Snow is a bit too beautiful

The following is from this morning's Arizona Daily Star.  Cracked me up.  Tucsonons don't get to see snow so when Mt Lemmon ended up with something like 50inches at the ski resort everyone wanted to go up and see the "pretty stuff."  Not me.  It is a nice view--from the valley floor.  The novelty is lost on me.

 Sunday, January 31, 2010 12:00 am


Mt. Lemmon's snow is a bit too beautiful
Snow-seeking Tucsonans clogged the highway to Mount Lemmon Saturday, filling the mountain to capacity, the Pima County Sheriff's Department reported.

On Saturday afternoon, travelers hoping to see the snowy mountain had to wait at the base and were allowed up only as others vehicles came down.

The downhill drive also was a tough slog for parts of the day, as traffic was jammed for a couple of miles near the base of the mountain.

The Sheriff's Department posts occasional alerts about the highway's condition on its road hot line number, 547-7510, and called it "very congested" Saturday. The department also noted that the "back route" up the mountain, the Oracle Control Road, is closed until spring.

Art Exhibition

I am part of a photo exhibition!  St Andrews Presbyterian Church has an art gallery in its main sanctuary and decided to mount a show of local photographers.  So a loose bunch of members/amateur photographers got together to exhitit.  Turned out to be a fun thing and must say I learned a lot about the mechanics of exhibiting ones artistic work.  Still second guessing the ones I decided to show but this is it!  They should be up for 8 weeks so come on over. 

MY SHOW

Snickers came for a visit

Snickers came to visit us this week.

 He brought along his faithful guardians, Jay and Verna.  Those brothers just don't get together often enough and we had a fun, albeit too short, family weekend together.  Did a lot of sitting around and catching up but there was time for golf, games, movies, food and playing with Snickers.  I love other people's dogs!!

They came to Arizona from Washington state hoping to catch some warm rays of sunshine but instead they ended up shoveling snow.  They were in Pine, Arizona visiting Verna's family and got caught in a winter storm that brought lots of snow to our high elevations also.  We just got welcome rain here in Tucson--2 inches, in fact.

Storms up on Mt Lemmon.

Costa Hummingbird

I stuck a suction cup hummingbird feeder on my kitchen window over my sink and almost immediately a bright male Costa Hummingbird found it.  How amazing is that!!  We are eye to eye.

This is a pic of a Costa that was hanging around my back yard last fall.  Don't  know if it is the same guy.  His purple throat is brilliant.

Home again

Home again in sunny Tucson.  Definitely warmer in Arizona.  That will teach us to leave home in January.  Here are a few lingering memories of Big Bend and southwest Texas.

The thing about Big Bend that makes it kinda special is the fact that it is not on the way to anything!  You can't just stop in as you are passing by, it is way off the beaten path.  You have to purpose to go there.  Makes it all the more fun when you have made the effort!

One of the iconic views of Big Bend isn't even in the park!  In fact it isn't even in the US.  These are the Del Carmen Mountains that skirt the south side of the Rio Grande (actually east, remember, the river makes a bend to the north here) which means they are in Mexico.  The late afternoon sun turned them into gold.

How about one more look at these Montezuma Quail. 

El Paso

We stopped for two days in El Paso.  Last time we were here for a two day stop on the big bike trip that Jay and Will did across the country in 2007.  We didn't do a lot of sightseeing at that time so thought we'd check out what is here.  Besides, it was warmer here than Big Bend or Davis Mountain.  The scenery not as spectacular or birding as amazing but we found a few interesting sites to visit.  Of course we did the "mission trail" and stopped at three of the restored old Spanish missions.  The one at Socorro is the most impressive as it has completed a extensive renovation and is still a active church.  They all have a rich historical story.
   I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the El Paso Art Museum which has a nice collection of Mexican colonial pieces, while Will checked out the El Paso History Museum.  Stopped to browse through El Paso Saddleblanket which is everything southwestern in an acre of floor space.  Then a little 21st century browsing at Macys!

Montezuma Quail

We stopped for one night near Fort Davis, Texas where we got to see these beauties!  These elusive quail are Montezuma Quail (this one is a colorful male) and although they reside in Arizona, I have never been able to find them before.  I was pretty excited to see them come into a feeder at Davis Mountain Park.  We didn't move a muscle and were able to watch a clutch of them for at least 20 minutes.  There were also bunches of juncos, nuthatches, chipping sparrows, white winged doves but nothing compared to this guy!

This black crested titmouse was also a first for me.  .  .the Montezuma was still the winner!

A glimpse of Big Bend National Park

The Rio Grand River

Big Bend National Park

The holidays are over, a new year is well underway—time to get out in the RV again. We just spent a week at Big Bend National Park in West Texas. It is a gigantic park, true to everything big in Texas. The Big Bend refers to the great southwest Texas U-turn the Rio Grande makes here—defining the park boundary for 118 miles. Contrasting the river’s flow through the Chihuahua Desert, carving steep walled canyons like Boquillas and Saint Elena, are the 8000 ft Chisos Mountains that add to the variety of natural spectacles of Big Bend. There are tons of trails to hike, back roads to explore, birds to find. Unfortunately  we arrived about the time the big cold front that consumed the nation decided to appear so we did more driving instead of hiking. But we managed to get a few challenging treks in. We were trying to dry camp but the cold weather put an extra drain on our power and we woke up one morning with a dead battery in RV. We had to scramble to get the generator started (it needs battery power to start) so that we could restart the furnace! Without battery power we could not even put the slides back in (it would have been an effort to do it manually) so that we could drive to a location with electricity. The next night we moved over to the full hookups sites and made full use of the electricity available. That night the official temperature was 10 degrees! However, the sun has amazing warmth in the desert so all except one cloudy, windy day we were able to do most exploring in relative comfort—albeit with an extra layer of fleece.