Tucson to Catalina State Park to Patagonia Lake to Benson to Tucson (Dec 11 to Dec 24)

Well, I didn't ignore the blog quite as long this time. Right now I've got an hour to kill at Tucson International Airport, so I'll get up to date.

On Dec. 11, it was raining (of course, Amy was here). So we went to the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona. They have a great exhibit called Paths of Life on all the different tribes that have lived in the area - Arizona, SW Ca, northern Mexico. I've seen a lot of ruins, petroglyphs, etc with interpretive material, but nothing putting all the tribes in context, when and where they lived. It was really nice to get that overview, and to see all the neat artifacts the museum has.

Then Amy and I had yummy pizza for lunch and I dropped her at the airport. It sure was fun to have her here visiting.

The rain was supposed to stop that evening, so I decided to brave the camping thing and drove to Catalina State Park, just a bit north of Tucson. As I read the payment instructions at the entrance booth, a passenger car passed me and headed into the park. I read I was supposed to pick a site and come back to pay in the morning when the office was open, so I followed the car into the park. I came around a curve to one of those "Do not enter when roadway flooded" signs. Well it was just pouring so of course there was water in the road. But the passenger car was on the other side, he'd obviously made it so surely my high-clearance, four-wheel drive jeep would? I'm a bit of a wimp about such things (or intelligently cautious, depending on how you look at it), but I decided it was less than 10 feet across the water, so I went for it and made it just fine. I followed the signs to the tent loop, and drove around it looking for a dry site (Ha! Dream on!). I got all the way around the loop, it was dusk and just pouring rain, so I just pulled into the last site to think about it - should I get out the rain gear, and have a walk around to pick a site? Or maybe just head to that Holiday Inn I saw 5 miles back? I'd never get the tent up without getting drenched. Then there was a knock on my window - the campground host. She wanted to warn me that the stretch of road with water sometimes floods and you can't get out for a couple days. Guess they had a really bad fire a few years ago which has led to a lot of erosion upstream, so the wash carries a lot of sand across the road and you just can't get across the water/sand mix, even with four wheel drive. Well, I'm thinking it's been 15 minutes of absolute downpour since I came thru the water, is it smart to drive back thru it? I decided to just stay where I was, I moved over into the passenger seat to get comfy, and had a few of the yummy homemade Xmas cookies Amy had brought me (nothing like a cookie to cheer you up!) I had a bunch of episodes of the NPR Sunday puzzle podcast that I hadn't listened to, so I passed an hour or two solving puzzles and amazingly enough the rain started to let up. Wonder if that was about when Amy landed back in Denver? :^) Anyway, soon enough the rain stopped altogether, I picked a nice site that wasn't a lake and set up my tent.

The next morning I got a good look at how nice the park was, but it was cold. Hmmm....that snow line isn't much above my campsite:


I stayed there a few days. They have some nice trails that I hoped to hike - but quite a few started like this:


Yes, that's the trail on the other side of that normally dry wash. I know, I'm a wimp, I could have waded across, but somehow, since I was waking up to an ice-encrusted tent from the heavy frost every morning, and the campground didn't allow campfires, well, I just wasn't willing to get wet feet. So I skipped those hikes, but there were some nice shorter trails that didn't require wet feet. Cool cactus:


And some really nice views:


One day I drove 45 minutes or so west to Sabino Canyon. The upper part of the canyon also required wet feet, but I had a nice walk in the part accessible with dry feet. I saw a pretty cardinal:

The creek was beautiful, and running strong from all the rain:


It just feel weird to be hiking in the desert and see all that water:


On Dec 16 I packed up and headed south to Patagonia Lake State Park, a nice campground on a lake (manmade) an hour or so south of Tucson. While there I had a nice hike in the adjacent Sonoita Creek state natural area, through some nice scenery:


Down to Sonoita Creek:

One evening I took a ranger-led sunset boat ride on the lake. Saw lots of birds and a gorgeous sunset.


On Thursday Dec 20 I drove up to Benson, 40 miles or so east of Tucson. My former neighbors and landlords in Corvallis, Polly and Lee, spend most of the winter there, so I stopped in to visit with them. They have a permanent RV lot that they own with a cute little casita on it that I stayed in. Aah, a real building, with a heater! Such luxury! It was really fun to catch up with them, and their adorable Westie, Mitzi:


The RV park was having lots of Xmas activities - one night we went to a Christmas carol concert, another night we went to a bonfire and caroling hayride. They have a really nice view from their porch, and we saw some gorgeous sunsets:


Today (Xmas Eve) I'm flying from Tucson to my parents in Venice, Fl for the holidays. And it's just about time for my flight, so I better go. Hope everyone has wonderful holidays!

