May 2018 – Tales From The Hive

Up, Up and Away (or do I have a career as a balloon pilot?)

While in Sedona, we went for a balloon ride. I have wanted to do this for a long while and finally justified the expense to myself. Our younger daughter rode in a balloon when she was 13 because her grandfather got her a balloon ride gift. Here I am at 60, letting myself do it.

You get to see the sun rise from the balloon!

It is a full morning experience, where you get picked up at 5:15 am, ride out to the launch site, watch the balloon and basket get unloaded and filled, ride for 90 ish minutes, land, then have breakfast (champagne, OJ, apple fritters and fruit.) Then the balloons get deflated and put away, everything gets loaded again, and we get dropped off at our car.

Filling up the ballon with the basket on the side still.

The ride was remarkable. We floated above the buttes, mesas and red rocks with amazing views in all directions. We saw the sun rise. We saw the top of some of the mesas we hiked up. There are other balloons flying. Mostly it is silent except when the burner is turned on. It felt magical enough that I could do this every day and not get tired of it (hence the new career direction.) Our pilot was probably in his early 70’s and had been flying for over 20 years. He was a fountain of ballooning knowledge and shared freely. The balloons launch from a specific spot but where you land is due to winds that day, so there are chase vehicles.

One of the many views from up high in the sky!

Typically other balloons fly at the same time because they all fly when the weather and winds are best.

This is what you see when you look up (when the burner is on.) This is why they tell you to wear a hat!

The fancy table for the after ballooning breakfast. These are the apple fritter and fruit plates.

I am looking pretty happy. It is because of the ride, not at all due to the mimosa!

While in this area we hiked to Cathedral Rock, Brims Mesa, Devil’s Bridge , Bell Rock and did the Courtyard Butte loop. You can hike around in the desert and stay on relatively flat trails, or you can hike up various mesas and buttes. They were all gorgeous. Cathedral Rock, Brim’s Mesa and Bell Rock had the added pleasure of astounding views from the top. We did so much hiking that I had to ask for an afternoon off from my husband after 3 or 4 days!

Looking back while hiking/scrambling up Cathedral Rock. In the middle you see a basket cairn. I had never seen a cairn like this before Sedona. So organized and sturdy!

Devil’s Bridge was so special because you not only hike to a natural rock bridge/arch, but you can walk on top of it and across it when you get there (it is about 5 feet wide at a minimum). When we first arrived, there was a yogi doing downward facing dog. He then attempted a head stand but kind of changed his mind in the middle. There is also an amazing view if you hike to the bottom of the arch and walk through it. You see the arch and the landscape behind it.

On top of Devil’s bridge (about 5 feet across).

You can also hike beneath the arch and get a visual looking through it. Most people did not do this but we were really happy we did.

My obsession to visit every national park, monument, recreation area, etc. led us to our next stop on the way to Albuquerque. We have an annual national park pass and have definitely gotten the best deal in town with it. For most, it costs $80 annually, and to get into a park, monument or recreation area usually costs between $10-20. We were surprised to notice how many of these parks there are!

The Petrified Forest National Park is in a desert painted with lots of colors, and strewn with petrified wood. Petrified wood ranges from white to gold to reds to purples, and looks like stone. There is even a natural bridge made from a giant tree that was under water for many years before it appeared again.

It looks like this has been cut up but the petrification process actually did this.

We have been in Albuquerque for about 2 weeks and got to spend the first few days with Ilana and her boyfriend, Josh. I even got pfankuchen (a special treat – german roll up pancakes by Chris) for breakfast on Mother’s Day before they left for their adventures in Alaska.

Awe inspiring!

We use words like awesome, vast, and enormous all the time. Well, the 10 days we spent traveling from Tucson to the Sedona area and then to Albuquerque put an entirely new spin on those words. Although we knew the Sedona area was not really an option for us as a home, we wanted to see the red rocks, the mesas and buttes, and were lucky to be able to take a side trip to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon.

On our way, we visited Jerome, an old mining town nestled into the side of a mountain. They take their history seriously here. There is a façade of an old building that hides a glass artist’s studio, and an old jail that slid over 200 feet and still stands. Many buildings are said to be haunted and we had lunch at Haunted Hamurger (no nightmares that evening). There are tons of stairs that connect homes like we saw in Bisbee, lots of kitsch, shops, galleries, bars, and restaurants.

Jerome is right near Tuzigoot National Monument, which besides indulging my new obsession with visiting national parks, recreation areas and monuments, was our first view of pueblo ruins (from 900-1300 AD). The pueblo is on a hilltop, was built by the Sinagua people who were farmers and artists who traded with other Native Americans hundreds of miles away. When they were living at the pueblo, there was more water. They had sophisticated farming methods.

The Tuzigoot people used these stones to grind flour from mesquite.

In all of the historic communities we saw, there used to be much more water, and so I learned something new on our way from Tucson to Sedona. Last fall and winter were relatively dry in many places in the Southwest, so fire restrictions, sometimes rated severe, are everywhere. This means no wood or charcoal fires, and as one sign indicated “Fire Restrictions – No Shooting.” I am such a midwest/northeast city person that Chris had to explain why!

