Signal Peak

 

Sunrise, Pinos Altos

We were up at dawn to tackle our steepest trail of the trip: Signal Peak, a 4.7 mile trail with elevation change of 1700 feet. At the top is a manned lookout tower during fire season. 

The first mile followed a rutted forest road before turning off on to a dirt path which quickly became a series of switchbacks.

Signal Peak is just shy of 9000 feet in elevation. We were wandering around on top around the base of the fire tower when we heard a loud voice from the heavens. “Hey there, how’s it going?” 

It was the guy on the lookout tower and he asked us if we wanted to come up!  After tying Callie off at the bottom, we joined him on the high platform. He works 11 days on and 3 days off. I asked him how he slept up there. He said the tower doesn’t sway but it groans and makes other noises. But otherwise, he sleeps just fine. 

View from the Top

Callie impatiently waiting at the bottom

I’m pretty sure we were at 9000’ from the tower platform.

Gomez Peak

Gomez Peak is a four mile hike just outside of Silver City, NM with 780 feet of elevation gain. It was a wet, cloudy day after a night of wind and rain. We did not see another soul on this hike. 

At the bottom

Fog starting to roll in

The summit

After coming down the mountain, we had an important task. We were headed to Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery. 

Monastery from Gomez Peak

Not for confession but because I had read that it was the only place that roasted coffee in the Silver City area. It was a long and windy gravel road up another mountain, and the place was only open from 11am to noon.

 I found a bag of Brazilian whole beans that had been roasted the day before. 

We might have picked up a few other things at their gift shop.

The bread was freshly baked by the monks that morning, and it tasted amazing.

Hiking, Beer and Music

 We got up early and drove to the Dragonfly Trailhead. 

Julia  picked out the hike for this day, which combined the Twin Sisters Creek Trail with the Dragonfly Trail to create a loop. 5.8 miles with a modest 341’ elevation gain. The cool temperatures made Callie an enthusiastic dog, and she took the opportunity to drink and lay in the creek.

We dropped Callie back at the camper and headed to Open Space Brewing in nearby Santa Clara. 

I had a new-to-me beer, a red IPA “Aldo’s Dream.” It was malty with nicely balanced hops. The brewery was started by two Continental Divide Trail thru hikers who combined their love for the outdoors with making great beer.

Next we were headed to Whiskey Creek Zócalo for wood-fired pizza and live music.  We knew we had found an eccentric place when walked through the parking lot. 

The guy on the left is from Alaska, and the guy on the right said he performs at a lot of motorcycle clubhouses.  They combined their tours to give alternating performances this night, and they were good. Some was folk, some was country, and a lot was outlaw country. 

Hiking, beer and music. Three of my favorite things.

Gila Cliff Dwellings

This is the first time we have spent any length of time in the Gila National Forest, and we’re loving it.

On our first full day in the Silver City, New Mexico area, we drove north of Pinos Altos and entered the Gila. Man, there were a lot of deer early in the morning. Fortunately, they stayed just off the road. 

Once we made it to the Cliff Dwellings, we were pleased to see that we basically had the place to ourselves. 

Just north of the Cliff Dwellings is a short 1/2 mile hike to wild hot springs.  Again, there was nobody around although we did see some people arriving at the parking lot on our way back. Life is good.

The water behind Julia was scalding hot. The water on the lower edge of the photo was tepid bath water. But the water in the middle was just right. There are several places along the road where a person could pay $5-10 for a hot soak, but there is something about working through a couple of stream crossings to be able to enjoy the experience for free. Besides, I’m cheap.

City of Rocks State Park

The wind howled every afternoon at City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico during our three day stay. Mornings and evenings, however, were quite pleasant with high temperatures in the 70’s and low temperatures in the high 40’s. 

We were in an electric campsite with water. Definitely living the high life. We had Reserve America reservations, but I’m writing a note to my future self that Sites 1-5 were first come, first served with a two week maximum. On to the rock pics:

We hiked each morning, going up to Table Top Mountain twice 

Top of the Table.

and the Hydra trail around the perimeter of the property.

Sunsets were spectacular. One late afternoon we took a bottle of wine to Observation Point to watch the action. 

Yes, we would come back here again—even during the windy spring.

Eastern New Mexico

 We are on the road again for a longer trip to test out Lance trailer systems on our new-to-us travel trailer. Very windy here. 50 mph gusts on our first day.

Only one bar of service so more later.

Spring Flowers and Wildlife

During my time in Arizona over the past 9 months, I've seen many Saguaro cacti.  This one, we see almost every day on our daily walk.

Cool Old Dude

Normally, from what I've been told, the Saguaro don't flower until later in the year.  With the exceptionally warm winter we've had and recent dry conditions, the flowers have arrived.

The Saguaro flowers are on full display for a very short time. Meanwhile, the prickly pear bloom has been prolific.

We saw another western diamondback last week, stretched out on the edge of the sidewalk.  I think he was waiting for us to go by, but we waited him out, and eventually he slowly crossed ahead of us.  

Some of the wildlife has been next door.  

Bobcat 

And some of the wildlife has been at the front door.

Kids playing Ring and Ditch

April in the Tucson area has been much more pleasant than March was.  Temps have been in the upper 80's and low 90's, but nothing like the record-breaking 100 degree days earlier in the year.  Nights have been amazing with the windows open and lows in the 50's.  Before too long though, we are going to head into the high country with the Lance.  We may need sweaters and jackets.  That would be a real change!