Prescott to Joshua Tree to Palm Springs to Anza-Borrego to Yuma to Painted Rock Petroglyph Site to Organ Pipe Cactus to Tucson (Nov 18-Dec 10)

OK, I've been a bad, bad blogger. My excuse is that most of the time I don't have wifi and the one night a week or so I stay in a hotel and have wifi is a combination of my shower and bed luxury time, my tv couch potato time, and when I'm on the net I need to pay bills, catch up on email, and research where I'm going next. I know, excuses, excuses... But I've received enough harassment emails and phone calls that I'm gonna get up to date tonight, and I promise to be better in the future.

On Sunday, November 18 I left Prescott and then camped where? Guess from the photo :^)


Oh, it must be Joshua Tree National Park! I got a nice campsite and settled in for a week. I might have stayed a day or two less, but that Thursday was Thanksgiving day, and finding a campsite anywhere over Thanksgiving weekend was gonna be tough, so I decided to just stay put.

Joshua trees are just the strangest looking trees:

There were lots of forests of them all over the park - though they're not really trees, but actually a type of yucca. The big ones are two or three hundred years old - they only grow on average a half an inch a year!

The park also has tons of cool rock formations. It was a full moon the week I was there - barely needed my headlight to find my away around the campground after dark. The moon rose in the afternoon, making for some cool skies.


On Thanksgiving day I did a really cool hike to the 40 palms oasis. The hike went up over a ridge and down to the oasis.


Its amazing to hike thru really desolate desert like the hills in the picture above and then come to this lush oasis:


After my hike, I went back to my campsite for my camping version of a Thanksgiving feast - I'd bought a roasted turkey breast the day before, along with a can of cranberry sauce, instant stuffing and some broccoli to steam. So I had a pretty good Thanksgiving dinner.

I did several other hikes in Joshua Tree along with some scenic drives. One road goes up to Key's View, where on a clear day you can see south past the Salton Sea to mountains in Mexico. I almost think I could see the mountain in Mexico, tho not in the picture - but you can definitely see the Salton Sea.


I spent the night Sunday Nov 25 in Palm Springs, which was a surprisingly nice town. I guess I expected it to be built up and kind of pretentious, but it has a nice small town feel to it. I stayed at the Palm Mountain Resort, which was a very nice (and reasonably priced) hotel, just a half block off the main downtown street, so I was able to walk around the corner to a good mexican restaurant, the Mariposa, where I had yummy soft tacos and a BIG margarita.

On Monday Nov 26 I drove down past the Salton Sea to Anza-Borrego State Park. I stayed for three nights at the Palm Canyon campground. On Tuesday I did the Palm Canyon hike, a really nice hike up a canyon to a palm oasis. Along the way I stopped and chatted a while with an elderly couple who had lived in Borrego Springs for decades. They were telling me how changed the hike is - I guess a few years ago during heavy rains, water built up behind a natural dam up the canyon a ways, then broke thru and came down the canyon as a 20 foot wall of water, washing away palm trees and tossing boulders around (and flooding a lot of houses when it got into the valley).


On the way back down I saw a herd of 20 or so Borrego big horn sheep.


They really weren't afraid of people, and would let me get within 20 feet or so before sauntering off. Too cool!


I did a few other nice short hikes in the area, including one to an ancient native american village site, where there were morteros. These are holes in the rock worn from grinding agave and pine nuts.


On Thursday Nov 29 I moved a bit south to Agua Caliente campground, which is actually a San Diego county park adjacent to Anza-Borrego State Park. There's a natural hot spring there and I thought it'd be a good base for exploring the southern part of the park. But Friday morning I woke up to rain and the forecast called for it to keep up all day. I didn't much feel like doing my planned hike in the rain, and Agua Caliente has an indoor hot spring soaking pool, so I took my book and spent the afternoon soaking in the hot spring and reading. Worked out well that my first day of serious rain on this trip I had a nice indoor hangout spot readily available. Saturday Dec 1 the sun came out in the morning, so I was able to dry out my tent and everything before packing up and heading east to Yuma, Arizona where I spent the night in a Comfort Inn.

