An Update From The Road - July 2nd

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An Update From The Road - July 2nd

Hello Everyone! Time really starts to fly when I go back to work. When last we met, I was headed out on my first trip of the season and thought I knew exactly where I would be the following week. Little did I know that torrential downpours would wash out roads and bridges in the northern section of Yellowstone, closing the park indefinitely the day before our arrival. This meant that my tour couldn’t visit the park around which the entire itinerary was developed, leaving me with an unhappy group and four full days to fill. Talk about crisis mode! Thankfully if I’ve learned anything over the last few years it’s that I can only worry about the things I have control over, so I took a deep breath, put a smile on my face and moved forward.

When I was a kid, I played basketball and when I was a teacher I coached our school team. In both instances, I really admired the kids who wanted the ball when there were three seconds left and we were down by two. That was never me, but there was always someone who believed they were the best person to have their hands on the ball when the pressure was on. That’s how I felt on this tour and I’m glad I was there because this was a great group of people who needed someone to give them 110% and try and pull this tour from the ashes. Throw me the ball, coach, I’ve got this.

And I did. I talked with our General Manager and pulled out my maps and got to work on Plan B. It wasn’t the same as the first thing I would tell a group in that particular park is that there is no other Yellowstone. But that didn’t mean that we couldn’t have fun and see some extraordinary things along the way. After all, planning trips to places I’ve never been is literally what I’ve been doing for most of the last few years and you all have seen the results of that firsthand. I sat my group down and made sure that they understood that I felt terrible about the situation but that, going forward, when I was positive and upbeat it wasn’t that I had forgotten what had happened. I also made sure they remembered that their vacation had been ruined, but others had lost their homes and livelihoods.

We ended up staying an extra day in Jackson which gave us an extra day of hiking in Grand Teton National Park. The weather was stunning and everyone enjoyed our bonus day. From there, we detoured around the park and visited Bannock, an old Montana ghost town preserved as a state park. We hiked the Humbug Spires and spent a quiet night in Butte. We spent an extra day in Glacier National Park as well, my favorite place on the planet.

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Snapshots: Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona

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Snapshots: Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona

There’s much more to Winslow, Arizona than just that lyric from The Eagle’s hit song Take It Easy, but they are definitely using it to their benefit. Standing On The Corner Park at 2nd Street and Kinsley Avenue is beautifully done and brings in hundreds of tourists a day to this little town of just 10,000 or so residents. The real highlight of the town, though, is the beautifully restored La Posada Hotel, one of the original Harvey Houses opened in 1930. It is still operating as a hotel and I had the pleasure of dining in the Turquoise Room restaurant during my stay (in town, not in the hotel). There are also some great parks down by the railroad, a nice little brewery and plenty of souvenir shops. I also loved the town’s Visitor Center which is housed in the old Hubbell Warehouse which was a railroad hub for John Lorenzo Hubbell’s western trading posts. The lady working there when I visited took me around and showed me all kinds of neat artifacts from the town’s history. When I was leaving, I thanked her and with a well practiced wink she waved and said “hey, take it easy”. I hope you enjoy these photos from tiny Winslow, Arizona.

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In Focus: Petrified Forest National Park

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In Focus: Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona contains a beautiful collection of petrified wood and also includes the Painted Desert, Blue Mounds and an old stretch of Route 66. It’s a park best explored by car, but you won’t really appreciate it unless you get out and hike out into the wilderness. Petrified Forest was designated a National Monument back in 1906 and was upgraded to a National Park in 1962. I enjoyed my visit to the park and hope you enjoy these photos I took exploring the Petrified Forest.

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This Week on the Road - June 2nd-8th

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This Week on the Road - June 2nd-8th

Hello Everyone! Well, we made it. Shadow Catcher and I have officially made it all the way across the country. This was my 27th drive across the continent and, as far as I know, her first. It was also my longest cross-country drive by far, taking just about 4 months, as opposed to the one to five weeks I normally take. While we didn’t actually see the Pacific Ocean yet, we did make it to the San Francisco Bay which will have to be close enough for the time being. Shadow Catcher has been parked in storage where she will remain for the next few months as I go back to work, but she’s only an hour outside of the city so I hope I can get out and check on her and take her for a spin when I’m in town. She certainly deserves a rest after the last few months, and with California gas prices hovering between $6 and $7 a gallon, it’s very good timing for a break. I’ve spent my week hanging out with old friends and catching up on some much-needed rest and feel very ready and prepared to begin my summer tour season this coming weekend.