We actually saw our first rain for a couple of months when we got to the Sedona area. It rained on and off much of the next day, so we took it easy in the morning, and visited an amazing building, Chapel of the Holy Cross. The Chapel of the Holy Cross is Catholic, built into the mesa, and designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. When I walked in, I was struck by the design similarities to Temple Sinai in Rochester. The side walls are slightly tipped towards the center, and the back wall is glass with an inspiring view.

We did spend the rest of the day shopping and eating , at Tlaquepaque (t-lac-apaca) Arts and Crafts Village – an authentic Mexican village (except for the modern stores). I think I might actually like shopping if all malls looked like this. On the way back to our AirB&B, we stopped and I tasted wine at Page Springs Winery.

About an hour from Flagstaff (outside of Winslow, AZ – any songs come to mind?) is a meteor crater that is 50,000 years old. Although it is not a national park (so I could not indulge my current obsession here), it is nearly one mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 550 feet deep. Because the local winds swirl and lift any accumulating dust out, it does not get filled in. You can tour the site and get lots of great scientific information.

On my own one day when Chris was otherwise engaged, I hiked at Fay Canyon, had lunch at a paleo restaurant, did a yoga class in Flagstaff, and had dinner at Criollo. Never fear, the hike was easy and well populated. That night was First Friday in Flagstaff, so there were people and music everywhere, open galleries, and an outdoor creperie.

The first sign one sees on the way into Fay Canyon. Seriously, who feeds bears?

Fay Canyon from the beginning of the hike

Flagstaff had another great things to offer including one of the best signs I have ever seen about driving drunk. “Drive hammered, get nailed.” True that.

From Flagstaff one day, after breakfast at the tasty and funky retro Tourist Home Café and Market, we went to the Grand Canyon and oh my, is it grand! We biked across the south rim for 5-6 hours stopping along the way. OMG. Awesome. Vast. My mouth nearly hit the ground at the first view point and I continued to truly be in awe the whole day. I have traveled a lot and seen a lot of neat places, but the canyon is indescribable. On our way home that night, in a very dark place, we pulled over to see the stars. Without light, on a clear night, there were so many that it took your breath away.

First view of the canyon – It is called the Grand Canyon for good reason!

The trail we want to hike on our next trip here.

On another day, we went to see two national monuments, Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well. These monuments preserve and show off cliff dwellings, again built by the Sinagua people. At the castle, there was a man playing music on a traditional flute which made the walk to see the dwellings kind of magical. We also got to eat traditional frybread on our way out, kind of like fried dough but lighter.

At Montezuma Well, we saw a large limestone sinkhole which is always full due to a natural spring, with cliff dwellings on the side. This pueblo built 7 miles of irrigation canals from the spring to their fields.

Part of a seven mile irrigation canal built by the Sinagua over 900 years ago.

We did a balloon ride, a bunch of really great amazing hikes near Sedona, and visited the Petrified Forest National Park (which includes the painted desert) but that’ll be the topic of my next post.

It’s Springtime in Tucson

On our four mile walk through the East Saguaro National Park yesterday, I was struck by how much the desert was blooming. Not that it hadn’t been blooming before, but there are even more flowers now that it’s warmed up a little bit.

It’s been really interesting seeing Tucson green-up during March and April. When one is up on a hill or mountain overlooking the valley, the formerly brown and dark olive colors have changed to be uniformly green. During this time the bougainvillea and palo verde have bloomed like mad, as have some barrel cacti, other early cacti, and all types of agave.

So it was really neat to see all the other flowers blooming now that the heat has arrived and made things comfortable (for me and the cacti at least). During the walk, I decided to take pictures of all the different flowering plants. This post is about those flowers I saw during our 4 mile, 98 degree hike (I loved it, but my love – she melted a bit).

I’m going to start with the trees that we saw. No palo verdes are shown here, but those are still blooming all around Tucson dropping their piles of compelling yellow flowers everywhere.

The prickly pear and cholla (choy-ah) are blooming finally. The prickly pear run from pink to light yellow, including a light lemon color. The cholla flowers are mostly a deep red with hints of black, or a bright yellow. Some of the cholla don’t appear to flower but drop new growths onto the ground which then may take root. I think most of the time it doesn’t work out that way; the “nurseries” can be full of dead Cholla babies (to go full Grimm).

There are also a wide assortment of small flowers low to the ground. Some of them are only one quarter inch wide. So cute!

There’s also this special one that appears to be related to tobacco (due to the leaf and flower shape). What’s tobacco doing in the Sonoran desert?

The fairy dusters are long gone, but the other shrubs are just starting out. This included one that has pale brown flowers that look totally fake.

Honorable mention goes to the kings and queens of the dessert; the saguaros that are just getting started on their blooms. Also, the hedgehog and pincushion cacti are in various stages of starting and ending.

Last but not least are some photos of the trails we hiked on. I chose these due to the amount of erosion which helps show the trail. Most of the trail was flat and in full sun.

Beth dumped the rest of her water bottle about 3/4 of the way through the hike because the water become too warm for her. It wasn’t boiling (yet) but it was a perfect tea sipping temperature.

After over 2 weeks of 90+ Fahrenheit (33+ Celsius), the desert appears to have decided spring has sprung