Lance is back
The annual Tour of the Gila runs next weekend. Last year, cyclist force-of-nature-Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer and their team came in at the last minute, adding a little more glitz, a little more hype and a lot more people to the scene.
Who would’a thought he’d come back. His reason last year was to get back in shape from an injury before a big race in Italy. Not sure why he’s coming this year; the Sun News article, linked above, says he withdrew from a race in France and is preparing for races in California and the great one, the Tour de France. I’d rather believe that he and the team enjoyed the challenging courses, including the 9,000 elevation change (updownupupdownupppp) that was the course on the final day, ending in Pinos Altos. Not to mention the friendly people who were both thrilled to host the tour including Lance and Levi, and low key about having world-famous athletes hanging around the bike and the coffee shops!
Snow and coyotes
Did I mention yesterday’s blizzard in Part 1? Woke up this morning to 30 temp and more snow. Light, just a mist of snow, but snow all the same. A little after dawn, just as I was settling in to work, I looked out my office window to see a coyote slipping across the yard. Very exciting—first one we’ve seen here. Of course, we know they are around, as well as gray fox. We see their scat on a regular basis now, and occasionally hear the coyote neighbors calling each other around the hills of the neighborhood.
I went out to walk Nutmeg and could hardly get her past the trail. She hung back, her nose twitching furiously. At least I assumed it was the coyote’s trail. About half way around the block the Grant County Animal Control truck, with a big cage in the back, passed me, driving slowly. I thought to myself, “how dare they. Someone has reported that coyote and called out Animal Control. That’s pitiful. People let their dogs run loose (I don’t think I wrote about the local pit bull that got out of its yard a month ago and tried to attack Nutmeg when I was walking her; I yelled and growled at it, and it retreated enough until its owner came for it) but they’ll call the “cops” on a coyote…” and so my thoughts ran, getting me fair riled up! Until I turned on my street and there sat the Animal Control truck and the man out talking to a neighbor. So I walked over (felt like ‘marching’ but decided to ask rather than tell) and asked him what was up. Turns out, after all my building righteousness, he was after a big black dog that runs the neighborhood and killed another neighbor’s little dog this morning. Neighbors have reported this big black animal before but it has never been reported as hurting another dog. Now the Animal Control needs to capture it and take it in and so was looking for a good place to set the cage-trap. So possibly, it was the dog’s trail or the scent of his victim, that had Nutmeg twitching. Well, I sure hope he catches that dog. And I sure hope he doesn’t catch himself a little neighborhood coyote by mistake. Or if he does, he figuratively pats it on the head and lets it go.
The continuing dilemma of deer
The Sun News also reported on the most current thinking about the deer overpopulation. Apparently, the Game and Fish folks are thinking of trapping and relocating deer. They’ll be using nets to capture the animals. If you read the article linked above, you’ll note that they’re hoping that by reducing the deer numbers in this populated area, they’ll also reduce the predators that come in search of a meal. Note especially in the article that our present neighborhood, Indian Hills is specifically mentioned. Just in case you thought maybe I was buying into urban legends and imagining things :^)
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Rollin' their own and other natural phenomena
We made a quick trip to Santa Fe last weekend to visit our architect – up on Thursday and home on Friday. The drive was grand with some wonderful scenery. These mental images come from that trip.
Desert mountains roll their own clouds.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon before. Drive across the desert and you likely will see clear skies. Except along the high ranges. There, you are likely to see clouds. These clouds are only along the peaks of the mountains with elevations of perhaps 8,000 and higher. On past trips, I’ve noticed these white puffs. They may not move; instead they may stay suspended above the lines and points of the mountains. Then again, the puffs may accumulate over the high ridges until the mountains huff them out over the desert plains and toward the opposing range or along the prevailing wind stream. If enough mountains are huffing their cumulus at each other, the possibility of rain takes shape. So on our drive up on Thursday, this was the face of the phenomenon.
