Another Hike and Some Hummingbirds

We are whooped.  We’ve been wondering where on earth the recently observed Yetman segment of trail ends up.  The trail maps and Google are worthless.  To discover the trail, one must hike towards the trail.  We parked out at Sarasota again and hiked out into the bowl that is surrounded by the Tucson Mountains.  Our original intent was to walk up to the four way intersection at the top of the hill and see what we would see.



See the rock formation that looks like a Tiki God?  He’s our navigational aid for the area.  All trails look alike out there.  Anyway, look at the horizontal line at the bottom of the photo.  We know this elevation after hiking out here for years, and we did not recognize that trail.  So we walked towards it, got near it and eventually decided to bushwhack up to it.  We don’t recognize the trail because it was not here last year.  It’s a great MTB trail.  It’s single track and side hill, but for the most part there are not large frightening rocks on it.  It’s also fairly long.  We were the only people walking it.



This is the old four way intersection at the end of Rock Wren trail.  It’s now a five way intersection.  The new trail comes in behind that sign to the left.  It ended up being a longer hike than we had planned, about three hours.  We both need better shoes to deal with all of the pointy rocks in the area.  Next time we’ll go back to the bushwhack and go the other way and see where that ends up.



I finally put up the hummingbird feeder.  We’ve gotten quite a few hummers on it.  I really love watching them.



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So that was today.  It was day two of being windy.  I would like for that to stop soon.

More Hiking and a Link to an Article

Thursday we hiked Upper Javelina in the Tortolitas.  It started out cold, it was pretty windy all day.  It’s just a beautiful trail.  It takes you into Wild Burrow canyon which is also lovely.



Here Jim surveys all he can see on the rocky trail.



There is some side hill trail and a couple of small scrambles.



It was a lovely day.



Yesterday we did not hike.  Our little feet were tired from the rocks.

Today we were back out hiking from the Sarasota Trail head.  There were several mountain bikers on the trail.  I can’t believe people can ride rocks that size.  I didn’t get any pictures of them riding on anything majorly scary.  We did the loop counter clockwise.



We also went out the Yetman trail for awhile to see if we could figure out where it goes.  After walking and walking and walking, we decided that perhaps we were not that interested, and went back to complete the loop.



Other than hiking, there has not been much interesting going on.  There is daily life, there is grocery shopping, it’s fairly boring.  Posting becomes difficult.  Perhaps we should get jobs so I could complain about something other than the policies of the current administration.  Did you see that Paul Ryan is now on record as saying he’s coming for Medicaid and Medicare?  Rich people get tax breaks, the poor and the old get the shaft.

In October, I linked to an article by Michael Lewis about the damage being done to the Department of Energy, and by extension, us.  Mr. Lewis has written another excellent piece about the U.S.D.A, and how the department is being gutted and its mission is being subverted.  It’s excellent writing, and very worth reading.  He really illustrates the depth of knowledge and experience that’s being lost by current appointments.

Hikes, Depression and Day 319

The weather has been great, we’ve been hiking a bunch.  It’ll be good when we put some muscle back on the legs.  This is Pima Canyon, a very steep and rocky trail.

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Yesterday we did both sides of Lower Javelina clock-wise.  There is much up down for your hiking pleasure.  We were both fairly whooped afterwards, but it was good to have increased mileage.

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We’re also spending a lot of time witnessing the destruction of this country.   The courts are being stacked with conservatives who do not believe in case law or precedence, but instead believe in their religion and their gut.  This is the worst of the terrible legacy the current administration will leave behind, these people will be on the benches for decades. 

By now, everyone knows that the Republican Senate passed a new tax bill.  The House passed a similar bill.  This year they are not even pretending that this bill will be good for anyone but the one percenters.  The “donors” told them to get this done or there would be no more money for campaigns.  And so they have.  Corporations have no plans to build new plants or add to payrolls.  Instead they will pay dividends to shareholders and buy back their stock.  I continue to wonder why people vote for the Republicans, they do nothing for the poor or middle class.  Their only allegiance is to the wealthy. 

Now that the tax bill will pass, the legislators have discovered that there will be a deficit.  SOMETHING must be done.  That something will be an attack on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.  Maybe a direct impact on people receiving benefits will alert them that they are not voting their self interest.

I also wonder why the Republicans are so heartless.  This is a quote from Orrin Hatch, old white guy from Utah.  He’s attacking poor sick children.  The CHIP budget is small, it doesn’t approach billions and billions and trillions.