Catalina State Park

 Visitor season is over, and it’s time for camping.

Leaving Storage

Like most camping trailers, there have been a few mechanical issues to sort out. The fridge is bigger, a lot more technologically advanced than the small Scamp fridge, and still not working right in the 90 degree Arizona desert. 

But we won’t let those issues prevent us from having fun at Catalina State Park, which is only fifteen minutes from home.

Tonight there was live music at the park, playing the hits from the 60s and 70s.

Not a late night. We were back at the campsite in time to watch Mount Lemmon turn pink.

Early April Report

Michael reminded me that I haven't posted for awhile, and he was right.  Visitor season has kept us quite occupied with only a couple of days between a series of guests from Wisconsin.  Our current guest is one of my favorites:  a friend that Julia met in pickleball from Wisconsin, who is a retired forensics police officer with lots of homicide case experience.  She is quiet, thoughtful, and very detail-minded.  Very interesting person.  But even so, it will be some relief when Julia drives her to Phoenix on Wednesday, and visitor season for us in Arizona will be over.  Next year, we've agreed there will be fewer visitors for different reasons.  Some of our visitors just plain didn't like the desert and missed the green/water of the Midwest.  Others will return but probably not for a couple of years.  They wanted to see where we landed, and now they have.

My pickleball season ended without a trip to the state tournament, but that's okay.  It was fun, and our team was competitive at a high level. Some members of our team competed on another team at a lower level and won the state championship in Phoenix (Arizona Players Pickleball League), but that's just not how I'm wired.  I like to go against players better than I am; for me, it's the only way I improve.

We have a few nights reserved in Silver City, New Mexico at the end of April.  We will do a trial run with the Lance camper, and if successful, stay for a few weeks to beat the heat. Then we will come back for a month before leaving on our summer's journey to the Upper Midwest.  I owe my Mom a trip to Iowa, and we will spend some time in Wisconsin also.  Depending on how the Lance is doing, we may take our time heading back home.  Julia has never been to Yellowstone, and I love Wyoming after Labor Day. We have a neighbor who doesn't like to travel, so she will keep an eye on our house while we're gone.

Windy Point, Mount Lemmon

Next weekend is the 41st Annual Tucson Folk Festival, a free event for the community.  There will be a lot of music and a songwriting competition.  We are looking forward to attending.

Record-breaking Heat

Fun Fact:  Tucson has never experienced 100-degree weather in March for as long as records have been kept.  We are poised to blast through that record this weekend, along with a bunch of other individual day records next week.

Lance updates:  With a couple of hiccups, my LiFePO4 battery project went well.  I ordered two 100 ah batteries from Amazon.  The Lance has a small battery compartment on each side of the trailer, which needed to be modified in order to accommodate the wider SOK batteries.  The local auto parts store was happy to take the dead lead acid batteries.  I ended up building wood boxes that sit on top of the sliding tray in each of the battery compartments. The sliding tray locks in with a rod and locking outside door, and a strap makes sure that they don't move around.  

I bought an Eco-Worthy LiFe PO4 20 amp charger from Amazon to get both batteries fully charged before installing in the Lance, made sure that the batteries fit into my crude wooden boxes, made sure that the wooden boxes fit nicely inside the battery trays of the Lance, and then still managed to make a mistake raising my blood pressure.

The solar charger in the Lance does not have a way to check on the health of each battery, individually.  It only shows when both batteries are charged to 100%. Fortunately, the SOK batteries come with an app that allows me to monitor the batteries individually by bluetooth.  After everything was installed in the Lance, the app worked perfectly, showing both batteries with full charges.  About a week later, I went out to the trailer and could only find one battery on the app.  My first thought was somebody stole one of my brand new batteries.  A few choice words were muttered.  After confirming that both batteries were physically still in their respective battery compartments, I was at a loss for explaining why the second battery wasn't showing up in the app.  

I took the solar charger off the wall inside the Lance and couldn't find anything wrong.  Then I went to Mr. Google and saw that if one of the SOK batteries isn't being charged for awhile, the built-in operating system shuts itself down into sleep/storage mode.  But why wouldn't both batteries be charging?  The sun was continuing to blast into the solar panels in the Sonoran Desert.  I checked battery one.  Nothing wrong with it.  I checked battery two.  Hmmm, the positive post looks different than the negative post.  A washer had hung up when I tightened everything down and wasn't making contact.  I took the wires off the positive post, straightened the washers, and tightened everything back down again.  Sure enough, the app immediately showed both batteries, and they were both still at 100%.  

We are in the middle of our last three sets of guests.  Even though the Upper Midwest has experienced record-breaking snow and cold this winter, I'm afraid they aren't going to be ready for the triple digit days that have prematurely arrived.  Dave and Ruth spent last weekend here and then spent the week in Joshua Tree after driving there in a rental car.  They return today for this weekend.  I've known Dave since sixth grade, and he has always lived within a mile of the moderating climate effects of Lake Michigan.  He's going to think he's arrived in hell!

Saguaro West National Park

Margaritas on the Patio

Do we have any regrets moving to the hot desert?  Not yet.  The thing is I can still wear a t-shirt and shorts almost every day of the year.  And even though it will reach triple digits in the mid-afternoon, mornings are quite pleasant.  This morning it was 62 degrees and even a little bit chilly when I took Callie outside just before dawn.  By the time that I make morning coffee and sat on the back patio, it was a beautiful morning with the birds singing.  Compare that to Wisconsin where we had weeks when it never rose above 32 degrees or even saw the sun.