Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Well, here it is, nearly a week since I posted something.  We have arrived at our park, and now we only have 18 hours in our day!  It certainly seems that way! 

                                             This is our clubhouse, as we drive into the park. 

And this is our spot for the next four months.  There is a house on each side of us, but we still have a very large space.  We did get our motor home washed, so now we can put our rug out, and set up our chairs, so it looks like we will be staying a while.  I have started my quilting lessons on Monday and will go again on Thursday's, we started our geo-cache group caching on Tuesday's and our group hike on Wednesday's. 

This is our hiking group today.  I chose this picture, because Jim's sister, Barb has a friend visiting and she did 'somewhat' follow our blog, as we traveled this fall.  We took her geo-caching yesterday and she's hooked, so that was fun! Mary is on the far right, and the rest of us have hiked together since we've been coming to AZ.  We did 6.5 miles with 614 feet elevation today.  They will get progressively harder and longer. 

After we finished our hike, we drove a short distance to the Salt River, where we sometimes see the wild horses that roam out here.  This lone stallion was just standing in the water and didn't seemed to  be bothered by anyone.  We left him, and drove back toward our park, and we spotted another small herd, a short distance off the road.

This small group of horses has a young foal, and this is the best shot I could get.  We usually don't see them this little at this time of the year.  February and March are the most prevalent times to see young foals.  This is a winter past-time to take our chairs and sit by the Salt River and watch the horses. 

This photo is taken from our motor home, looking west at the sunset!  We will end our blog at this time, and we hope you have enjoyed coming along with us.  We've had a wonderful trip, and now it's time to settle in and catch up with the many people we have met in The Valley.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Can you tell that we are winding down?  We just haven't done the things in Tucson, that we usually do, and the weather is mostly to blame.  When we can't see the mountains really well, we don't go out!  We did buy masks today to wear when it gets so bad.  They haven't had any rain in this area since August, so that is part of the problem.  We had a beautiful sunrise this morning and I'll post that picture. 

How do you tell it's a sunrise and not a sunset?  It came up in the east! Beautiful.

There isn't much happening at the fairgrounds this week, so the Sheriff's Department, Search and Rescue, had a drill.  It was quite fascinating to watch.

        This is a full shot of the men on the ground, one coming back down, and the helicopter.

We took our bikes to one of the paved trails in Tucson today, and did some caching.  This was another labyrinth that we saw, where a cache was hidden.  The bike path was very nice, and it had many bikers on it.  We started at the top of the hill, so it was fun going down, but a bit harder to get back up.  I was surprised I made it without stopping (or having to push my bike).

This is the bike path we did today.  Tucson has many paved trails and this one took us into the northeast part of the city.  We saw ranches with horses, cattle, and chickens all along the one section.  Tucson is planning ahead to put the trails in before too much development transpires.  It was overcast and not windy today, so a beautiful day to bike.  We found 20 caches. Tomorrow we leave for Apache Junction, and it will be good to get in and settled.  We have a lot scheduled for our first week, so it will be busy!  We like to get our coach washed right away, so we can get our stuff out of the 'basement', and make it look like we're staying a while.   We have a guy coming Monday to do that.  I start my quilting on Monday morning, and I'm teaching a class again, this year.  Jim will get the dish set up tomorrow, so we are ready for the big game on Saturday with Ohio State.  The men's basketball and football play OS Saturday, so it will be a full day!  We do think the Badgers are up to the task (football) and they own their own destiny.  GO BADGERS!  I'll probably post one more time, and that will be the end of the blog. We hope you have enjoyed coming along on our trip.  It was a very fun and enriching time, with us seeing and doing a lot of different things.  Most of all, we have fresh fish to eat this winter.  Thanks to Glenn!  We are forever indebted.  It seems ages ago, that we were bobbing around in a boat on the Missouri River!  It was relaxing and very fun!  Now we need to contact our two daughters, who live in VA and NJ.  I just heard on the news that an earthquake just happened this afternoon.  It's a 4.2, so hopefully, no damage.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

