Another Day, Another Rattler

We were up and out at 8:15 this morning.  It was a good start, but we need to do a little better.  This is why.



April is weird.  There are a lot of temperature swings and a lot of wind.  Quite often May can be almost pleasant, except when it’s not.  I keep wondering if we were crazy to buy a house here, but if not here, then where?  If we hate it, we’ll sell it.  No decision is ever final with me.

We saw yet another rattle snake on the trail this morning.  We also saw four cyclists blocking the entire trail so they could look at it.  They came close to taking out two fast riders with their sudden stop on the trail and then whirling around to go back to the snake.  That’s really terrible behavior on a fairly heavily used trail.  We’ve reached the point of being all blase and stuff about snakes.  Not!

People are so interesting.  The afternoon winds have been really strong for about a week.  There’s been a lot of sand, dust and plastic grocery bags flying through the air.  So we were very surprised to see mobile painters mask off this bus for painting outside.  Who does that?



It seems like a paint booth would be better suited for this purpose. 



My favorite church.  Doesn’t it look like something you would see in Greece?  I love the white against the blue sky.



I scraped this off of Twitter.  The changes in the costs of stuff are just amazing.  The level of housing increase surprises me, I would have though it would be higher, coming from Seattle where they have seen 18% increases.



Tomorrow we have to get the luggage out from under the bus and determine if we have any luggage tags.  I can not believe the cost of luggage tags at Target.  Actually, we can’t believe the cost of just about everything, since we haven’t really bought anything except shoes, boots and food for ten years.

Miscellaneous Stuff in Tucson

We were at Walmart the other day and saw this Range Rover towing a small travel trailer.  The trailer did not have air conditioning.  Note the diamond plate on the hood of the car and the roof rack.  It’s so you can walk on the hood of the vehicle and the roof rack. The driver is from Germany – he’s a police officer.  Once in their career they’re allowed to take off a year without pay.  He shipped the vehicle and the trailer to the US.  Customs gave him some static at the entry port because they felt that his engine was too polluting, but they let him pass.  He’s spending six months in the US and then six months in Canada.  Then he’ll go back to work.



Allergy season is upon us in the Old Pueblo.  We’ve made it through round one with the trees that have the yellow balls. 



Now we’re in the blooming Palo Verde stage.  There’s one more bloom after that, and then the steeenking yellow tree bloom will be done.  We also have the blooming yellow bushes, I’m not sure when they quit.  That’s pollen on the ground in a parking lot.



The trichocereus  in the park are beginning their bloom.  They are, as always, just lovely.



Hedgehog cactus.



Yesterday we had the carpets cleaned.  The guy used more fluid than the last time he was here.  It took a long time to dry.  Marco is coming Saturday to wash and wax the bus.  It’s really dirty.  Given the amount of wind blown dust around here, nothing stays clean.



We rode up the Santa Cruz trail this morning.  This is one thing we saw.  It’s a Western Diamondback Rattler.  He was cold and not moving at all, so we rode around him and wished him a good day.



Construction of the Caterpillar regional HQ is proceeding.  You can see the building off to the right.  I’m really curious as to what they are going to do with all of the desert they have excavated and scraped.  If you look to the left of the white truck, you can see a layer of the old land fill they are digging up.  All of that debris is being moved to another land fill.



We stopped at the Sweetwater Wetlands to see how the grasses are recovering from the annual burning.  They set them on fire to control mosquitoes.  It really messes with air quality when they do that.  The grass looks better, but it’s still a little crispy.  It’s a pretty area.  The city originally wanted to close the park, but fortunately they did not.  The birders would have been really upset to lose it.  Now they keep water in the basin, and the ducks fly in.  It’s part of the water reclamation system, which is very extensive in the city.



Other than this paltry offering, I have nothing else to report.

Marking Time in the Old Pueblo

Late this afternoon I walked the trash over to the dumpster.  Coming back down our street, all I could hear was the droning of air conditioners.  It has warmed up quite a bit.  We’re doing a better job of getting up and out early while it’s still cool. 

We hiked the trail that goes around Little Cat Mountain this morning.  There were high thin clouds which was nice. There was a flower by the side of the trail.

Yesterday we rode up the trail.  It was our second day in a row riding, and my left shoulder and neck were letting me know they aren’t happy with back to back riding.  It’s always a struggle to get the shoulders whipped in to shape after time off the bike.  Anyway, on the way back we saw a bunch of people in the Santa Cruz River.  Being the nosy parker that I am I hollered down and asked them what they were doing.  They were on an eight hour walk around Tucson.  I do hope they were keeping their eyes out for rattlesnakes.  They’re out.

We’re in wait state – we have two weeks before heading to the east, and there is really nothing we can be doing between now and then. 

One of our soon to be neighbors gave us some sage advice about snakes in the yard.  Trim your bushes up high off the ground so you can see what’s under them.  Never put your hands or feet anywhere you can’t see clearly.  Good life advice!