Sunday Dec 2 I headed east on I-8. A few miles out of Yuma I wondered if I'd gotten on the wrong interstate or something - all the sudden there are signs saying slow down and stop for border patrol agents. I was confused - had I somehow ended up at the border? But no, when I got up to the agent and asked, he assured me I was on I-8 towards Tucson, and from his reaction I wasn't the first confused tourist he'd encountered. You'd think they'd have signs explaining that it's not the border, just a symptom of the police state we seem to live in these days. The agent took a glance at my Jeep full of camping gear etc., and I guess decided I didn't have room for any illegal aliens, so he waved me thru.

That night I stayed at a BLM campground called Painted Rock Petroglyph Site, about 20 miles west of Gila Bend, not more than 15 miles off the interstate, but really in the middle of nowhere. There were tons of petroglyphs:


The campground was nice, probably 50 sites or so, but just about deserted - one RV down the other end and me in my tent. It was the only place I've stayed so far where gathering firewood was allowed, so I spent an hour or so gathering dead and downed wood. Mainly of course I was lucky to find twigs more than a half inch in diameter. But I found a few branches a couple inches in diameter and a LOT of twigs, so I was able to entertain myself with a fire that evening for a couple hours. I needed the fire to scare off the desert fox who was hanging out near my campsite :^)

On Monday Dec 3 I headed south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It was really windy when I got there, just before dark, so getting my tent up was a challenge. I had to stake it down first, and then put the poles in, or it would have blown away. I parked my Jeep so it blocked my tent from a bit of the wind, and had an early night.

Tuesday Dec 4 I did a really cool loop hike, Estes Canyon/Bull Pasture. Lots of cool cacti and amazing views. It went up a ridge, 1000 feet elevation gain or so, and it was HOT climbing in the sun. But well worth it.



On Wednesday, Dec 5, I headed off to Tucson since my friend Amy was flying in from Denver on Friday. Wed and Thurs I camped at Gilbert Ray Campground in Tucson Mountain Park, a really nice Pima County park just west of Tucson. Thursday I did errands around town, then Friday morning I picked up Amy at the Tucson airport. We planned to camp, but the forecast was yucky, so we decided to get a hotel room and stayed at the Hotel Congress, a historic hotel in downtown Tucson. Friday afternoon we took a self-guided walking tour thru old town Tucson and saw some cool old houses. Then we had dinner at a mexican restaurant, El Charro, that all the guide books recommended. Well, Amy and I would strongly recommend against it - we both got food poisoning and had an awful night.

Saturday we went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Really nice, but for while the rain was coming down sideways - we retreated into a greenhouse where they had butterfly's flying around. Fun - and warm, tho dry might be the wrong word since they kept it really humid and tropical-like for the butterflies.

The weather was still nasty so we decided against camping, but we wanted someplace nice to hang out, not just a chain hotel, so we went to a Barnes and Noble, got a bunch of Tucson/Arizona guidebooks off their shelves and browsed them while we had a late lunch in the store's cafe. Then we called a couple places and ended up at a wonderful B&B near Saguaro National Park East, the Hacienda del Desierto.

Sunday the forecast was still for rain, so we decided to stay a second night and headed off to Saguaro National Park. We took a scenic loop drive, did the short Mica View loop hike, then took a longer hike up the Tanque Verde ridge trail. The sun came out for out hike and we saw cool Saguaro cactus.


I told Amy not to hug the Teddy Bear Chollo, but she wouldn't listen.


We got some amazing views from on the ridge.


Then we headed back to La Hacienda and cooked ourselves dinner - our room had a nice kitchenette. We'd lucked out with a nice day hiking in the sun, but it poured that night so we were glad to be in our nice warm and dry room and not camping.

Today we went to Saguaro National Park West and took a nice hike through cactus.


And we saw some petroglyphs:



We'd lucked out with sun for our hike again, but the clouds were ominous, so we decided to get a hotel. We're staying at a Best Western in Tucson - thanks again to everyone at the vigil.

Tomorrow Amy heads home to Denver - so I made her haul her tent and sleeping bag on the plane, and we never camped. I feel bad that we've basically had crappy weather the whole time she's been here - but we did get some nice hikes in during the sun breaks. And it's been fun to have someone to hang out with - and handy to have someone to split hotel bills with during this rainy spell :^) If anyone else wants to come hang out somewhere in the desert with me, I'd love the company.

Not sure where I'm going next, but I promise not to let so much time go by before I update this again.