I've been lax on writing in our blog, but life has been a bit quiet for us lately.  We had a big sports weekend, some good and some not so good, but we haven't minded staying inside.  It's either been windy, with the dust blowing around, or yesterday it was 92 degrees, and the weather person said Tucson was the hottest spot in the nation.  Why are we here?  The high temps are to break tomorrow, so we will be biking and geo-caching on the many trails they have in the city.  It has given me time to get a good share of our Christmas cards and letters written, as we will get busy once we get into Apache Junction.  The news yesterday was interesting, in the fact that, due to the warmer than usual weather they are having in Phoenix, there are more calls to remove rattlesnakes.  They usually have one call a week, but they have been having 3 and 4 calls a day.  People store their Christmas decorations in their garages, and snakes crawl in there to stay cool.  It is quite a surprise to see a diamondback rattler,. when they start unpacking!  We have done a lot of hiking or caching in the desert, and we are surprised that we haven't come upon one. So, that's our news to date. 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

It looks like I haven't posted since Wednesday.  Can you tell we are winding down?  We have a short week left in Tucson, and will arrive in our park Dec. 1.  In the meantime, we had a nice Thanksgiving Dinner, plenty of leftovers to tide us over through today, so it freed us up yesterday to do some geo-caching.  We found a frontage road close to us, and it went nowhere!  Someone put some nice camo bison tubes out there, and most were easy to find, but a couple of them took us a while.  They were hidden in picky AZ trees, and we found out that we bleed RED!  A couple of them were hard to find.  Now we know why the geo-cachers back in WI have a hard time finding this same type 'in a pine tree'!  Nasty!  We were able to ride our bikes and geo-cache, so that was wonderful!  There were no vehicles on this dead-end road, so it was most enjoyable.  We found all 17 placed on that series, and we are now over 5100 caches found to date.  We have plenty of others loaded for this coming week, and we will save them for when the temps drop on Tuesday!  I heard on the weather news this morning, that Tucson hasn't had such high heat temps since the 1930's.  There is no rain in sight, either.

Ooops, my Thanksgiving Dinner is sideways, but you can see that we enjoyed a feast like the rest of you! 
I also just finished my 5th baby blanket on this trip.  I'm knitting them 'for future use, to give to great grandchildren, if that ever happens'.  I loved the last one I did, as it has hearts knitted in it, and it was so fun to make.  I'll do that pattern again, in pink and probably green.  No rush!  Today we will watch Michigan and Ohio State, and then this afternoon, the Badgers play Minnesota.  We hope they can keep it going, and they can't think beyond this game!  We watched the Wisconsin Badger basketball game last night with Milwaukee, and they have improved immensely since their last game.  They are so young, but they will get there!  I probably won't post anything until we do something, which might be Monday.  Have a great weekend!  For us, it's football and staying cool! 

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Well, here it is Wednesday night already!  We did move from Willcox on Tuesday, got settled in at the Pima Co. Fairgrounds, and hurried off to stock up on groceries before the big rush!  We usually spend Thanksgiving in Tucson with other RV friends, but with everyone going in different directions, we are alone this year.  We don't mind.  We will still have chicken and dressing (a turkey is too big for two people!), potatoes, cranberry salad, veggie and pumpkin pie.  See, we keep up the traditions of the holiday weekend! We'll also have leftovers, so when we are out and about, we'll have an easy warm up meal when we get back.  The winds blew this morning, and it made it very dusty outside, so it's a good thing I was confined to the house with my cooking. 
We take this time to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.  I'm going to end with our sunset last night.  Our sunsets are just gorgeous in the southwest.  I guess it's all those 'particles' in the sky that give it that beautiful color!

Monday, November 20, 2017

Happy Birthday to our daughter, Judy today!  I'm sure she celebrated this past weekend.  We had lots to celebrate, especially in the world of sports.  Well, with the exception of the Packer game.  What a disaster, but we sort of knew that going in.  I'm happy now, as the Wisconsin Badger basketball is starting.  They are a young team this year, but they always seem to do well.  They had a good game with Xavier last week, and even though they lost, they played well.
We are winding up our three weeks here in Willcox, and have had a great time.  Next year, we will stay a month.  We move to Tucson tomorrow and will stay until Dec. 1, when we check into our resort park for the winter.  It will be good to plant our roots for a while, after being on the road nearly three months, but our life has been very enriched with the things we've seen and people we've met.  Speaking of people we have met......We had a couple park next to us in this park for a week, and they have sold their house in Massachusetts (Cape Cod) and invested in a beautiful 42 foot fifth wheel.  They are going to bounce around this area until February and then they are coming into Bonita Vista, where we are for the winter!  What are the chances of that?  They will stay through March, so we will look forward to seeing them again. 