Out of Santa Fe on Friday and driving toward Albuquerque, we noticed that the Sandia Mountains were rolling up a different cloud. From our initial perspective, it appeared that the mountain was smoking. To the west, the sky was clear, but there was a dark gray cloud emanating from the peak nearest us and trailing along the ridge toward the east. As we drove further down I25 toward Albuquerque and rounded the end of the range to run alongside, we could see that the dark, dense roll of cloud was clinging to the ridgeline the length of the Sandia range. As we traveled south, the threatening cloud receded in the rear view mirror along with the mountain range. Our attention captured, though, we watched to see whether the other ranges of note had rolled up similar dark bands of cloud. Sure enough, each range that we passed was similarly topped. And we noted that rain fell in isolation over mountains to the east. We had planned on driving back across the Black Range rather than take the longer, flatter but faster way, but began to worry that we’d get down to the point of decision and see that the Black Range was likewise clouded. Fortunately, by early afternoon, the desert sun had prevailed and the clouds had dissipated into a bit of cirrus.
That thing had horns!
On leaving Silver City on Thursday, we drove the longer, flatter but faster way, which takes us down toward Deming. From south of Hurley and the great Grant County Airport on down to Deming , the landscape is rangeland. Cruising along at 65 makes for difficult wildlife viewing. However, it is easy to tell a wild critter from a domestic one. And the wild critter we saw as we flashed by was no mule deer. But it wasn’t elk either. That thing was a pronghorn! No discussion about whether a pronghorn is an antelope (it’s not) or whether pronghorns are in the neighborhood (according to the internet research I did, they are). If only I’d seen, thought and reacted in time, I would have stopped to enjoy its presence.
More desert flowers
We crossed just south of the Cook range on Rt 26 and up toward Hatch. Unexpectedly, we found the desert floor and lower hills covered in yellow. Not with poppies, but with a low-growing ground-cover type of flower. Again, we found ourselves pointing out hillsides, crevices and ranges that appeared soaked with sunshine!
And finally, our trip back across the Black Range
I guess I’ve been here long enough now, driving these mountain roads often enough and acclimating my fear of heights adequately enough. When we drove the Black Range the one and only other time, crested at Emory Pass at about 8,200 feet, after snaking up on 10 mph curves, to snake down the other side on equally tight curves, I was in vertigo hell. The only reason that time my nails weren’t bitten to the cuticle was that I was driving. This time, the drive over was my idea, and again I was driving. But the experience was very different. I won’t tell you I took in the scenery. On those curves with no side rails and nothing but down, you don’t sightsee. But we pulled over a couple of times to take in the view, and what views there are from up there. When we got up to Emory Pass, we stopped, got the dog out and walked up to the Emory Pass view point. To tell you the truth, we stopped and walked the dog because, despite what would seem common sense and against the posted restrictions of 17 feet, we came up behind a double cab pickup hooked with an overlong 5th wheel and towing a car, and traveling tandem, another double cab pickup towing a flat bed with several atvs tied down. Way more than 17 feet. And anything more than about 17 feet cannot possibly stay in lane on the switchback curves. I didn’t relish following them down the other side; so we stopped. I was stunned to learn afterwards that mining trucks – double carriers – used to ply that road over the mountains on a regular basis.
A dog story
We took Nutmeg with us. I successfully found a halter that hooks to the seat belt, keeping her secure in the back seat, if somewhat disgusted and embarrassed at having to wear the darn thing. We stayed in a Comfort Inn. They put us on a lower level hallway next to the back door for easy escape for a puppy that needs to pee. Along with about 4 other dogs! The rule was that you aren’t supposed to leave the dog in the room alone. Apparently some of the other dogs’ people chose to ignore the rule. We were settling in when the other dogs began to bark. When it wasn’t the sheep dog across the hall, it was the little yapper two doors down. Or maybe the other yapper on the other side of the hall. Nutmeg, otherwise quietly hanging out by the bed, would jump, lunge at the door and reply in kind. It was obvious we might not get much sleep. So I decided the only thing to do was to sleep with her – or her with me – so that I could control her if she jumped up to bark. This is a dog that has never been allowed on the furniture – bed or otherwise. She didn’t even know how to get on the bed! If you can imagine, I had to walk her to the side of the bed, which made her nervous, not knowing what to expect. Then grab her around the chest – making her close to panicky. Lift her front quarters up onto the bed, causing her to try to back up between my knees. And then hoist her rear end up onto the bed. She stood stock still for a minute, trying to figure out her footing. That was long enough for me to slide under the covers. Which was her signal to sink down next to me and sigh heavily. And not move the rest of the night. Well, actually she did move – she jerked, she dreamed, she thumped and ran. But she didn’t bark once. That’s the last time, however, that she’s getting on the bed with me. She has terrible bed manners. She plopped her butt on the pillow next to me, with her head down by my knees. Morning came quickly, though. A quick bowl of food, and we packed up, coaxed her into her halter and were on our way.
