Usery Mountain Regional Park, Mesa AZ and a duck toller visit!

March 18-19, 2016

Say what you will about Facebook, it can be an excellent meeting place for people with similar interests, as it proved to be in the present case. This wonderful regional park was suggested to us by my Fb friend Carole McCollum, from our online Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever group.  Carole, her husband, and their toller Baron are winter residents of Mesa AZ.  Our schedules happen to mesh and we arranged to camp at the park nearest to their winter home and had a great visit with Carole, her friend Joanna from Thunder Bay Ontario,  and, of course, Baron!

The park is in the Sonoran desert, on the edge of Mesa, which is part of the greater Phoenix area.  A very busy place and we were lucky to get a campsite!  And one with a fabulous view of Usery Mountain at sunset!  The park is full of cacti, among them tall, proud and plentiful, the Sonoran desert Saguaro.

Our view, wow!

Some Saguaro have a personality...

 The desert is now blooming and it is a great joy to (finally...) see some colour!

Ocotillo in bloom

The cuddly sounding teddy bear cholla

Many birds and reptiles make their home at Usery Park

A wren...not too sure which type

A stern looking lizard, again, unsure of type

 A great hike with Carole, Joanna and Baron

 Smiles all around back at the rig

So lovely to have a toller nearby again! 

  

Thanks again Carole for your visit, your beautiful painting of the mountain and all of the wonderful fruit from your trees (the gin and tonics are much improved with your "wemons" we enjoyed a grapefruit this morning for breakfast and are looking forward to your oranges!) 

On our way to the campground we stopped at the Mesa Marketplace Swap Meet, an enormous weekend shopping marketplace with 1500 vendors.  Dave and I split up for a couple of hours and regrouped to compare purchases.  Tire protectors (to guard against that unrelenting sun)  for the rig and some tools for Dave, used books (some by the Arizona/New Mexico recommended mystery writer Tony Hillerman who sets his novels in this area) , a hand-painted T-shirt with cacti and the ubiquitous desert quail and a hand-painted purse with whimsical dogs for me.  A great success! (...)

Something I don't think you can buy inCanada

For sale at the market, but I still haven't seen MY bear...

Usery Park has a world class archery range, with miles of trails, targets of different types including 3D.  Unfortunately, Dave did not have any of his bows and none are available to rent.  We had to content ourselves with walking through the area...

 

3D deer target

Saguaro are definitely NOT official targets...

From Usery Park, we are heading North, towards Sedona and the Grand Canyon!  We have now officially turned the corner and are heading towards home.

Roper Lake State Park and some Shelburners!

March 14-17, 2016

It was time to do a little business such as laundry, banking, a haircut, cleaning and vacuuming the rig (using a powerful car wash vacuum cleaner to get rid of some of that desert dust!) and we used this lovely smallish park on a smallish lake (read, reservoir) as our base.  We had a few pleasant walks, saw a few birds and, when coming back from our errands one evening met up with a group of very friendly people, two of whom, Gus and Ann Kaufman, are summer Shelburne, NS residents!!!  Wow, what an incredible coincidence as we pulled into our campsite and Gus is pointing at his Nova Scotia T-shirt! (and later showed off his Boxing Rock shirt, yeah!)   Well, this called for a couple of get-togethers  and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and our new friends.

 The area is known as the Alpine region of the Sonoran desert and  one can see why, with the chalets on the lake, framed by the snow-covered peaks of Mount Graham.

View of our campground from the top of a nearby Mesa

 

Pretty Roper lake

One of many red-winged blackbirds who make Roper Lake Park their home

And a motley crew of Arizonians, Wisconsinians (?) and Gus and Ann on the right from Wisconsin  and Shelburners, Nova Scotia, during part of the summer.  See you guys in August!

Solo morning hike at Kartchner Caverns State Park

March 13, 2016

After our various perambulations (!) in the last couple of days, Dave was in no mood to "climb another friggin' mountain"  so I went solo in the early-ish morning and had a great 3+ mile hike.  