This is Bob and Karen, and we really enjoyed visiting with them.  They are just 7 months into their full-time RV life, and are excited about it. 

We're drawn to eagles, as Adler means eagle in German, and we saw this metal sculpture while geo-caching last week.  We're done posting pictures of rocks!  One more thing to add to this post today.  Jim was banging my GPS around the other night, until it got annoying!  I thought he was going to have it in a zillion pieces!  After he quit banging, he cleared all the data off the GPS, reloaded it, and IT WORKS!  Now, I can walk in my own direction!  We will be doing some geo-caching in Tucson, so I'm glad I have my own GPS again.  Jim has found some bike trails in Tucson with caches along the trail, so we look forward to that.  The downer to going to Tucson, is that it is going to be very warm there!  La Nina is going to affect AZ this winter and it will be very warm, so we need to get used to it.  I guess all we need to do is think of our friends back in the Midwest, where it is predicted to be colder and more snow! 

Saturday, November 18, 2017

It's been a football weekend.....that isn't over yet!  Friday we were able to watch our hometown team of Waunakee, take its sixth state championship in football.  They played at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, and we were glad to be able to watch it.  Ron Dayne's son plays for Waunakee, so he was thrilled to play in the stadium that sent his father on to be a Heisman winner.  Today, we watched the Badgers win their much talked about game with Michigan!  We all know that the Badgers are a second half team, but we thought they had a ruling overturned in the first half, that halted their momentum.  They proved to be the better team today, and hopefully, they can win their next game with Minnesota.  They will be in the Big Ten Championship game, and probably with Ohio State.  It's all how it plays out.  We will be watching the Michigan and Ohio State game next Saturday.  Tomorrow we will watch the Packers and the Ravens game.  Every win at this point, is a bonus, with having Aaron Rodgers out with an injury.  We're pretty lazy today, but it feels good!  

Thursday, November 16, 2017

We went back to the Chiricahuas and intended to do a repeat hike but, add The Heart of the Rocks Loop, as well.  By the time we got to the start of that loop, I was pretty tired and rethought that plan.  We had just talked to a couple that did it, and they said it was a tough up at first, but then it got better.  We already had 3.4 miles in and knew we had to return.  The loop was 1.1 miles, so we decided to do it another time.  We did that loop the first year we experienced the Chiricahuas, but we were ten years younger!  I was really glad when we got back to the truck!  We hiked 6.8 miles and had 1,397 feet accumulative elevation.  We didn't take a lot of pictures, as you have already seen the Mushroom Rock and Balanced Rock, which we saw again today, but I did take a picture of the Sea Captain, as we were driving out of the park.

You can see the tiny hole for his eye, and we call that 'an arch' of some sort!  It is right along the drive out, and quite visible for all to see.  We left the park around 4:00 so we saw about 10 deer at the entrance of the park.  They were all does and young, but no bucks.  They are a lot smaller than the deer we see back in Wisconsin.  Tomorrow is a lazy day and we will be able to watch our hometown of Waunakee play in the state football championship in Madison. 

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

What do they say about 'best laid plans?'  I was so excited to go geo-caching today and to whittle away at the Geo-Art Geo-caches just north of Tombstone.  We had our Arizona Trust Land Permit updated, so we could legally be on that land, and drove about 75 miles to the area. 

This was our road in and it was about 3 miles from the main road.  This looks good, but we scraped many catclaw shrubs that we were positive that we would have 'desert pin striping' on the side of our truck!  We arrived at our first geo-cache and it was 97 feet into the thicket.  We were that far in, so we thought we'd see how good or bad it was.  It was BAD!  The dry grasses were waist high on me, and lots of catclaw that, we were told there were none to be seen!  The first cache was planted under a cat claw!  Nope!  We did fear that we wouldn't see a snake if it was lying in the weeds, so we relied on our good senses, and left.   So, we drove back out, and headed for Benson.  We still had a few caches in Benson that we needed to get.  After finding them, we stopped at Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant for lunch.  I thought it was good, but Jim wasn't a fan!  We did share a piece of their house specialty dessert, though and it got an A.  It was carrot cake, topped with a light rum sauce and walnuts!  Yum!  It reminded me of Jim's mother's carrot cake.  She made the best!  We stopped to get a picture of Rex Allen, in the town park, before we came home. 