Finally, white again
Today is April 22. A full month after the first day of spring. This afternoon, it snowed. Actually, it blizzarded. The cumulus that rolled up and out of the Gila today carried lightening, thunder, rain and snow. I looked out my office window at one point and couldn’t see the house on the other side of the arroyo, let alone the peaks behind. It snowed for an hour, enough to frost the junipers and leave a white coating on the ground between the pines on the mountainsides. At dusk, we still couldn’t see the tops of the ridges. Tomorrow morning, they’ll be white. At least until the sun warms them, melting snow and evaporating the moisture. Then the moisture will roll up the mountainsides again, to create more puffs to grow into new cumulus.
Desert mountains roll their own clouds.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon before. Drive across the desert and you likely will see clear skies. Except along the high ranges. There, you are likely to see clouds. These clouds are only along the peaks of the mountains with elevations of perhaps 8,000 and higher. On past trips, I’ve noticed these white puffs. They may not move; instead they may stay suspended above the lines and points of the mountains. Then again, the puffs may accumulate over the high ridges until the mountains huff them out over the desert plains and toward the opposing range or along the prevailing wind stream. If enough mountains are huffing their cumulus at each other, the possibility of rain takes shape. So on our drive up on Thursday, this was the face of the phenomenon.
Out of Santa Fe on Friday and driving toward Albuquerque, we noticed that the Sandia Mountains were rolling up a different cloud. From our initial perspective, it appeared that the mountain was smoking. To the west, the sky was clear, but there was a dark gray cloud emanating from the peak nearest us and trailing along the ridge toward the east. As we drove further down I25 toward Albuquerque and rounded the end of the range to run alongside, we could see that the dark, dense roll of cloud was clinging to the ridgeline the length of the Sandia range. As we traveled south, the threatening cloud receded in the rear view mirror along with the mountain range. Our attention captured, though, we watched to see whether the other ranges of note had rolled up similar dark bands of cloud. Sure enough, each range that we passed was similarly topped. And we noted that rain fell in isolation over mountains to the east. We had planned on driving back across the Black Range rather than take the longer, flatter but faster way, but began to worry that we’d get down to the point of decision and see that the Black Range was likewise clouded. Fortunately, by early afternoon, the desert sun had prevailed and the clouds had dissipated into a bit of cirrus.
That thing had horns!
On leaving Silver City on Thursday, we drove the longer, flatter but faster way, which takes us down toward Deming. From south of Hurley and the great Grant County Airport on down to Deming , the landscape is rangeland. Cruising along at 65 makes for difficult wildlife viewing. However, it is easy to tell a wild critter from a domestic one. And the wild critter we saw as we flashed by was no mule deer. But it wasn’t elk either. That thing was a pronghorn! No discussion about whether a pronghorn is an antelope (it’s not) or whether pronghorns are in the neighborhood (according to the internet research I did, they are). If only I’d seen, thought and reacted in time, I would have stopped to enjoy its presence.
More desert flowers
We crossed just south of the Cook range on Rt 26 and up toward Hatch. Unexpectedly, we found the desert floor and lower hills covered in yellow. Not with poppies, but with a low-growing ground-cover type of flower. Again, we found ourselves pointing out hillsides, crevices and ranges that appeared soaked with sunshine!
