Woke up to snow Tuesday morning. It was gone by afternoon.
The perfect snow
Written by karen on February 12th, 2009Movieland
Written by brad on February 8th, 2009Karen is not the only one making movies here in Portal. I’ve started up again on my time-lapse movies. This one uses the koi pond as a reflecting device for the clouds as well as for its koi.
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Koi Pond with Clouds
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It’s stormy here today and I have a camera setup facing toward Horseshoe Canyon. I’m keeping an eye out for rain, but so far so good. It’s windy as heck. I have the tripod kind of wrapped into some fencing to prevent it from flying off.
I’ve gotten better at looking at the clouds and evaluating their movie potential. It takes some patience to see the clouds move and to determine their direction. Today it’s too cold for much of that; I tried, but you can’t really shiver and watch clouds at the same time. I basically pointed the camera in a nice direction and got back into the house.
The world is so much different with digital cameras. I shoot all kinds of movies that never amount to anything and the only cost is batteries. Even those are rechargeable.
There are a couple variation of this time-lapse on youtube.
A new take on Friday “happy hours”
Written by karen on February 7th, 2009When we lived in California, Brad and I used to occasionally knock off work early on a Friday and go do something fun. (Not that it outweighs all the extra hours we put in, but this is one of the nice side benefits of having our own business.) Often, we went down to the beach or the harbor to walk, people watch, and, of course, eat.
Yesterday, in celebration of finally getting my desk cleaned off, we decided to go out and look for some more abandoned train cars. We found one, but then got sidetracked following a canyon road. This time it was Price Canyon, which is a few miles south of Apache (10 or 15 miles south of where we live.) These canyon roads, like the one our property is on, are all dirt roads that run west off 80, typically starting with with a few miles of beautiful open range land.
As the roads get closer to the Chiricahua Mountains, they meet up with the national forest.
Then the terrain gradually changes to more rocky mountains. This road first went through one of of the densest oak forests I’ve seen. It was beautiful. In general, the road was very good, but as we got back into the forest more, it got rougher, making us glad we have a big truck. There were some dry rock creek beds that were easy to imagine as rushing rivers in the wet season.
We saw a couple beautiful whitetail deer and many birds. Back in the forest, the rock walls and mountain faces were stunning. We can’t wait to come back and hike here. (From the end of the road, it’s 6 miles to Sentinel Peak and 9 miles to Rucker Lake.) There were some astoundingly tall pines as well. It is amazing how fast the flora changes here.
This was a pretty long road, going about 10 miles back before it ended at a trailhead that we can’t wait to hike and explore more. I rode most of the way back standing in the back of the truck bed (“safari-ing” as we call it), shooting some video. (Stay tuned for the video; I have a big work project to get through first.)
The day finished with us driving back into a beautiful sunset.
I have a feeling this will be the start of some great new Friday “happy hours,” possibly extending into some nice long weekend backpack trips. :)
Old wrecked train cars
Written by karen on February 5th, 2009There used to be a railway through our valley. I know this in part because you can see old tracks in some places and in part because I researched a deed restriction related to the railroads when we bought our land.
As a result, there are several old abandoned train cars on the plains here. They are beautiful. I’ve begun photographing them and hope to have a whole collection of pictures soon. In the meantime, here’s a preview. (Click image to enlarge.)
Before and after
Written by karen on February 2nd, 2009So we did decide to go with switching the living room and the office in our rental house. Here are the before and after pictures. (Note that none of this is our furniture.)
Living room before:
…and after (now the office):
Here’s the new living room (previously an empty room that we’d planned on being the office):
This isn’t our “dream house,” but it’s certainly more than adequate for the time while we’re building. And, while I was worried that having a home office might drive me crazy, so far it’s really fine. I actually enjoy not having to get up and “go to work” and being able to take a walk at lunch or after work in the surrounding beauty. (Knowing that dark is coming each evening around 4 or 5 is actually motivating me to stop work then.)
Arugula
Written by karen on February 1st, 2009We were heading out to the Chiracahuas Sat. morning to hike (pics below), and we saw a produce stand set up on the side of the road. (Brad had read about this on a flyer at the post office, but I couldn’t believe it. Produce in Jan., when it’s in the 20s at night? The farmers markets around here don’t open until May or June.) We stopped and found a small selection of things and bought a bag of arugula and a bag of chard. The guy who runs the stand grows it in a big greenhouse that it turned out is only a couple miles from our property.