Rex Allen was born in Willcox in 1920 and died in 1999.  He had many hit records, but his most famous song was, 'Streets of Laredo' and he sold over 3 million copies.  He was the last of the Silver Screen Cowboys. Willcox is proud of their 'small-town boy-makes good.'  They have a museum in Willcox that has a lot of his memorabilia.  They still celebrate Rex Allen Days in Willcox every year during the first weekend in October. 

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

We were supposed to move to Tucson today, but after looking at the temps there, we decided to stay in Willcox another week.  We are 10 degrees cooler than there, so for now, we are staying put.  We had a late start, but went back to the Chiricahuas and only did a 3.3 mile hike with 557 feet elevation.  It wasn't a difficult hike, but we are still working on our stamina.  We had a sighting of 6 coatimundis on the trail, and it made our day!  We had only seen them once before and that was from the other side of the Chiricahuas, coming in from Portal.  We were told to not hike on that side, as the illegals were coming up that valley, so we didn't go back there again.  That is one thing we have to comment on, is that we aren't having to go through a checkpoint after we leave here.  We understand the Border Patrol is using more vehicles for tracking down the drugs coming into the country and there must not be much of the illegal foot traffic, as there used to be.  Now, back to our hike and wonderful wildlife experience.  We had just turned around to return back to the visitor center, and only went a short distance, when Jim sighted the coatimundis on the trail.  We were quiet and slow to approach them, so we didn't scare them away. 

This is a good head shot of the coatimundi, but I was so excited that I didn't get his whole tail.  They have really long toenails and toes for digging for grubs, and other food.

Here is one after he dug a hole, to go after whatever was in there.  You can see how long their tail is.

You can see two coatimundis on the trail.  It gives you some idea of what our trail is like.

This is a view of our trail with the fabulous rock formations across the valley.  Are you tired of seeing these rocks yet?  We might have one more hike in us yet, for this area.  Hiking this trail in the late afternoon is nice, as it's in the shade.  Today we met a couple on the trail, and they are from Plymouth, WI and they are staying in Tucson for a month.  We usually, always stop and chat with whomever we meet.  It gives us a chance to 'catch our breath'!  Tomorrow, we'll have a late posting as we are going geo-caching near Tombstone, and stopping in Benson for Mexican.  The geo-caches we are going to check out, are placed in the form of a tombstone!  Now, remember that they are all 538 feet apart, and there are about 190 caches in all.  We won't get them all done in one day! I doubt if we will get half of them done while we are here.  For you geo-cachers, if you want to check it out, the caches are named after all the people buried in Boot Hill in Tombstone.  The first cache is called, ORMSBY and the cache # is GC6CXNJ.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

First of all, this is Veteran's Weekend and we should all remember those who served, and thank all Veterans for their service!
We watched football yesterday, and did see the Badger 'offense' win the game. (ooops, this is a correction! Jim read our blog and pointed this out......it was the defense that won the game!)  They played an awesome game and the offense had better kick it up several notches, if they are to win going forward!  The game ended and we had to rush off to the Triangle T Guest Ranch.  This is one of our must do things in this area.  We see some of the same people every year, and it's just a fun place to go.

This is the Rock Saloon at the Triangle T Guest Ranch.  It was getting dark, so it doesn't show really well, but it is definitely an old time saloon with the swinging doors and all.  The Triangle T has been visited by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Johnny Cash, and many country western stars.  They actually, have an old movie set on the premises, and many country western movies have been filmed in this Texas Canyon area.  There should be horses tied up to the post, instead of cars to make it really look authentic.  The clientele all wear cowboy boots, big hats and even some have spurs on their boots!

Raleigh Jay always plays his music on Saturday nights, and people come to listen or dance. He is quite good. Last night, they had lots of little kids, early on, and they were staying in the campground of the guest ranch.  They had their fun, expelled some energy on the dance floor, and then the parents took them back to their RV's and put them to bed. We talked to one couple from Tucson, and they had twin 2 year old's and a 4 year old.  They love coming here for the kids to climb among the rocks and just have a great time.