As usual, there were warnings about evil creatures on the trail.... a new one, the Gila monster (yikes!), the only venomous lizard in AZ.... 

  
Luckily, this image is from Google...

Here too, spring is in evidence, and the desert is beginning to bloom!

It is always satisfying to get to the top and see the view...

Tiny tiny State Park at about the middle of the pic

Oh yeah, I did come across this giant ground sloth....but it looked pretty friendly!

Saguaro National Park, Tucson AZ

March 12, 2016

When one thinks of desert vegetation, one instantly conjures up a cactus, more specifically, the picture we all have in our minds is of the Saguaro cactus (pronounced sa-wa-ro).  These cacti are loyal and exclusive citizens of the Sonoran desert, in Arizona and Mexico, while a few plants stray as far as Eastern California.  

The Saguaro National Park was created in 1933 to help preserve this symbol of the American South West.

Spring is coming to the desert and things are beginning to bloom!

Other species of cacti such as this blooming barrel cactus are found in the Saguaro National Park 

 

The Park has an 8-mile driving loop threading its way through the stands of Saguaro.
 

Saguaro are a very slow growing cactus, with a potential lifespan of 150-200 years.  They might be 1.5" tall after 10 years.  The branches or arms may begin to grow at about age 75 years!  These arms generally bend upwards and can be as numerous as 25!  Of course, there is always the exception to the rule as shown below...with a contrarian whose arms are pointing downwards...

Saguaro can be quite the desert giants, attaining a height of up to 40-60 feet. When rain is plentiful and the saguaro is fully hydrated it can weigh between 3200-4800 pounds.

There was some concern over the last several decades about the diminishing population of Saguaro in the Park.  Theories to explain this ranged from weather (too many long lasting frosts), theft (yes, theft!), proximity to urban development and overgrazing within park limits.  Conservation measures have been taken such as disallowing access to farm animals and micro-chipping cacti to deter theft...

We left the Park as the sun was just beginning its descent and were safely tucked in at our campground by the time it was fully dark.  A very busy day in the desert!

Pima Air and Space Museum, Tucson, AZ and a bonus Air Show!

March 12, 2016

Today's day trip from Kartchner Caverns State Park took us into the greater Tucson area.  We were keen to see the Air and Space Museum and the nearby US Air Force base's Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG).  

We toured the vast Air and Space Museum for several hours, via a tram for the large outdoor display area, and walked through the five indoor hangar and display buildings.  I attended a brief lecture about World War II Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs) delivered by a young woman student pilot and toured the display about "women in the air", which described the many obstacles faced by women in this field and the many advances and accomplishments.  There was also a display of the various uniforms worn by women in the air, both pilots and flight attendants.  Particularly colourful were the 60s flight attendant uniforms...

The tram guide was incredibly knowledgeable about aircraft, describing without missing a beat, over 100 planes on our one-hour tour.  Phew! 

The aircraft in this privately run museum range from the tiny...

World Record holder Bumblebee, smallest prop plane at 6' long!

World's smallest jet aircraft

 

to some enormous cargo planes.  The collection includes dozens of military aircraft as well as commercial airliners, helicopters, a replica of the Wright's Brothers plane and modern Mach 4 planes.  Impressive!  Here is s small sample I selected for their telling graphics:

and an acrobatics plane from the US Navy's Blue Angel team: 

We would very much have liked to tour the AMARG described above, but the base was closed for touring (bad news) because of an Air Show (good news!).  We craned our necks and caught the US Air Force's Thunderbirds Acrobatic team's performance.  Here they are flying in tight formation of four or five aircraft.  Wow!

As we left the area and made our way to our next stop, our GPS took us along the road beside the AMARG.  Miles of aircraft of all sizes and shapes parked in a huge area, awaiting their next service call.  This, followed by acres of spare parts, the air version of an enormous auto wreckers yard!