When I left you last week, I was headed up to South Lake Tahoe to visit my very good friend Rob and his family. I met Rob in high school, but didn’t really get to know him until after college when we lived together for about a year in a beautiful house in Chevy Chase, Maryland. We have been good friends ever since, and it is always truly a pleasure to spend time with him. I remember visiting him soon after he moved to California and being one of the first in our friend-group to meet his new girlfriend, Tara. I was here for their wedding and have been blessed to watch their children grow from toddlers to ‘tweens. I visited them a few years ago in their vacation home in Tahoe which has since become their full-time home, and I was thrilled to be able to spend a few days there with them this week.

On Thursday I spent a few hours giving Shadow Catcher’s interior a deep-cleaning and reorganizing which it desperately needed. I spent my Friday on a beautiful sandy beach on the shore of Lake Tahoe with Rob and his family. We went kayaking, threw the Frisbee and I even went for a very short dip in the cold, clear water of the lake. That evening we went to cheer on young Nolan as he took to the field in the first playoff game of his little league baseball career. They made a valiant effort, but came up short of a win. Nolan walked and stole a base which was definitely the highlight of the game for us. It was great to just sit and watch the game under the trees as the day came to a close. Saturday was a pretty relaxed day for us all. We went for a few little walks around the lake in the morning and then I got both of the children to show me their musical skills. Mazie plays the violin and Nolan plays the guitar, both of which I just happen to have in the back of my van. I was really impressed by their skills and had a blast jamming with them for a little while in the afternoon. In the evening, Tara cooked up an incredible feast of lasagna, salad and a delightful apple crisp with some homemade ice cream. We stayed up late chatting and drinking beer and listening to some wonderfully nostalgic 1980s movie theme music. It was an awesome few days up in the woods and I’m so very lucky to have such wonderful friends who would take me in for a while.

On a rainy Sunday morning I headed down out of the mountains to Lincoln, California – just north of Sacramento – to catch up with another old friend, Dave Flood. I met Dave when I was a rookie tour leader way back in the summer of 2000. We ran into each other a lot on the road during the next few years, and he was always good for a laugh. I haven’t seen Dave in probably at least 15 years, but we’ve kept in contact on Facebook and talk on the phone every couple of weeks. He’s been trying to get me to come visit him in Lincoln for a many years now, and I was glad to finally be able to take him up on the offer. He made me promise that I would arrive at 11:30am so that I could participate in his weekly ukulele lesson at noon

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This Week on the Road - May 25th-June 1st

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This Week on the Road - May 25th-June 1st

Hello Everyone! First and foremost I wanted to thank you for all of the kind messages and comments you sent this week. Each one made me feel a little bit better and they were all appreciated. I do believe that my bout with Covid is over and while it was not a fun time, so many of my friends are currently infected that at least I didn’t feel as isolated as I could have. The illness was bad, but the loneliness was difficult as well. I’m used to being alone and I’m comfortable with being alone, but I always have the option of going to a bar or a restaurant and at least being among people. With this I wanted to minimize contact as best I could so I got take-out and sat in my room or my van. It’s also been hard not being able to exercise as much as I’m used to, but I have read too much about people pushing themselves through Covid and doing permanent damage to their lungs through scarring and didn’t want to risk it. But it seems to have passed at this point and I am ready to get back to some of my routines which I’m really looking forward to. This won’t be a long newsletter this week as I’ve spent most of my time recuperating and driving, but there have definitely been some cool moments – most notably the two days I spent on the North Rim of Grand Canyon.