And finally, our trip back across the Black Range
I guess I’ve been here long enough now, driving these mountain roads often enough and acclimating my fear of heights adequately enough. When we drove the Black Range the one and only other time, crested at Emory Pass at about 8,200 feet, after snaking up on 10 mph curves, to snake down the other side on equally tight curves, I was in vertigo hell. The only reason that time my nails weren’t bitten to the cuticle was that I was driving. This time, the drive over was my idea, and again I was driving. But the experience was very different. I won’t tell you I took in the scenery. On those curves with no side rails and nothing but down, you don’t sightsee. But we pulled over a couple of times to take in the view, and what views there are from up there. When we got up to Emory Pass, we stopped, got the dog out and walked up to the Emory Pass view point. To tell you the truth, we stopped and walked the dog because, despite what would seem common sense and against the posted restrictions of 17 feet, we came up behind a double cab pickup hooked with an overlong 5th wheel and towing a car, and traveling tandem, another double cab pickup towing a flat bed with several atvs tied down. Way more than 17 feet. And anything more than about 17 feet cannot possibly stay in lane on the switchback curves. I didn’t relish following them down the other side; so we stopped. I was stunned to learn afterwards that mining trucks – double carriers – used to ply that road over the mountains on a regular basis.
A dog story
We took Nutmeg with us. I successfully found a halter that hooks to the seat belt, keeping her secure in the back seat, if somewhat disgusted and embarrassed at having to wear the darn thing. We stayed in a Comfort Inn. They put us on a lower level hallway next to the back door for easy escape for a puppy that needs to pee. Along with about 4 other dogs! The rule was that you aren’t supposed to leave the dog in the room alone. Apparently some of the other dogs’ people chose to ignore the rule. We were settling in when the other dogs began to bark. When it wasn’t the sheep dog across the hall, it was the little yapper two doors down. Or maybe the other yapper on the other side of the hall. Nutmeg, otherwise quietly hanging out by the bed, would jump, lunge at the door and reply in kind. It was obvious we might not get much sleep. So I decided the only thing to do was to sleep with her – or her with me – so that I could control her if she jumped up to bark. This is a dog that has never been allowed on the furniture – bed or otherwise. She didn’t even know how to get on the bed! If you can imagine, I had to walk her to the side of the bed, which made her nervous, not knowing what to expect. Then grab her around the chest – making her close to panicky. Lift her front quarters up onto the bed, causing her to try to back up between my knees. And then hoist her rear end up onto the bed. She stood stock still for a minute, trying to figure out her footing. That was long enough for me to slide under the covers. Which was her signal to sink down next to me and sigh heavily. And not move the rest of the night. Well, actually she did move – she jerked, she dreamed, she thumped and ran. But she didn’t bark once. That’s the last time, however, that she’s getting on the bed with me. She has terrible bed manners. She plopped her butt on the pillow next to me, with her head down by my knees. Morning came quickly, though. A quick bowl of food, and we packed up, coaxed her into her halter and were on our way.
Finally, white again
Today is April 22. A full month after the first day of spring. This afternoon, it snowed. Actually, it blizzarded. The cumulus that rolled up and out of the Gila today carried lightening, thunder, rain and snow. I looked out my office window at one point and couldn’t see the house on the other side of the arroyo, let alone the peaks behind. It snowed for an hour, enough to frost the junipers and leave a white coating on the ground between the pines on the mountainsides. At dusk, we still couldn’t see the tops of the ridges. Tomorrow morning, they’ll be white. At least until the sun warms them, melting snow and evaporating the moisture. Then the moisture will roll up the mountainsides again, to create more puffs to grow into new cumulus.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
If Monet painted wildflowers...
