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.

Bear Wallow, Etc.

 Julia has been bugging me to take her somewhere there is some fall color, so we headed up to Mount Lemmon yesterday.   It takes about 90 minutes to drive up towards the top of the mountain, where temperatures are usually about 15 degrees cooler at about 9000 feet elevation.  

It was a beautiful Arizona day.  Not a cloud in the sky.  

We parked next to a ticketed automobile at this vista on the way up for a bathroom break.  When I looked at the ticket taped to the outside window of the vehicle, the ticket indicated 72 hours abandoned.  Before we left, a three vehicle crew with a stretcher parked the other side of the vehicle and headed off up the mountain.  I hope it wasn't the driver of the car. Couldn't find anything about it in the newspaper.  

The Bear Wallow turnoff is at Mile Marker 22--a few miles from Summerhaven.  From Mile Marker 22, it's a short drive on a dirt road to where we accessed a trail in the Bear Wallow Unit.  We were probably a couple of weeks past peak season, but there were still some golden aspens and reddish maples.

Shortly after joining up with the trail, we encountered an unusual thing in the woods. I think it's some kind of toilet, but it was locked with a padlock.   Anyway, someone went to a lot of trouble to "plaque" the occasion.

When we got home, I looked up the phrase, and it's apparently some kind of weird slang or joke.

From here we followed a number of switchbacks up towards Mount Bigelow, a minor summit close to Mount Lemmon.  We found some nice campsites up there and a University of Arizona station. We did not find a trail that provided a loop so we ended up on a road walk, another short trail, and then traced our steps back to the beginning.

What we discovered is that the best fall color was a short distance down the mountain from where we originally parked, so we walked a short distance on the Sunset Trail.

We ended up meandering about five miles with no particular destination in mind.  This was after our 3 mile early morning walk with Callie.  So we felt like we deserved a burger and a beer, even though it wasn't quite noon yet.

Summerhaven is the resort town on top of the mountain.  We ordered an overpriced, but well-prepared burger with Slow Body IPA, a Tucson brewery that we hadn't tried yet.  It may have been the sunny deck location on a beautiful fall day after a lot of walking, but we both agreed that the food and the beer went down really well.

We weren't quite ready to drive down the mountain yet, so we drove a few miles to Marshall Gulch, which we discovered that the Arizona Trail goes through. The map of the trail from the Mexico border to the Utah border made me think of my A.T. thru-hiking days.  It seems unlikely that I'll be completing the Arizona trail, but I do intend to do some more research about some section hiking.  For sure, we will return to Marshall Gulch, which had a beautiful picnic area and trails to discover.