When I left off last week, I was recuperating in a hotel room in Flagstaff. Flagstaff was a godsend to me last week, with its walkable downtown, Whole Foods and especially the cool, clean high-desert air. It was also one of the most photogenic towns in all of Arizona, but sadly I didn’t take any photos as I just wasn’t really in the mood. I will return in the future though, and I look forward to getting some photos when I do. I did make it out to Walnut Canyon while I was there, a small National Park site about 20 minutes out of town. It’s a beautiful little park where an oxbow bend in a seasonal river has left an island of land surrounded by a deep valley. This landscape provided a nice protected location for a small Sinagua village site about a thousand years ago. The ruins in the park became a hotbed for looters and tourists in the late 19th century, prompting government protection of the site. Most of the ruins there are reconstructions, but it’s still a lovely canyon to stroll around. Back in Flagstaff I also enjoyed a wander through the old Weatherford Hotel which has been lovingly restored after being threatened with demolition. Despite my illness, I did have a nice stay in Flagstaff.

I left Friday morning and after a short stop at the Navajo Bridge, which is one of the major crossings of the Colorado River in Arizona, I headed on up the Kaibab Plateau to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. I have been to Grand Canyon no less than a hundred times in my life, but always to the more popular South Rim. The South Rim has always been the centerpiece of the park since the railroad arrived over a century ago. The North Rim is higher, averaging almost 9,000’ above sea level, and far less crowded. I spent two days there - taking photos, doing short hikes and just sitting on the rim and reading my book -and I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful, cool, relatively quiet considering it was a holiday weekend and a perfect place to wind up my stay in Arizona. I enjoyed two sunrises and two sunsets and found some wonderful viewpoints along the canyon rim. There seemed to be quite a few rim-to-rim hikers and it is a pretty serious 21 mile hike from the South Rim down and then up the Kaibab Trail. After dark, the talk seemed to all focus on those hikers who hadn’t yet made it out of the canyon. Some made it out later in the night and many finally emerged the following morning admitting they had either underestimated the hike or overestimated their own abilities or, most likely, a combination of the two. It was fascinating to see and listen to and I provided what reassurances I could, knowing all too well how easy it is for hikers to struggle up out of the canyon. All-in-all, I really had a great time up on the North Rim and will definitely return there in the future.

After sunrise and breakfast at the lodge on Sunday, I headed on down the road. After a brief stop at Pipe Springs National Historic Site, I drove on to St. George, Utah to catch up with my friend Jenny. Jenny worked at the same tour company that I did for a number of years and has continued guiding with other companies since. Right now she guides hiking and llama-packing tours, primarily in the Desert Southwest, and is also in the process of building out a small school bus to live in. I haven’t seen her in years and we spent the day catching up and talking about old times and new adventures and about our mutual friends and what they’re up to. I always enjoy her company and it was nice to have someone to chat with for a while. We had some tasty tacos and then went to a trailhead parking lot outside of town where we parked our vehicles side-by-side for the night.

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Snapshots: Navajo Country

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Snapshots: Navajo Country

I’ve spent many months of my life on the Navajo Reservation, more than I’ve spent with any other Native American group. I’ve always found the Navajo People (or the Diné as they refer to themselves) to be warm and welcoming with a wonderful sense of humor. I’ve had the incredible opportunity to lead tours throughout the Navajo lands and to explore on my own as well. Some of these photos are from my recent travels on the Rez and some are old favorites. I hope they show the diversity of the landscape and the splendor of my time in Navajo Country.

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This Week on the Road - May 11th-25th

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This Week on the Road - May 11th-25th

Hello Everyone! I’m sorry I didn’t get this post written last week, but I was feeling a little bit under the weather and decided that rest was probably more important in the moment. As it turned out, it was the beginning of my symptoms for Covid which I managed to catch somewhere in Hawaii and am still wrangling with as I write this today. It’s not been the easiest thing to deal with either while I continued to run my tour in Hawaii or upon returning here to the mainland. I did, thankfully, climb out of the valley from Phoenix pretty quickly and find myself today in Flagstaff which is cool and clean and a good place to recover my strength and move towards the future. I am very thankful to be vaccinated and boosted and to know that this is likely to only be a temporary setback. It is going to tamp down my plans for the next couple of weeks as I need to make a full recovery before I go back to guiding tours in the second week of June, but I feel like I’m going to be alright. I knew this was going to be a risk when I decided to come back to guiding this summer, but it was a risk I was willing to accept and now here I am. All of that being said, Hawaii was still beautiful and I had a wonderful group of people around me to spend my time there with.