After our hike, we went home and made dinner, which included a salad. That arugula was amazing! We are looking forward to getting more.
These pictures are from the South Fork part of the Chiracahuas. You can get to it by driving into the park past Portal. It also connects to Horseshoe Canyon on the back side. (This is roughly 7 or 8 miles from our property. Some day we’ll do a big hike or even a backpacking trip back here.)
Weather report
Written by karen on January 29th, 2009I know that many of our friends and family are enduring
some bitter cold right now. (I’ve been traveling a lot this month and have been some very cold places myself.)
That being the case, I thought it might be a good time for a weather report from Portal/Rodeo. This week, it’s been cold at nights….as low as the 20s, but always seems to warm up to the 60s or 70s during the day. Earlier in the month, it was generally warmer at night (40s) and nice, warm, and sunny during the day. There was one day of rain, but I missed it. (I was on the road.)
It’s interesting to be experiencing variable weather again. I’m kind of looking forward to things like the monsoon season, summer, and big thunderstorms.
Chicken
Written by karen on January 29th, 2009For any of you who have eaten or heard about my yummy dishes made with fake chicken, sausage, etc., the brand is LightLife. It’s found in the refrigerated food section, often near tofu, and I highly recommend it.
Canyon hike
Written by karen on January 20th, 2009On Sunday, after our normal run (the first one in AZ), we went on a hike in Horseshoe Canyon (while tivo’ing football). This is the canyon that is directly behind our property at the end of Sunrise Road. At the end of the road, which is about two or three miles from our property, there is a gate (currently closed to keep the cows on the mountain side for the winter) that you can drive through. About a hundred feet or so past that gate is a sign marking the entrance to Coronado National Forest.
We drove for a while until we found a place where we could pull off and park, which was the first of several campsites we saw. We parked and started our hike.
The pictures here pretty much tell the story of the amazing beauty of this area. We saw many different types of environment on our 5 mile or so hike, ranging from grassland prairie to dense oak forest to very rocky mountains.
Among the interesting things we saw on this hike were several large drinking water pools for the cows. (The cows, however, were all at the front gate. We didn’t see any further back in the canyon. And despite all my efforts to be friendly, the cows seem pretty terrified of me, or anyone I guess, on foot. Weird since they are unfazed by cars.) One was a smaller trough fed by an enormous metal container the size of a swimming pool. Brad fished a dead bat out of it though so I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it.
We didn’t see another person or vehicle the whole time we were there.
We mostly hiked on a dirt road that seemed to go on and on with several branches we’ve yet to explore. There are a lot of interesting places to go next time, not to mention the many other canyons in this area. We’re also anxious to do some camping. It’s amazing to think that this is just a few miles from our new home, and that we are finally actually living here!
Where does the time go?
Written by karen on January 17th, 2009
It’s amazing how fast the day goes by…especially when you don’t get up until 11.
OK — I have an excuse. Yesterday, I got back from my first trip out of Tucson and didn’t get home until about 3am. The trip went well. The drive from the house to the airport (which began at about 3am but at the beginning of the day instead of the end) was a little stressful, just because I hadn’t done it before. I was also working in a trip to Fed Ex. Everything worked out fine though. The Tucson airport is very very easy. I even managed to get a haircut in NC (from a totally random place I found off the highway — another thing I’m trying to be less fussy about; it worked out fine). For the trip home, I’d planned on staying at a hotel in Tucson since the flight was so late, but I thought that if I slept on the plane and felt good, I might drive right home. I did sleep on the plane and felt really great when we landed, so I drove home. It was really easy and quite a nice drive.
One funny part of the trip was when the airline attendant was doing the whole preflight safety thing. She talked about the life vests and added “just in case we decide to land in the Hudson.” Funny, huh?
Today, after breakfast, Brad and I cleaned the house. No more cleaning people; it’s a part of our simplifying-our-lives thing. It’s been awhile since I’ve cleaned a house. It wasn’t that bad though.
Then Brad went off to tar the roof of the container on our property, while I caught up on work and did laundry. Tomorrow, rest, footbal, and maybe our first hike into Horseshoe Canyon.