Bear Canyon and 7 Falls Hike

Each year, while in Tucson, we have visited Sabino Canyon in the Santa Catalina over in NE section of town.  It is not a park, rather part of the Coronado National Forest.  Thousands flock here each year and it gets real busy with a lot of walkers and hikers in the main part of the canyon where you can see amazing flora and sometimes fauna.

Click on any of the photos to expand and enjoy.

Gazing west into Downtown Tucson at the 2+ mile marker

What really brings us back each year is the smaller canyon to the east of Sabino.  Bear Creek Canyon offers a more rigorous hike of about 700 ft elevation gain over 6 miles round trip from shuttle stop or even further (9+ miles) if you begin and end at Visitor center.  Today we took the shuttle both ways.

Turning around from previous photo you look up the canyon towards our destination

Her:  "gorgeous, simply gorgeous!!"
Him: "Yup"
Her:  "Gorgeous, simply gorgeous!"
Me:   "Yep"
Her: .......... you get the picture.

The destination is 7 falls at upper end of this canyon.  As we approached the canyon end, we could see over to the falls area. Yikes.  Must've been 75 hikers over there.  Talk about a crowd.  Not to worry, I say,  I think they are hiking club and have been there a while which means they will depart soon.

Looking out over 7 Falls

 Sure enough, by the time we arrived at the pools, the clubs were beginning to pack up after their lunch.

Gazing back at the trail in distance.  Resting the feet.
Some people (you know who) took off their shoes and soaked.

 We found a rock near the main pool, leaned back, and snacked on nuts and dried berries (like a bear).

Resting at the Pools

 We actually found someone to take our photo also.

Click on this iPhone Pano of the 7 Falls area to see it in its glory.

I climbed up above our lunch spot to see this falls.

one of the upper falls

 Then looked down on the pools  That is Sraddha in the red next to pool down there.

Can you see Sraddha down there?

A "broom" flower

A few little wildflowers begin to bloom along trail

Narrow trail and geology of the canyon

 As we returned down the canyon we finally realized that, if we really press, we can make it back to the shuttle which runs only once per hour.  So a forced march back was great cardio as we pressed hard.

Stopped briefly to catch this little scene along Bear creek.

Yes we did make the shuttle.  Felt real good.

Model Railroad Fanning in Southern California

Broke away from the sun in Tucson to fly to the left coast for a long weekend with some model railroad freinds.  For the past few years, the guys have been visiting me in Northern California, however, now that I no longer have my model railroad layout, we all decided to head to Southern California for some sun.  Just in time since it snowed a foot in Portland which made flying both ways real fun. I had a smooth flight from Tucson.

Me in the hole dispatching the railroad

Click on any of the photos to expand.

We flew in early Friday to LAX where our mutual friend, Frank Kenny, who is building a wonderful modern era railroad called the CPRX which runs from southern California through the Tehachapi loop to Fresno.  I didn't take a lot of photos.  Others shot more.

Randy running the Amtrak (behind him)

 We worked on Frank's layout all day.  Made some good progress on a number of things and a couple steps back in a couple thanks to my booboo.  Won't go into it here but it's easily fixable.  Whew.  I owe you one, Frank.

Joel, Yardmaster and Dave in background

We visited the Belmont Shores Model Railroad club Saturday morning (see video below) then toured some of the 1:1 size big railroad yards in Long Beach and ate our lunch while watching the big trains drive by.

GP-60 Engines switching out the yard in Long beach.  Ya don't see Santa Fe markings much anymore

Back in the afternoon to Frank's place to operate his railroad.  First time he has fully operated the railroad with a dispatcher.  Dave and I shared the duties, well, mainly Dave.  We worked out a few bugs in the operating plan.

Some of our "crack" crew membes looking for trouble

 Overall the layout runs great with few mechanical or electrical issues.  Afterwards, we debriefed with Frank over our suggestions for improvement.

he thinks he knows what he is doing.  He doesn't

 As a former layout owner, I can attest to the amount of effort Frank has put into building this layout and the effort still needed to make it shine.  He will get there and we look forward to returning next year.