I arrived in Honolulu late in the evening on the 12th and was thrilled to wake up on the morning of the 13th in beautiful Waikiki where I went for a walk on the beach and enjoyed my coffee under the shade of a palm tree. I still had work to do that day, but did manage to get out and cruise around a little bit in the afternoon. I met my group in the evening and we enjoyed a hula show at the International Marketplace followed by a nice dinner and a beer at Maui Brewing Company. The following morning, we headed out to Pearl Harbor first thing for a few hours exploring the museum and a brief trip to the USS Arizona Memorial. In the late morning, we headed up to the North Shore of Oahu. I dropped my group off for a swim in beautiful Waimea Bay and then we had some lunch in Pupukeia before heading up and around the coast. We made several photo stops taking in the magnificent coastline and the stunning mountains rising out of the sea. We wound up our day back in Waikiki with another hula show, this one right on the beach and a lovely sunset over the water.

Saturday morning we made a stop in Honolulu to see Iolani Palace, the home of the last king and the last queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. We checked out a handful of the other historic buildings downtown and even the modern state capitol before heading off to the airport for our flight to the Big Island. We arrived in Kona in the early afternoon and then headed south and around the island and made a stop at Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park. This fascinating and beautiful park once served two purposes in early Hawaii. The first was as a retreat for the royal family and the high chiefs and priests of the island. The second was as a place of refuge for people who had broken the sacred laws of Hawaii and also for the wives and children of warriors lost in battle. There is a lot of fascinating Hawaiian history there and it is always worth a stop. From there we made our way around the island to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach and our first look at some of Hawaii’s wonderful honu or green sea turtles. Then we headed on to the small town of Volcano, just outside of Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park, where we would stay for the next two nights. We stayed at the lovely Volcano Inn which is probably my favorite hotel on the whole trip. It’s a small eco-lodge out in the jungle where you go to sleep to the sound of rain on the canopy and a symphony of tree frogs all around you.

We spent the next day exploring the national park with a local guide who brought us to all kinds of cool places and showed us some beautiful parts of the landscape. In the afternoon we checked out some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs and the beautiful Holei Sea Arch on the coast. After a quick stop at the Volcano Winery for my group to sample some of their volcanic grown wines, we had our dinner at the park lodge while the sun went down and the glow from Kilauea became more apparent. I visited this park four times in 2019 and there was no lava to be seen so it was wonderful to be able to see this volcano alive again. We traveled to several viewpoints where we could see the glow of the lava, and then hiked out near the Keanakākoʻi crater where we could actually see the lava flowing and pooling. It was pretty amazing and I’m really glad we went out to see it even if it made for a long day.

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This Week on the Road - May 4th - 11th

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This Week on the Road - May 4th - 11th

Hello Everyone! What a difference a week makes, especially when there are planes involved. I’m writing to you this week from sunny San Francisco, where I’ve been since Sunday as I begin my new guiding job with Incredible Adventures. It’s definitely been a transition, but a good one and one I’m excited about, especially as temperatures climb and the days get longer. Summer’s creeping in and I’m thrilled to be back in the saddle and showing international tourists around our beautiful country. It’s a job that suits me and one that, while stressful and intense, is something I truly enjoy doing. While I’m starting with a new company, my manager from my old company is my manager here and many other guides have come over as well which means there are a lot of familiar faces around. It’s been wonderful to be back in a big city as well and to not have to worry about parking and sleeping and the stresses of van life for a few days. My company has put me up in a nice hotel here for the last few days and that alone has been a sort of vacation for me. On another note, I found it amusing that while filling out my paperwork I have been writing the year as 2021 and felt surprised yesterday to look down and remember it is actually 2022. I guess my mind has been focused on other things since the New Year. All in all, it’s been a great week and while this will be a short recap this week, I want to keep my newsletter coming out as regularly as possible through the coming work season. It will be difficult at times because this job is pretty full on and runs seven days a week, but I will do my best.