We took our Safford AZ wildflower excursion on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning, we stopped into our local bookstore – I needed something to read – and Dennis (O’Keefe of O’Keefe’s Bookshop) suggested that we go over NM Rt 78 rather than mindlessly following I10; he was at lengths to describe the views we would enjoy crossing the mountains there. So we headed up past Cliff, admiring our own snow-capped Mogollons and nearer-by, fields full of small yellow flowers – our wildflower immersion began earlier than we expected! Above Buckhorn, we turned our back on the Mogollons and headed west to Mule Creek, NM, and up into the Gila National Forest, which became the Apache National Forest as we crossed into Arizona. I was fascinated by the way the microhabitats changed so quickly and so completely: Drive through rolling grassland, hit Mule Creek and through two washes, round a bend and into ponderosa pine. Go up the side of the mountain through healthy pine forest, over a small ridge and instantly leave pines behind and enter piñon/juniper forest. Another curve and a bump and back into the pines. And finally, crest the mountain range, cross the state line and drop into prickly pear, ocotillo and scrub bushes. We stopped, breathless, at the overlook. Gazing into Arizona from that elevation, we could see across a valley to hills jeweled with gold coins and necklaces, and crowned by another snow-capped peak. The mountain on which we were perched dropped past cathedral spires of stone, with foundations of smoothed rock outcroppings. I reached for my camera to take some pictures and…Oh no…No memory card! I thought I’d remembered everything: dog food, dog bowl, water bottles, snacks and the little insulated lunch bag, binocs and bird book, battery charger for camera batteries, 2 pairs of shoes and 5 layers of clothes (not changes, layers). But I forgot to make sure the memory card was in the dang camera!
We wound our way down the side of the mountain, thrilling but not enough to panic my fear of heights, and into the valley. And here, they began. Blankets of flowers. Mexican gold poppies, desert marigolds, desert chicory, globe mallow and a half-dozen other flowers whose names I don’t yet know. The hillsides looked as though Monet had wandered the landscape with a leaky paint bucket and a runny brush. The gold ran in streaks down some hills and puddled in the crevices. In places, Monet had brushed gold across a slope and the poppy-paint sagged downhill in ripples. And his paint pot leaked drips, drops and splashes of color. Monet loved to paint the light—on these hills and fields, he infused rainbow colors with glowing sunlight. Some fields and hills and crevices were dense with gold while some were lightly brushed. He hazed fields of poppies with purple penstemmons and dotted them with white. In some areas, tall spikes of red-purple, red or orange stood over the shorter, massed poppies, asters and marigolds.
All this and no camera….
We drove on into Safford, located our hotel and checked in, then went to find the WalMart. Conveniently, we had not gotten around to getting N his Christmas present—a small digital camera. So we shopped, successfully, for his and found an inexpensive memory card for mine. Now, we were both ready.
On Sunday, we were back in Monet’s footsteps. We drove the triangle of Safford to Duncan, crossing the Gila River, and back to Three-Way. We detoured to the area where we had found such a profusion of flowers on Saturday afternoon, now that we had cameras. Continued up to Clifton to a little café called PJs, then back down and east to NM again. Climbing the mountain range which we had descended the day before afforded a different view of the mountains, the hills and their flowers. We stopped again at the top, but the day was hazier. The jeweled hills that stood out on Saturday were now fuzzed into blandness and the snow capped mountain forming the western boundary of the valley disappeared into the haze. So glad we had gone that way the day before. I still took a number of shots, but on inspection, the light was so bright that the images were washed out. Next time. Driving back Rt 78, we crossed the line into NM and from the Apache to the Gila National Forest, and dropped down into view of the Mogollons again and ran for home alongside the Gila River.
General notes from the weekend:
1. Sightseers can be foolish wherever they are. I watched a man driving erratically down a long grade sided by a steep downhill slope protected by a flimsy guard rail. When he got close enough, I could see he had a video camera aimed at the golden hillside. He came too near hurtling right over the rail, down the slope and into that same hillside, a lousy ending for his home movie.
2. Dogs are not always conducive to peaceful poppy-peeping. Nutmeg got bored sitting by her back window and tried – several times – to climb up into my lap. Guess who was driving? I was more than a little worried about hurtling down a slope myself, especially on one of those 15mph switchbacks on the mountain side. And if she wasn’t trying to climb in the front with us, she was barking at the unseen, unheard and very possibly un-embodied. I’m going to WalMart before our next trip to locate a doggy seat belt. At least that will keep me on the road, even if deafened.
