Hiking Madera Canyon

Near Green Valley is Madera Canyon, above which are Mounts Hopkins and Wrightson, the latter rising to about 9500 feet. With our neighbors Dwight and Carol, we hiked up from Madera Canyon to Josephine's Saddle, between the two mountains, at about 7000'. By the way, these are the mountains, two of the Santa Rita range, that can be seen from our place.

It took us about 2 hours to do the 2.5 miles and 2000' elevation change. At Josephine's saddle we had some lunch. We came down a different trail, one about 4 miles long. It was fascinating to see the difference between slopes that faced south and those that faced north. The latter were forested and mostly green; the former were treed but desertlike, with yucca, prickly pear (below a certain level) and much sandier.

Here are some pictures showing us hikers and the view west across Green Valley.

We settle in and set out

Yesterday, Saturday, we went on a hike with the Sahuarita hiking group. Sahuarita is a town that adjoins Green Valley to the north and is NOT age restricted. It is growing rapidly--the new SuperWalMar will open in January. The town has a recreation program that includes a hiking group, which we read about it the local paper. So we went to the staging area at 7.30 on Saturday and joined a group of about 15--mostly well north of 55--on a hike near Rio Rico, about 30 miles south of here, just about 10 miles north of Nogales and Mexico.

We did about 5 miles at about 4000 feet, mostly level with some ups and downs on a rocky road. Each direction looked like a postcard view: here are a couple:






It was a nice hike, though we were told it was an easy one, especially compared to those staged by the Green Valley Hiking Club, which we hope to join as well.

---------------------------------------------------------Wildlife sightings just beyond our back wall include an owl, last evening; rabbits; quail; and javelinas, relatives of pigs. Here are some pictures, one a detail of the other. I'll strive for better, but these will have to do for now. The javelinas are about the size of large dogs. Here is a link about javelinas: http://www.desertusa.com/magnov97/nov_pap/du_collpecc.html

Daily life

Here are some random notes as we settle in here in Arizona:

Yesterday we went to a street fair in Tucson. (http://www.fourthavenue.org/content/home ) Lots of crafts, fairly generic, but with a Western/Southwestern flavor, of course. We bought a few things. It was quite nice--we ate lunch outdoors at a nice café in an old hotel downtown, the Congress Hotel. (http://www.hotelcongress.com/) It's near the University of Arizona. The street where the fair was is right next to the U, so lots of funky students, older folks, faculty types and university-area stores that are permanently there.

It's cloudy here today and a 10% possibility of rain tonight!!! It keeps it much warmer at night when there are clouds. We actually had a few drops--literally-of rain this afternoon; not enough to do more than put isolated drops on the sidewalk.

On Saturday our neighbor, Dwight, took us on a 24 mile bike ride, 12 miles uphill, perhaps a total of 1000 feet--felt like more--in elevation. I was huffing and puffing--out of practice, at altitude (about 4000 feet at the end). Coming down was easy, however.

Today at the Post Office there were no parking spaces; cars were backed up onto the main street as people were mailing what I took to be Christmas gifts. With so many grandparents in residence, the density of people visiting the PO during the day is pretty high.

Other sightings: quail just outside our back fence; javelinas walking past 20 feet from us. And a road runner on our way back from Tucson on a road through the San Xavier reservation.

More pictures

More pictures





We knew there was something about Arizona

Trip Pictures--to Arizona

Here is a selection of pictures from our Arizona trip:


Giant windmills outside OK City

Below--leaving East Texas and coming into the desert in New Mexico

ABQ to Green Valley

Now that we have Internet access again, let me finish our trip blog.

We left ABQ (the abbreviation for Albuquerque that I’ll use throughout) early, at 6.28 am. Since we entered the Mountain Time zone, it was earlier on the clock than in our bodies. ABQ is high, and we drove through high desert landscape—mesas, buttes, creosote bushes and the like. ABQ is on the Rio Grande river and we drove south through the Rio Grande valley, crossing and recrossing the river several times during the morning. We saw mountains in all directions.

Sixty miles or so before Las Cruces, we turned southwest towards Deming and from there west towards Tucson. Between Deming and Lordsburg, the last town in New Mexico, we crossed the Continental Divide at 4585 feet.

As we drove west on I-10, we were paralleling railroad tracks much of the way. Passing us, heading east, were train after train of flatbed cars carrying containers labeled China Shipping, Hanjin, “K”line. Some trains were almost entirely Chinese red with shipping containers. Much of the inexpensive merchandise we get from China comes through Los Angeles and Long Beach and then apparently heads east on this southern route. It was quite impressive.

We drove through mostly flat desert much of the way. Just before we got to Tucson, we came though a pass where we descended over 1000 feet from an area of giant granite boulders to the relative flatness of Tucson, which is at about 2400 feet. We decided to take some smaller roads from I-10 to Green Valley and arrived here at 1:50 pm.

Since we got here, we’ve been setting up housekeeping: buying, in short order, essentials one usually acquires over months--spices to cook with; cleaning supplies; telephones; wastebaskets; picture hooks; all kinds of stuff. And then getting phone and internet service; putting together desks and other furniture from Ikea (up in Chandler, on the southern edge of Phoenix, about 120 miles and 2 hours away). And re-evisioning and rearranging furniture. Things are settling down now and the furniture seems to be in about the right places.

It gets quite chilly at night—32 degrees last night—but we have had nice warm, sunny weather during the day. Average seems to be in the mid 60’s. We put sheets over our grapefruit and orange bushes (too small to call trees) because of the freeze potential. Our neighbors told us to do this.

On Friday we went with our neighbors to Tubac, the art colony town south of here, for their Christmas weekend. The town, which has a very old Southwest feel even though many buildings are not old, has almost no outdoor lights, but it was full of luminaria for the occasion. (Several observatories in the neighborhood have helped keep outdoor lighting in this region limited.) Sunset was multicolored and dramatic.

So here we are on our current adventure.