When I wrote this post last week, I was in tiny Camp Verde and had a very quiet night when I wrapped it up. Thursday morning I was up early and off to Prescott which was less than an hour away. I had a lot of things I needed to get done when I got there – unexciting things like laundry and a tire rotation, but things which were quite necessary. I did manage to spend a few hours in the Sharlot Hall Museum, a central museum complex named for the lady who founded it. It was a fascinating place which included several original town buildings and a few purpose-built exhibit halls. It was a good day to be there as there were several school groups at the museum on field trips so there were interpretive volunteers stationed in several of the historic buildings around the museum. In the evening, I went for a nice prime rib dinner to celebrate a successful winter and spring on the road and to look ahead to a great summer back at work. Then I headed downtown to Whiskey Row, once a notorious Old West entertainment district and now just a fun stretch of bars and restaurants. Prescott seemed to have a nice mix of students, hippies and cowboys and there were plenty of people out enjoying themselves on a Thursday evening. I especially enjoyed the open-mic night at the Birdcage and the history of The Palace, Arizona’s oldest standing saloon which once served the likes of Doc Hollywood and the Earp brothers.

I spent Friday morning packing for my flight and cleaning my van – both of which were easier in the cool Prescott morning at 5000’ than they would be in lower and warmer elevations. Around noon I headed over to visit a very old friend of mine who was finishing up his work week at a popular bronze sculpture workshop there in town. I met Jefferson back in 1992 between my junior and senior years in high school when I worked at a summer camp in Virginia. He was in his twenties at that point and had been working at the camp for several summers and was one of the camp rangers. It was my first summer there (of two) and I helped run a high ropes course that summer. It was quite a formative experience in my life and I still remember how much I enjoyed working there and looking up to Jefferson (who we knew as “Slim” back then). He admitted when I saw him that he didn’t really remember me, but when I showed him a picture of me at 16 he remembered that guy and we could certainly reminisce about mutual acquaintances from camp. He showed me around the shop and explained the process of creating the bronze sculptures they were working on. The artists create the molds, but when they are cast they are far from a finished product. Jefferson’s shop assembles the different pieces, touches them up, grinds and polishes them and then adds color and texture using chemicals, fire and specialized tools. It was quite a fascinating process and one I had no idea was so complicated. The finished products they were turning out were magnificent and their shop is apparently in very high demand which is always a good thing.

Jefferson knocked off for the week and we headed over to Bill’s Pizza on the main courthouse square for a delicious pie and a long conversation. When we finished our lunch, he invited me out for a hike and we headed up to the beautiful granite mountains outside of town where we embarked on a pleasant 3 mile loop through the woods. Jefferson knew a lot about the plants and trees and insects and I appreciated learning from him as we went as we continued to catch up on the thirty years since we last met. After the sun went down, he invited me to spend the night at his place and have dinner with him and his partner, Colette. They had a lovely home and we sat up chatting about all kinds of things into the night.

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This Week on the Road - April 28th-May 4th

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This Week on the Road - April 28th-May 4th

Hello Everyone! It’s hard to believe it’s May, but it definitely is. Even in the middle of the desert, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing and the days are getting longer and longer. That means it’s almost time for me to go back to work so I can fund these adventures and I’m really looking forward to being back out there guiding tours for a while. That being said, I am hoping to really enjoy these last few days of freedom because guiding is pretty full-on and I know it’s going to be a busy summer. Yesterday was my 5 Year “Vanniversary”, marking five years since I bought Shadow Catcher up in Lansing, Michigan and began this wonderful adventure. We’ve seen good times and bad, but it was definitely the best purchase I’ve ever made and the adventures we’ve had together have been pretty epic. This week has brought us north into central Arizona where I’ve found cooler weather, beautiful landscapes, cute towns and endless miles of hiking trails. It’s really been exactly what I needed and it’s been a pretty great week out here and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

My hotel night last week was very relaxing and refreshing and I felt significantly better when I headed off to the Diamondbacks’ baseball game Wednesday afternoon at Chase Field. I was a little surprised that the cheapest seats in the stadium were $29, higher than most ballparks, but on the other hand I found free parking nearby and they had inexpensive hot dogs and corn dogs, so it all worked out in the end. The stadium was beautiful and stayed pretty cool as long as you found a seat in the shade. It does have a retractable roof which I guess they save for even hotter days (it got up to about 97° while I was there for the afternoon game). I got a kick out of knowing my uncle and cousin were at a Milwaukee Brewers game this week and they had to close their roof because it was snowing. It was not an action packed game, but the Diamondbacks did pull out a win for their hometown fans. They were playing the L.A. Dodgers and there were a LOT of Dodgers fans there as well. After the game I went and enjoyed a cocktail at Bikini’s, a Phoenix Tiki institution which has been slinging Mai Tais since 1947. It was a nice enough place to stop in for an afternoon drink and then I stopped into Tombstone Brewery for an excellent session IPA and found a nice corner to sip my beer and read my book for a while before calling it a night.