These are the people that we have gotten to know from year to year.  The couple on the left is from Nova Scotia (Jim and Linda) and they always ask if we are coming to visit them in the summer, and they will show us around their area.  The next couple is Doug and Karla, and Doug was born in Wisconsin near Ladysmith, moved to MN as a child, and then made the move to this area.  He is quite the cowboy!  Karla worked at Big Nose Kate's in Tombstone, but has since quit that job.  They live near Benson.  Then we just met Ed last night and his wife was off some place, when I took the picture.  We had a couple sitting behind us, that eventually, moved to our table, as they just retired and wanted to pick our brain!  When they found out that we are into our 12th year of full-timing, they had lots of questions.  They are from California (Carl and Liz) and are just getting started.  They told us that we were the best dancers there, and I said that we have been practicing for 'nearly 60 years'!  Our trip to this area wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Triangle T.  We did miss, 'Ken', who is a seasoned old cowboy rancher, and has had lots of health issues over the years, but Doug told us that he had a twisted intestine, and he would be back soon.  I doubt if we will see him this year, as we don't plan to go back before we leave here.  Next year!   Today we will watch the Packers and enjoy our leisurely day.  We are strongly contemplating, staying another week here.  We will go to the office tomorrow and make those arrangements.  We will be cutting our stay in Tucson a bit short, but we are also seeing the temperatures 10 degrees higher there.  We can go back to the Chiricahuas and do more hiking, and perhaps take in a different wine tasting room.  We found a clump of caches south of Benson in the shape of a tombstone, so we can always go there.  There's lots to do, and what's the rush? .

Friday, November 10, 2017

We were slow to start this morning, as we are just getting over our big hike yesterday, and know today isn't going to be too demanding.  We went to Benson to get some of the few caches there, that we haven't gotten or didn't have time to do before.  We had lunch at G & F Pizza place, and then we went to a wine tasting outside of Sunsites, AZ. 

We finally captured a picture of a Roadrunner!  They are an interesting bird down here.  They are very elusive, and try to run and hide (beep, beep) when they feel threatened.  This was the best shot we could get. 

We wanted to get to the Golden Rule Vineyards tasting room around 4:00, as they close at 5:00.  'Ruth' was tending to the customers today, as 'Jim' was off some place for a two day wine producers meeting.  We met Jim in 2007 when Norm and Helen Agan were visiting this area with us.  We just stumbled onto this pistachio farm, and at that time, Jim was preparing his land for planting the grapevines.  He told us that growing grapes used less water than pistachio trees do, and he wanted to get into the business.  They have grown immensely and their wine is very good.  Jim graduated from Iowa State University, and he said he knew more about growing corn and soybeans, than he did pistachios.  He didn't tell us how he met his wife, but we found out tonight!  Ruth was divorced with 3 teen-age children, she went back to school to get her degree, and was on the plane to Las Vegas for a meeting in Reno.  Jim happened to be sitting next to her on the plane.  One thing led to the other, they shared some time in Vegas, kept in contact, and after a visit to his place in Iowa and her place in AZ, they decided to get married.  She said, 'they never dated'!  LOL.  Jim had never been married and he was 44 years old when they met.  I believe in destiny!  Being that we missed him, we might go back Sunday to meet with him again and chit chat.  Then at the tasting, we sat at the tasting bar with a couple from Sunsites.  They are in their early 50's, retired and settled there.  They were fun to visit with, and we could relate to many of the things they knew about, so it was fun.  They met online.... he was from California and she was from Ohio. 

We had to get a picture of Ruth.  She was very fun, and we enjoyed the conversation and the wine!  We ended up getting  4 bottles from them and a bag of pistachios.  Why do we always like the more expensive wines?  I'll end of that note! 

Thursday, November 9, 2017

After a day of R & R yesterday, we had to get up early today to get to the Chiricahuas for a van ride to the top. I always ask people in the van where they are from.  Today, we had a couple from Germany, a foreign student from Norway, her host family from Sierra Vista, AZ, a guy from Virginia (he ran down the trails), a couple from Seattle and a couple from Colorado. This was the day we hiked from the top to the bottom!  It was 7.1 miles long and elevation of 734 feet.  So, a bit longer than we have done but the elevation wasn't as bad.  Why, then, am I so tired?

We love this trail, as it takes us from the very top of the Chiricahuas, which is close to 7,000 feet elevation, to the visitor center, which is at 5,400 feet elevation.  We do have some up's and down's, so it isn't all down.  This gives you a good idea of what it's like near the top.