Kent, Phil (very shy) and Frank Kenny, our Host

And what did Sraddha do while I was galavanting around the country?  She had a quiet weekend home.

Sunday we operated on Joel Morse' "New York, Ontario & Western" RR which was real fun.

Yours Truly running a local

Yard work

Now what was I doing?

Mark Lestico adding his bridge over door

New way of doing signals

Staging and yard areas.

We also visited two other layouts, Bob Grech' HO Western Pacific and Mark Lestico's N Scale Cascade Subdivision.  See video's below.

Some videos I shot during layout tours:

Bob Grech's Western Pacfic HO Model Railroad - http://youtu.be/XdWme1lLbgQ

Belmont Shores Coal Drag - http://youtu.be/ZFmWLXolQ6E

Mark Lesticos Cascade Subdivision N Scale Railroad - http://youtu.be/mBobRCByNxI

Whitewater Draw, McNeal, Arizona

We had heard about this place south of Wilcox, Arizona, where Sandhill Cranes roost in the winter.  Having spent a few days each of the past 3 Decembers in Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in southern New Mexico, we love photographing the cranes, snow geese, and other water fowl who winter there.

Sunset over Whitewater Draw

We drove south from Roper Lake State Park through old Indian Country, the Wilcox Playa situated between the Chiricahua Mountains on the east and the Dragoon Mountains on the west.  Near Cochise Stronghold which is where, yes, Cochise hide out and foot the blue coats in the 19th century.  Now fertile farmland irrigated from deep wells dot the countryside.  About 40 miles south of I-10 we found McNeal, Arizona then a few miles south and east over dirt roads, arrived at Whitewater Draw.  Nina over at Wheelingit blog had rated this dry camping site as one of their favorites for 2013.  The parking lot can handle up to 3-5 rigs depending upon size.  Stay limited to 3 nights.  We decided to stay for 2 nights.  There were pit toilets, and best of all, the price was FREE!

We arrived mid-afternoon.  Several cars in parking lot area, but no RV's or trailers, yet so we selected our site on the south side facing the pools which were 1/4 mile walk distant.  Later in afternoon a large 5th wheel arrived, then a small RV so plenty of room for all.  A couple other rigs came and went back out due to lack of room so we felt fortunate.  

Sandhill Crane Family: Mom, Dad and Junior (in the middle)

Lovely afternoon with sunshine and warm breezes.  We walked around the pond spotting a few cranes sunning themselves on the beach.  Most were quite distant. 

 Lovely sunset.  

Nighttime felt very still and quiet.  Well pretty quiet other than the owl and the cranes whooping it up all night.  Real party animals those cranes!  Hehe.  Actually a beautiful sound to hear them in the stillness of the night.

Next morning we were treated to an amazing sunrise but the bird photography wasn't so good since the sun stayed behind those beautiful sunrise clouds so I don't have much.

Later in morning the wind freshened to about 25-30 mph gusting to 40 and remained stiff breezes rest of day through the night. Good news is we had decent internet via our new cellular modem from Millenicom.  Woo hoo!

Here is link to my Picasa album

We did see quite a few other birds too.

We were pretty tired by days end from walking around in these winds and the photography light was not great yet I still managed to get a few pix.

Sunset reflections

Another fun thing was Bisbee, Arizona only 35 minutes away so we drove over for a walk and lunch.  Even more windy over there but was fun.

Saturday morning the wind was less but light still not great.  We walked around for a while then headed out for Tucson.

Here are a few more pix.

An Owly Sunset tonight

Time to call evening quits. I wrote 3 blogposts tonight. We are in Whitewater Draw in SE Arizona near Bisbee.  Thousands of sandhill cranes. I have photos which will process and post later.  We arrived last night in the parking lot where we are camped for 2 night.s Storm coming through.  No rain but lots of wind. Strong winds.  No issue with being inside but tiring to be outside in it.  However, Good internet, so I can post all of this stuff.

