocks was about 2 hours. We were happy to be able to go on this hike (we’ve mostly been trying to focus on the house instead of things like this, but it was nice to go, and we were able to take a couple neighbor kids along), and we never would have found this if we hadn’t had a great leader!
We’ve had a nice visit with my Dad this month. In addition to some old favorites like Bisbee and the local canyons, we did some new things on this trip.
First, we visited the San Pedro Riparian area. This is a lovely river near Sierra Vista that is known for its beauty and wildlife (especially birds). We’ve driven by it a million times and always said we wanted to stop and see it so we finally did. It was beautiful, and we will definitely be returning to do some longer hikes.
We also visited the Pima Air and Space Museum and AMARG (aka the Boneyard) in Tucson. My dad is an aviation history aficionado, and coming from Dayton, home of Wright-Pat AFB and the world’s largest military aviation museum, we wanted to see how this compared. It was impressive. I have to say that all the military aspects of it were pretty depressing. I don’t remember that from all the hours of my childhood spent looking at military planes.
I’ve driven by AMARG, the “boneyard” for military planes, a ton of times and always wanted to see it from the inside. Unfortunately, the tour we went on didn’t let us get out of the bus, but we did see a huge number of out-of-service planes. They are used for parts and also sold off to “friendly” governments.
After that, we took a quick trip to Saguaro National Park. It was beautiful and is another place we’ll be back to for some hiking.
We got up early Christmas morning (actually set an alarm if you can believe that) and headed down to Whitewater Draw where we’d heard there were a fair number sandhill cranes.
It’s about a 75 minute drive, and we got there at about a little after 9. There are some very pretty ponds there, and we saw some cute ducks, a beautiful bright red bird ( possibly a flame-colored tanager), and a lot of raptors, but no cranes. By 10:30 or so, we started hearing the cranes. (You can often hear them long before you see them. They fly very high and have a loud, though oddly pleasing, call.)
Before long, we could see flocks of 100+ birds overhead, and in the distance, many thousand were visible (with the lovely new binoculars Brad got me for Christmas). After 45 minutes or so of flying, they finally started landing. And landing and landing and landing.
By my very rough estimate, there ended up being between 10,000 and 20,000 on the ground. (They say there are as many as 30,000 there at times.) It was so amazing. For the most part, the birds just sat close to one another making their noises, but every once in a while something made huge numbers of them lift off. Wow!
(If anyone is interested in coming to see these cranes, the season is roughly Nov. through Feb. Not the nicest time of year here, but certainly more temperate than the snowy north.)
Last week, Brad and I took a long weekend trip into NM to see the birds at Bosque del Apache, and on the way home, we stopped at the Very Large Array, which is about 45 miles west of Socorro.
It was quite an impressive place, and I’d recommend a visit if you’re ever nearby. They have a very nice visitor center, which is completely unstaffed (a good use of public funds in my opinion). The whole facility apparently runs on a staff of seven, though we saw quite a bit of activity going on while they were there. They also have a self-guided walking tour which is very nice.
While there, I learned that these are radio telescopes, which means that they detect radio emissions from space (and while the film Contact was shot here, they do not actually do SETI work. They did, however, say that if any viable signals were detected, they’d be the first to look further.) There are 27 telescopes arranged in a large Y-shape, which makes up the array. By joining signals, they are able to function together as a much larger telescope. The telescopes move along railroad tracks to form different configurations. Each one also reorients itself fairly often.
Here are some pictures.
Driving home, we went a back way we hadn’t been, west out Socorro and then through Pie Town and Quemado before heading south through Gila Forest. The drive was fabulous, and we also stopped at the Catwalks (more about that another time). Here’s a time lapse movie Brad took on the drive. (If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, go to about 1:10 to see the Very Large Array telescopes moving.)
This was a place I’d passed on the highway many, many times and really wanted to visit. With Dad’s interest in Native American history and this being on the way to Casa Grande, the opportunity was ripe.
This was a very nice museum and separate art gallery, both housed in beautiful colonial Spanish buildings. The works here belonged to the private collection of William Fulton, a businessperson and later archeologist, who moved to Texas Canyon, AZ to further his studies.
These ancient ruins are from the Hohokam culture and feature the “great house,” a four-story high structure housed under a modern shelter to protect it.
We’d planned to do Fort Bowie in the morning and the Shakespeare Ghost Town in the afternoon, but Fort Bowie ended up being a bigger adventure than we’d thought and we spent all day there.
We hiked to the fort (though I now understand that you can drive there), and it was a beautiful hike through amazing country to get there. After we hiked back (different trail…well worth it), we were famished and had a great picnic lunch.
This was the state park where we camped on the first night of our two-night trip up to Bandelier. It features a large number of upright rocks made from eroded volcanic ash, one of only six geologically similar features in the world.
This place was awesome! Just about every camp site was great. We got in just before sunset and left the next morning, but we’ll definitely be returning to check out the surrounding trails and to spend more time here.
This site of Ancestral Pueblo dwellings has been on my to-do list since the first time we went to Albuquerque, and it met all my expectations plus some. Brad and I even hiked up to the Alcove House, which features a 140 feet climb up four ladders.
In addition to the fascinating ruins, we saw lots of beautiful fall foliage. And the drive both into and out of the part was stunning.
We camped at Jemez Falls campground (which was great) and also enjoyed a nice breakfast in Jemez Springs at the Jemez Stage Stop. (This seemed like a fun little burg to spend a weekend or something.)
Our region is so packed full of unique and interesting natural and historical sites, some of which we’ve visited and others of which are still on our list.
I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. One is that we are having some visitors here this month. The other is that I am excited about the idea of doing some projects with local school kids around some of these sites. Being a fairly remote location, a lot of kids think it’s boring to living here and that anywhere would be better. On the other hand, a lot of us adults have chosen to live here because it is such an interesting place. Kids here (many of whom have never seen these sites) should get a vision of why it’s a cool place.
So here’s a list of some of the sites, just in case you’re wondering.
Shakespeare Ghost Town Again, haven’t been there yet…hoping to go for the re-enactment weekend later this month. (I’m leaving Tombstone off this list…I hear it’s grotesquely commercial, and Brad won’t go anyway.) – Update: We’ve been to the Shakespeare ghost town; interesting, a bit touristy, but good if you like this kind of thing….and some day, I want to go to Tombstone; a free beer goes to whoever comes and wants to go with me.
Last week was crazy here. We spent many hours getting ready for the big open house at the farm. It went great and we had a tremendous turnout, but boy were we tired at the end of it all. (We made something like 50 pizzas, 3 trays of lasagna, salads, bread, 20 or so pies, and cheesecakes.)
We also had our first overnight visitor at the guest house. It was great to have Brad’s mom here, and we put her to work! (I’m a little worried that we are going to get a reputation for working our guests to exhaustion. :)
After all that, we finally made a trip to Gila Cliff Dwellings. Over the past five years or so, we have made several attempts to go there but for a variety of reasons, none have come to fruition.
This park is only about 2 hours from our house, and it is fabulous! We’ve visited several other cliff dwellings, but have seen none like this where they let you actually go into the dwellings themselves. It was great. (The hike to the dwellings is a short one mile round trip.)
These structures were built by the Mongollon people who lived in the area in the late 1200s AD. They apparently only occupied the dwellings for one generation. No one knows exactly why they came or left. There are six separate caves with 46 rooms.
The area surrounding the park is beautiful country, and we look forward to going camping there in the future.