Did we see a giraffe?  Not quite!  This is an oak tree that was burned in the 2011 fire and I thought it was quite interesting, the pattern that it left. Most of the trail wasn't harmed by the fire, but we could see where it went across another mountaintop. 

This is one of their outstanding rock formations in the park.  They call it Mushroom Rock, and I think it looks more like an anvil.

This is another famous rock formation in the park.  It's called Balance Rock, and it's 25 feet tall, 22 feet in diameter, and weighs 1,000 tons.  I wonder how they figured that out. 

We met this guy on the trail and had a good chat with him.  Notice his hiking stick.  He said that he and his wife went to 17 national parks last year and he has a metal on his stick to prove it.  He teaches and leads hikes to instill wilderness hiking skills to others.  His wife has Parkinson's so bad now, that he has someone stay with her, so he can get some hiking in.  He is a fairly young guy, so we felt really bad for them. 

Jim found another pretty 'blonde' lady today.  Jeanie, notice where his hand is!  She was a charmer!

It didn't take Virginia's husband long to find her!  They were adorable!  We found out that he is Walter Stephens, the well know watercolor artist from Sunsites, AZ.  He is 96 years old and it is a second marriage for them.  He never sells his work, but donates pieces to the community for a fund-raiser.  He said he doesn't paint any more.  He met Virginia in church 5 years ago, and married shortly after.  I can see why he doesn't have time to paint.  She's a character.  He was a pilot and then a commander in the navy in his younger days. They just returned from a trip to San Diego, for a military reunion.  She said they were treated like royalty.  They said they come to the park every day to walk the trails!  I don't think they did the 7 mile hike that we just did, but bless them for wanting to be in this enchanted area!  She had taken pictures of some deer that they had seen today.  We wished that we had more time to talk to them, but we finally met 'Walter Stephens'!  We used to see his work hanging in the golf course clubhouse, and inquired about buying some, but nope, it wasn't for sale.  Today was a great day! 

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

We're rested up and it's a bit cooler out today, with lots of cloud cover.  All important to do this hike that we want to do today.  It's an elevation climb until we get to the top, then we turn around and go back down.  I have problems with going up,and have to stop and rest a lot, but I can keep up going down. 

We are seeing our destination for today, as we drive into the Cochise Stronghold.  We'll be up on top when we reach our halfway point. 

This is a plaque at the start of the hiking trail and at the campground in the Cochise Stronghold.  It has been told to us, that Cochise was buried with his horse and dog, some place up there.

Jim is surveying the water level in the Half Moon Tank area.  This man made dam was constructed with rocks/stones from the area and they had to haul the cement bags up here to complete the dam.  This was 2 miles up from where we started.  I'm sure it was done in the late 1800's, but we don't see a date anywhere.  It had to be quite the undertaking at that time.

This was a welcoming sign, as we reached the top.  We have gone down the other side for part of the way, but today, this was far enough!  Our total hike was 6.6 miles and 1244 feet elevation climb.

We met 'Denise' on the trail and she was delightful!  We compared trails we've done, and places we've been, and she said that she and her husband have been in forest service all their life.  Her husband was the ranger at the Chiricahuas in 2010, so we had to have seen him there.  She is a real outdoors gal, and is native to the area.  She has done many of the trails that we have done in the Superstition Mountains, and has led female hikes to Havasu Falls.  We could have talked to her all day.  She told us that they had a fire just north of the Stronghold, this past summer.  They had helicopters come to the Half Moon Tank and fill their 'buckets' to extinguish the fire.  We wondered why the water level in the Half Moon Tank was so low, and that shed a lot of light on it. We saw no sign of fire in the areas that we hiked today, so they did a good job.

Denise took a picture of us, with the 'soft rocks' in the background.  The rock structures here are quite different from the ones in the Chiricahuas. 

There are lots of balancing rocks in this area, which is near the top of our climb.  There is an open space that we can see down into the valley, from which we came.  I may not post tomorrow, as it's laundry day, and we rest up for our longest hike on Thursday.  We'll be going back to the Chiricahuas.

Monday, November 6, 2017

We needed a slower day today to rest up after our hike yesterday and our anticipated hike tomorrow.  We had a few geo-caches to find around here, so we did that, and was hoping to find an apple orchard open yet.  It seems like we missed it by a week.  The apples were early this year, and they usually run through November.  The Briggs and Eggers Orchard told us that they supply the Sprouts Stores, plus the local stores, and they said they met their demands.  The other orchard was done on Oct. 31st, but they still make pies for Apple Annies, an outlet here in Willcox.  One can go get a fresh home made piece of pie there plus a lot of other stuff! We didn't go there!