Different from a 3 dog night
The sunset tonight was spectacular. As we gazed at the spectacular sunset tonight through our front window Sraddha noticed the Great Horned Owl we saw earlier in day fly out of his roost and up onto a post.  I had my big lens already set up with camera for the cranes so I grabbed it, went outside, walked up fairly close and got this shot of his silouhette against the sunset.  Only photo so far processed from big camera.

Great Horned Owl admiring the sunset

More to come when we get to Tucson this weekend.

-Blessings from the road
Kent

Indian Country and water rights!

When I say Indian country, I don't mean on the continent of asia, nor do I mean Afghanistan when our troops venture out into the backwoods, (or sometimes down the road).  I mean real indian country, where the Apache Indians roamed.  More on this later.

Situated in Eastern- Southeastern, Arizona, to distinguish this from South-Southeastern Arizona which is Bisbee and Whitewater Draw (next post), and all those fun places we love to visit. It is not northeastern Arizona where Winslow and the Navaho Nation is.  More south central eastern because it is near the New Mexico border north of I-10.

The Route
We departed McDowell Regional Park (see previous post) heading east through the copper mining region of Globe Arizona then onto the San Carlos Apache Indian reservation.  Just drove through en route to Safford, Arizona where we camped in Roper Lake State Park.  I wish I was better at photos like RVSue or Nina over at Wheelingit blogosphere. But, then this blog is mainly for friends and family.

Actually I don't like the google blogger sphere and am thinking about switching to wordpress but it seems converting is really a lot of work so I might just start over and reference this site.
Enuf of a riff here.  Let's get back to the story.  Actually not much of a story.

Well there is a little bit of a story.
Ya see, our water pump gave stopped working at Lost Dutchman a while back.  Ouch. This is used when we are en route or when dry camping. We didn't really need it at the time since we were hooked up to city water and same for McDowell.  However it loomed over us because we wanted to boondock later on in deep SE Arizona at Whitewater Draw (next post). How to fix?  I am pretty handy so I called Tiffin, spoke with a tech who advised I check the voltage of the wires to the pump.  Hmm. I used to do this sorta thing with my model railroad and have voltmeter.  yep  no power to pump.  Now what to do?  I tried to find a repair place but none very close by so ruled that idea out.  Maybe a mobile repairman?  I found one, called the answering service and they never called back.  Darn.  If not repaired then we are limited to staying in parks or RV resorts with water and, while driving down the road, had to pour water down the toilet to rinse.. (probably more than you wanted to know right?).

Bright Idea
As we drove through Apache reservation down highway 70 through from Globe to Safford, I had the bright idea that maybe, just maybe, there was an RV repair shop in Safford?  Sraddha googled this and found Trek RV repair and sales  (no website tho). We drove there and stopped in.  Talked with the nieest people and discussed our problem.  Geez, I need to get more photos here.  Alas.  We made appointment for next morning to bring Charli (our RV) in for a look see. Off to Roper Lake State Park nearby.   We arrived early enough in the day to score a nice view spot.  Walked around a bit.  A small park but internet worked well.  I was worn out from driving so didn't do much. Sraddha walked all around the lake seeing many species of birds.

Finally, here is my one photo for this post.

Our morning view at Roper Lake State Park.  Mt Graham in distance at 10,000 fot elevation

Our Water Rights Restored
Next morning we got up early for our power walk then headed into town for our repair appointment.  they got us right in, told us a good breakfast place and to expect a call within an hour.  We went for a mexican breakfast of tamales and enchiladas.  And sure enough, got a call within an hour.  A new water pump was needed.  Worthwhile investment of time and money.  Actually not too expensve.  Yes, I could have fumbled around and installed one myself but it woulf have taken at least 3 trips to hardware store for parts like last fall in Lone Pine when I installed the inverter myself.  This was quick, easy, fun, nice people and we were on our way south to the next destination...Whitewater draw where  the rest of the Sandhill Cranes, not in Bosque del Apache, hang out in the winter.

-Blessings from the road
Kent