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.