Jim had the camera today!  If you want to look small, sit in a big chair.  Confucius didn't say that! I did!  We were disappointed that we couldn't get any apples, but we got a good laugh out of it.

We were north of Willcox looking for a geo-cache, and this street sign was on our way.  Are we in the Old West?  This truly, is still the Old West.  We met this 'young lady' in the visitor center and she gave us some information about her grandfather, when he was 6 years old and his sister was 10.  Their parents homesteaded near here, and they were doing a menial job in the root cellar for their mom, when they heard the raid on their place.  Everyone was killed, but those two young children, as the killers didn't know they were there.  They witnessed people dressed in Indian clothing, but wearing cowboy boots, and Indian blankets thrown over saddles.  No one believed them, until years later it was founded to be true.  They were to be sent to an orphanage out east, but they didn't want to go, so they ran away with the Apaches and lived with them for 10 years in the Superstition Mountains, near where the Lost Dutchmen's gold is supposedly hidden.  We hike in the Superstition Mountains, when we get to Apache Junction, so we found this an interesting story. We thought this storyteller was well into her 80's and in the printed story that she gave us, it states that she was born in 1941.  One year after me!  OMG!  We just continue to find things out about this area, and we so enjoy it!

 We drove south of Willcox to the outskirts of town, and to the viewing area, where we see many ducks, and we spotted about 50 Sandhill Cranes, that have come back here for the Winter.  More will be arriving, as the cold weather has set in back home.  In February, they hold 'Wings Over Willcox' to celebrate the cranes coming to this area. 

Sunday, November 5, 2017

 I didn't post anything yesterday, as it was a football day.  The Badgers won, but they lost their ranking in the polls.  They all say that the Big 10 is a powder puff conference this year. I guess we will have to wait and see.  We did watch the thriller of Iowa and Ohio State, and it didn't hurt for us to stay home and recuperate from our previous hikes.
It was a gorgeous day again today, so we headed off to the Chiricahua National Monument to do another hike.  We are doing hikes that are progressively more difficult and with more elevation climb, to get us in shape for the Valley hiking.  Today's hike was 5 miles (4.97 to be exact) and 1,065 feet accumulative elevation.  It is a strenuous up, immediately, so that's a good thing to do that when one is fresh!  Then we hiked along the ridge line for a while, before dropping down the back side to go down into another valley.  We hiked back through the Apache Pines to our destination of the Natural Bridge.

This is our view once we reached the canyon rim, overlooking our path on the way up.  You might be able to see the burned trees from the May 8, 2011 fire that swept through here.  It was so devastating, but they did manage to save the Faraway Ranch house and several of the park buildings, including the visitor center.  They had to wrap them to prevent them from destruction.  We did notice more greenery in this area this year, so it is starting to come back.  It will take years for the larger trees to grow to offer shade.  We are just glad that we started coming here in 2006 and have beautiful pictures of how it was.  It still is a peaceful, and serene place to visit. 

This is my favorite butt shot of Jim today!  We are on the other side of the mountain and descending down into the valley on the other side, from where we started.  There are more shrubs this year, and the once green grasses from the summer, have turned a brilliant gold, that shimmered in the sunlight.  Before the fire, this was home to quite a number of black bear, and it was told to us by the ranger, that a mom had triplets and lived back here.  Before 2011, we could see lots of fresh bear dung in the area, but we never caught sight of the animal itself.  The Chiricahuas are also home to cougars, rattlesnakes, and coatimundi.  We have not seen a snake of any kind here in all the years we have been coming here. 

The natural bridge at the end of our trail is 30 feet long.  It was surprisingly untouched in the 2011 fire, as the fire stopped about 200 yards from this area. 

Jim is holding two pine cones from the huge Apache Pine Trees.  I have never seen pine cones as big as this.  The pine needles on these trees vary from 8 to 15 inches long.  This is the only place in the park, that we have seen them this long.  There is another portion of the park that we hike, and those needles are about 6 to 8 inches long.

This is the end of the line for this hike.  Now to eat lunch and turn around and go back.  It was a good day! If you can't read the sign, it says, 'End of Trail'.