Then there is this, from Senator Grassley, defending the end of estate taxes in an interview with the Des Moines Register.

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

The wealthy invest, the rest of us blow our money on booze, women and movies.  I don’t know about you, but I have not bought any women lately.  One of the multiple articles on his statement can be found here.

The outright condescension these men are displaying towards the American people is disheartening.  They seem to view us as “other.”

Just today, the president announced he’s cutting the size of Bear’s Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase Escalante by half.  Hopefully this will stay tied up in court for decades.  Once that land is scraped for oil, gas or coal, it will never recover.

So, yeah, I am fairly depressed about the state of things.  It makes it difficult to plan for the future.  We’ve been thinking about buying a house, but now I wonder if we should just hang on to all of our cash for that time when there is no SocSec and Medicare.   At least we’ll have a roof if we hang on to the bus.  Heaven help us if we get some dread disease.

I know it’s a bummer of a post, but if I don’t write it down, it doesn’t get remembered.

This Past Tuesday in Seattle

Here is a cut and paste from this article.

SEATTLE -- If it seemed like it was dusk at lunchtime on Tuesday, you weren't that far off from being right. In fact, it was actually darker during the noon hour Tuesday in Seattle than it was during the peak of the solar eclipse on Aug. 21!

A thick cloud layer courtesy of an moderately-strong inbound cold front did a fantastic job of not only dumping a decent amount of rain in the city, but blocking out the sun.

I am trying to keep it firmly locked in my head why we can not live there again; along with real estate prices, the taxes, and the traffic. 

More Hike From the Sarasota Trailhead

Sunday we hiked a loop counter clock-wise that we had done in March of this year.  In March we did it clock-wise.  It had been awhile, but we knew there was a turn off somewhere to make a loop.  It was also 90 degrees.  We walked, and walked and did not see a turn off.  Then we saw what we thought was our trail heading out into the hinterlands.  We flagged down a mountain biker and asked him if we were close to the turn off. 

We must have looked really old to this guy.  He told us that the trail would be steep and arduous and that the best thing for us would be to turn around and go back the way we came.  We were probably within five to 10 feet of the turn off, we just could not see it from where we were standing.  We were hot, I was concerned that we didn’t have enough water, so we turned around and retraced our steps.  We should have ignored the guy on the bike. 

So, I am going to document this hike some more, and maybe do a better job than last time, so we can remember it next year.

One leaves the trail head at the end of Sarasota and walks up the trail. Go past the map on the kiosk, that is the trail you want.  The trail will split and you will go left.  At this point there is nothing to do except follow the trail.  Eventually this rock formation will come into view.



The trail continues on and goes down into a wash, and then comes back up.



When you come up out of the wash, you’ll see what looks like a four way intersection.  There is actually a well defined section that has been ridden by many mountain bikes.  You don’t want that.  Make a sharp right and continue on keeping the wash, and that rock formation, on your right.  It doesn’t look like a trail, it looks like a drainage ditch, but that is where you want to be.



The trail will eventually go back into the wash and then head left.  Here you can see the trail about to drop into the wash, over on the right is where you just came from.



After the wash, there is nothing to do except stay on the trail.  It climbs up, and you can see this.  The notch between those two hills is where you’re heading.



This is what confused us Sunday.  This is the Yetman trail, we could see it from where we were standing, and we knew we did not want to go in that direction.



This is the turnoff to complete the loop.  The hill that one climbs is not arduous, it’s just a little steep.  If we had continued on, instead of turning around we would have seen this turn and would be been fine.



Eventually the trail will come to this wide space at the base of the Cat Mountain trail.  Hang a right into the gravel filled wash, take the first right out, and continue back to the original split in the trail.



So, there are now more instructions for this hike, half of which is not on the trail map at the trail head.

What is this?  It’s not poop.  When I poke at it with a pole, it’s soft and looses its shape easily. Poop generally has some structure to it.  There are no bones in it, so I don’t think it’s owl pellets.  Did you know you can buy owl pellets on Amazon?  They’re sterilized and sold as a teaching tool for kids to see what owls can make.  It appears to be compacted fur, but I’m at a loss as to which end of the animal it came out of.



It was a good hike.  The temperature finally dropped so we were much more comfortable and not worried about sun stroke.

Thank You

Thank you for all your comments and good wishes.  It meant a lot to me to hear from you.