3. We crossed the Gila River several times in two states. The river has its headwaters in the mountains of the Gila National Forest; I’m not sure of the name of the range at its source. It flows free through New Mexico, heading north through its valley and curls around between one range and the next to come south again on the Arizona side. If you trace the river across the map, it turns north again to Phoenix, and then angles down to a juncture in Yuma with the formerly-great Colorado. Once our free-flowing Gila runs into Arizona, it is dammed and siphoned and channeled into a formerly-great condition as well. At the point where the Colorado and the Gila join, neither is much more than a muddy trickle. But that’s a blog for another time.
4. Did you know: Arizona does not follow the change to daylight savings time. So in the winter months, NM and AZ are on the same clock. However, 2/3 of the year, when you cross the state line, you lose (or gain, heading east) an hour. Like the state lines themselves, time is arbitrary and convenient, having little bearing in the short view on reality.
5. And finally, what was I reading? Thanks to Dennis’ recommendation, I picked up an account of Geronimo, called Meet Me on the Mountain. Fascinating; told from the perspective of Apache oral history. There is always another story and another view – and another truth.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Ridin' with Bonnie & Clyde
Meet Bonnie. She’s the lead of this team. And Clyde’s the one without the blaze. Sonny’s the driver. We rode with the gang around Piños Altos as part of our “showing off” weekend with our friends, Maribeth and Eric, from DC. Great fun, especially because we drove the entirety of the small old gold-mining town. Piños Altos is peopled by about 310 souls in a real variety of housing – everything from old adobe cottages about the size of a small hotel room to new, high-tech green homes. Piños Altos is also the home of Judge Roy Bean’s original bar, a church built and donated by the Hurst family in the 1800s, the first school house now turned museum/curio shop (even the dust in the place dates back to pre-1900!), and the soon-to-reopen remodeled Buckhorn Saloon and adjoining Opera House. We rode through town after brunch in a tiny restaurant called Two Spirits Café, which boasts all of 7 tables.Leaving PA, we traveled the triangle called the Trail of the Mountain Spirits, stopping at Lake Roberts for a bit of a walk down to the lake, partway around and back up again. So wonderful to find large(ish) bodies of water in the high desert. This lake was spotted with waterfowl; had I known – or more accurately – remembered, I would have brought my spotting scope. As it was, I did have my binocs and picked out bufflehead (not hard), coots (also not hard), canvas backs (a little harder) and ruddy ducks (had to consult the book on them).
We also pulled off at the Ben Lilly monument for a long view both up into the Gila and west toward the Mogollon (Muggy-yown). Beautiful vistas and details. Here’s my visual account of the day.
We took advantage of a second beautiful day to go up on the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and hike a bit. Took Nutmeg. I ended up playing party-pooper and turned us back after about an hour. We were noticeably losing elevation – gradually, not steeply, but still. We did have to walk back up! An old friend of mine once said, about hiking, “walk till you’re half tired. Remember you have to walk back.” Well, when you’re heading downhill on the outbound, you’d better stop before you’re half tired because you gotta walk it uphill on the homebound. I don’t know who was more grateful to be heading back in the direction of the car – me or Nutmeg. She surely went uphill much more slowly than she had gone down, satisfying herself with only those smells that her nose could reach without leaving the trail. No pictures, although I had my camera with me. Really, one pine treetrunk looks much like the next unless you’re going to make a real study of them. On the other hand, there were several varieties of small wildflowers blooming at ant-level. It would have been fun to try and get down to their level and get some macro-shots. But that takes more time than most people are willing to wait for, and it’s not real interesting watching someone lying on their belly with a camera pointed at a miniature white (or purple) flower. That type of photography is better done alone.
Speaking of wildflowers, I just made our reservation in Safford AZ for the weekend. Over there, I gather that there’s more than gold on the hills. There is purpleblueorangeredandwhite – a real rainbow of earthbound color. Hope it waits for us.
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