Thursday morning I headed over to tour the Arizona State Capitol, or more accurately the State Capitol Museum. Much like Louisiana and Florida, Arizona has a horrendous 1970s era capitol building, but thankfully, also like those other states, they hung onto their original capitol building and opened it as a museum. The museum had a fascinating display of information and artifacts from the USS Arizona which was sunk in Pearl Harbor in 1941. They had a nice tribute to Sandra Day O’Connor who, while born in Texas, served much of her career in Arizona. They had the phone on display on which O’Connor got the call from Ronald Reagan conveying news of her nomination to be our first female Supreme Court Justice. I was impressed by their lengthy exhibit on Arizona’s World War II Japanese internment camps. I also loved the Arizona Model Railroaders’ room which is a work in progress but had trains pulling through several Arizona towns as they wound their way around multiple levels of tracks. There was also some beautiful Arizona art on display and several smaller exhibits and I found the whole place a very worthwhile visit. Outside of the Capitol are several war memorials which were all beautifully done. When I had finished my visit, I took my book and sat under a nice shade tree and read for a while. Then I headed south of downtown to the home of my old college buddy, John Bushko, who I haven’t seen in 25 years. It was wonderful to meet his wife and children and catch up on all that he’s been up to in the interim. We have a lot of overlap in our Penn State friend circles, so it was fun to hear and to share stories about our mutual friends. They made an absolutely delicious dinner to share with me and we sat out by his pool swapping stories into the night. They definitely left me with a different appreciation of Phoenix and another night in a cool bed was welcome and greatly appreciated.

We were all up early on Friday and enjoyed some coffee and breakfast in between John’s early morning meetings (he works with a lot of people on the east coast, so his day workday starts at 6am). I said my goodbyes around 9 as I wanted to get out of town before the day heated up too much. I headed east through Apache Junction and Superior to Globe, an old mining community with a cute historic downtown and a few great ghost signs on the sides of their buildings. Globe’s old courthouse has been converted into a lovely art gallery and they also had a cool old train engine in one of their local parks. I was there for about an hour and then headed up the hill to Tonto National Monument, an old Sinagua Indian ruin in the middle of Tonto National Forest.

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Snapshots: Gallup - Murals and Old Signs on Historic Route 66

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Snapshots: Gallup - Murals and Old Signs on Historic Route 66

Gallup got its start as a railroad town on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later incorporated into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad) and was named after the local paymaster, David Gallup. The town was incorporated in 1881 and became the county seat of McKinley County 20 years later. Coal mining would soon become Gallup’s major industry and it was even known as “Carbon City” for a time. Gallup would fall along the path of Route 66 on its way from Chicago to L.A. and even made it into the popular song we all know about the Mother Road. Because of Gallup’s location near the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni reservations, trading posts sprung up along the highway where tourists could buy jewelry, rugs, fetishes and prized Kachina dolls. Today Gallup is home to around 20,000 people and is a wonderful melting pot of Anglo, Native American and Hispanic cultures. In 2013, Rand McNally named Gallup “America’s Most Patriotic City”. I had a great time in Gallup, poking around the trading posts and admiring some of the vintage murals and signs. It was another great town for me to get my kicks on Route 66. I hope you enjoy these photos from historic downtown Gallup.