Cactus, Baby Owl and Hike up 2nd Ridge

Well it’s almost April, so it must be time for cactus pictures.  The cacti in the RV park are gearing up for a spectacular show.  There are many buds.  They get watered so they look better than the ones out in the wild.  This plant is almost always the first to bloom.



The prickly pears have started, as well.



After all the furor over Facebook’s capturing of data (to include phone call logs, if you have it on your phones) I decided to download my Facebook data and see what they have on me.  Precious little as it turns out.  I did recover a couple of good pictures I had forgotten about.



People who have lived much of their lives on Facebook are downloading data and discovering forgotten conversations with ex-lovers, phone numbers of grandparents who were never on Facebook and a ton of stuff they were not expecting to see.  It’s kind of creepy.



We’re seeing a lot of these flowers on the trail.  They also come in a very pretty lilac, but I didn’t get any decent pictures.  The wind was up and they were all waving back and forth in the breeze.



The always lovely ocotillo.



There is a baby Horned Owl in the park.  There is a palm tree that is covered in some sort of vine that seems to be consuming the tree. The parents have nested in the vines and made a baby. 



Here we have the Tucson Mountain Park map again.  See the white bubble pointing at the Yetman trail in three places.  Look to the left of that and up a little, and you can see 2nd Ridge and the trail up there.  We did that hike from the Genser trailhead yesterday.  If you’re in Tucson it’s worth doing.



The view from the top is always enjoyable.



I swiped this from one of the Seattle papers.  Look on the left side at the thing that looks like a mushroom cloud.  That’s what is meant by “scattered rain.”



So I mentioned we might be putting an offer in on a house.  We did.  It was accepted.  We are buying a house.  It’s close to the border of Tucson Mountain Park, so there will be no more development in our immediate area.  The developers are very busy scraping the desert in Oro Valley, and it’s becoming an ant hill of people.  We are planning on keeping the RV for the foreseeable future because there are still places to go, people to see.  April 14 we’re flying to Charlotte NC to rent a U Haul truck and empty out our storage unit.  Yea!!!!!!  Road trip!  I can not tell you how much I am not looking forward to driving across the country.  But hey!  Pictures of new stuff!

More As Seen in Tucson

We’re still here!  Today was a hot ride.  We successfully got out of the house earlier than usual, but our departures still need a little work.  We’re getting a cooling trend starting tomorrow, so maybe I can finish my coffee before dashing out of the RV.

Here is some of the stuff we’ve seen on the trails lately.  Happily, we have seen no more snakes.

The ocotillos have leafed out and are blooming.  We saw a hummingbird feeding at one, but he left before the camera could be deployed.

The other day we took the walk through the bowl of Tucson Mountain Park, and saw this crested cactus.  He’s pretty far away, but if you look carefully you can see that the original crest put out two normal arms and two crested arms.  He has been busy.

I think this is Golden Gate Mountain in the background.  The light was really spectacular, but the camera did not completely capture it.  Notice the ocotillo on the right side.  Leafed and blooming.

So there you have it.  Hike and bike.

Alt-Route for the John Krein Trail

We’ve been looking for the other end of the John Krein trail.  We found it yesterday, but both of us were not feeling great so we did not pursue it.  Instead we did the clock wise trail around Little Cat Mountain.

Today we did the loop pictured below.  It’s a wonderful hike.  Please refer to the map, see the P for parking lot?  That’s where we started.  Instead of going right, and through the cut between the two Cats, we went left on the new trail that goes around Little Cat.  It’s slightly shorter going in that direction.  See where the trail makes a 90 degree turn away from Little Cat then up onto 1st Ridge? (I put a circle around it.)

This is what the trail looks like; sort of like a drainage ditch with no signage.  Yesterday, I just happened to be looking down and spotted it.  We’ve been by there countless times and never saw it.  Plus, we spent some more time studying the map and had a better idea of where the trail had to be.




It goes steeply up the hill.



See the rock formation behind Jim?  Once you’ve walked far enough that you see that side of the boulder, it’s time to start looking for the trail up the hill.



If you come to the top of the hill without making a turn off the Around Little Cat Mountain trail, and you see this, you have gone too far.  Go back whence you came.



After a little bit the trail splits, go left and keep going up.  The keyword here is up.



It’s just lovely up there.  You can see forever.



This is a steep trail.  There is some side hill which was giving me a tiny case of the willies.  There is also a lot of loose rock and big steps.  We decided we would rather do the entire loop than go back down the way we came up.



This is the pay off for the hike.  One leaves the trail and scrambles up to the big pile of rocks on the right, and then surveys all that one sees.  Unfortunately it was really windy and neither one of us wanted to be up on that pile of rocks and be even more exposed to the wind.  Next time.



It was a good hike – Jim hiked like the Jim of yore.  The boy is back!