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This Week on the Road - April 21st-27th

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This Week on the Road - April 21st-27th

Hello Everyone! It is hot, hot, hot here in Southern Arizona – too hot in fact. Yesterday’s temperature hit 100° Fahrenheit in Phoenix and it has been above 90 for most of the week. It’s wonderfully pleasant in the mornings and the late evenings, but the days have just been too hot and my productivity, enjoyment and morale have all suffered as a result. I spent most of the last week in Tucson for various reasons, but don’t feel as though I accomplished much. I was thrilled to finally get out to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument this week, but when I got there I ended up scouting out some shade to sit in until the sun started going down. I decided yesterday that I will throw in the towel and head north to higher elevations. I’m in my last couple of weeks of freedom before I head back to work for the summer and I want to enjoy them instead of suffering through them. I will stay in Arizona for now, but I will not get to see all of the places I wanted to at these low elevations. I’m sure this part of the country will be quite pleasant in December when I return. That all being said, I did have some nice experiences this week which I am happy to share with you all, but this will be a shorter newsletter than usual.

When I left off last week, I had only just arrived in Tucson and had been out exploring the wonders of Saguaro National Park. When I finished my hikes out there, I stopped off to get a wonderfully refreshing Eegee, an interesting brand of smoothie found only in Tucson. I also got my first of two “Sonoran Dogs” - bacon wrapped hot dogs with a southwestern array of toppings. The one I got on Wednesday was from El Guero Canelo and it was delicious, but I preferred the one I got at BK’s later in the week.

I spent much of Thursday in the library but headed out to the opening day of the Pima County Fair in the late afternoon. It was a cute midsized fair with plenty of rides and games and places to eat. I enjoyed the sea lion show and the pig races and, of course, taking photos of the wildly colorful carnival. The food was terribly overpriced even by fair standards in my opinion, so I settled for a funnel cake which was sadly quite small and not very fresh for my $11. It was definitely fun to be there, though, and I have really missed these types of events. I had a couple of beers and saw some live music, but called it a night pretty early.

On Friday I headed down into Old Town Tucson to see what it had to offer. I started my visit at the old Presidio, which is a re-creation of the fort that once stood high above the river to protect the area. I was thrilled to get a guided tour of the Presidio by Raul, a lifelong Tucson resident, now retired, who was both pleasant and knowledgeable. I found it fascinating that the man in charge of building many of the old Spanish forts, which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Tucson along New Spain’s northern frontier, was an Irishman named Hugo O’Connor who had fled religious persecution and joined his fellow Catholics in Spain. I also enjoyed reading about Jose de Urrea, one of Tucson’s most famous native sons. He joined the Spanish army in 1807, but later joined the Mexican call for independence. He went on to fight for Mexico against the Texans in their war for independence, and I first heard his name at Goliad in Texas, which I visited right before the pandemic sent me home. He later served as governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, but later returned to the military to fight against future U.S. president Zachary Taylor in the Mexican-American War. His was definitely an interesting story, one of many I found in the small but informative Presidio.

From there, I went just up the street to the old courthouse, a beautiful building which now houses the main visitor center for the city. Upstairs there is a small museum which looks at some of the crime and justice aspects of Tucson history. I was intrigued by the Arizona Supreme Court case of Ann Jordan and Henry Oyama which challenged the state’s interracial marriage policy. After so much time in the Deep South, it’s easy to forget that these laws were not simply Black and White. Oyama was an American-born World War II veteran with a master’s degree from the University of Arizona, but his Japanese ancestry prohibited him from marrying Ms. Jordan, who was White. The courthouse was also the site of the trial of Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger, one of America’s most infamous bank robbers…

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Snapshots: Rio Grande del Norte National Monument

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Snapshots: Rio Grande del Norte National Monument

Rio Grande del Norte is one of our more recent National Monuments, having been designated as such in 2013. It protects the confluence of the Red River and the Rio Grande which are both designated Wild and Scenic Rivers. Both gorges are gorgeous and the point of land above the confluence, called simply El Punto, provides amazing views from high above the two rivers. I hiked the Little Arsenic Trail while I was there, which brought me down to the Rio Grande and led me straight to the confluence. It was one of the better hikes I did during my stay in New Mexico and was very rewarding around every turn. I spent the night at the campground on the canyon rim and enjoyed a beautiful sunset in the evening and a magical sunrise the following morning. In between, the stars were spectacular. I debated whether to drive out to this park as it was somewhat out of the way, but I’m sure glad I did as it is stunning from end to end. If you’re ever in the area, you should as well. I hope you enjoy these photos from beautiful Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.

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