Wasson Peak

A modest 4687 feet gains Wassan Peak the title of the highest peak in the Tucson Mountains, which are partially protected by Saguaro National Park West. The walk to the summit is about seven miles or so, easy to follow, and popular. Lots of good desert plants and birds and a nice view at the end. I might suggest going during the week if possible. It's worth the trip out there because you can also visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and see the raptor presentation. 




Unfortunately, my long-suffering camera is fading fast. The lens doesn't communicate with the camera body and I'm not sure the light sensor is quite right. I can usually finagle a few good shots out of it. Sometimes I get weird ones like this above, which is pretty cool.

Crested saguaro are uncommon. Desert four-leaf clovers.

Old mine shaft for what I think was the Gould mine...

Grand Canyon to Ban the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles

The Grand Canyon is set to discontinue sales of plastic water bottles within the park. Shaun McKinnon of the Arizona Republic explains the whole decision and history here. Plastic water bottles account for 20% of the overall waste at the Grand Canyon and 30% of the recyclable material. It's good that people are getting the message that they need to drink when they visit the Canyon, but the Grand Canyon is a fragile environment that undergoes heavy traffic. Limiting the number of plastic water bottles in the park helps keep trails clean, animals safe, and the views unmarred. All national parks are set to eliminate sales of water bottles within park boundaries, but each park is free to establish its own time and method for getting the bottles out. The Park Service plans to sell refillable bottles and provide water stations so visitors can still stay hydrated.

Privatization Threatens an Arizona National Forest

Tonto National Forest stretches from southeast of Phoenix to far in to the Northeast near Payson. Adventure Journal posted an article today about the privatization taking place in Tonto National Forest's Payson District. Basically, the NPS is selling out to private companies who will manage tourism. The problem is that, unlike the NPS, those private companies can charge what they want. They can charge whatever admission fees they want, set permit prices, even charge for parking! Handing over our federally funded land to private contractors who can make profits on land our tax money pays for is nothing but government sanctioned highway robbery on public land.

The article on A.J. explains the situation very well. Read it here - Privatization Threatens an Arizona National Park. It's written by Kitty Benzar of High Country News and the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition.

Here's few thoughts that Benzar doesn't mention. My first reaction to hearing the threat of private fees was "Screw 'em! I'll sneak in or go somewhere else!" I'm not going to get shaken down for some bullshit fees by corporate thugs on my way into a NATIONAL forest and I'm sure I'm not alone. Unlike the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, I don't completely object to small, moderate fees that help pay for the upkeep of the land and I think most people will pay them just to stay on the right side of the law. It's fair that if you use the parks, you help fund them a little more than folks who don't use them. But I'm not bowing to private companies if I want to use land my tax money pays for and shame on anyone who tries to use the law to force our money into private hands in order to access PUBLIC land.

Fee avoidance will likely hurt the visitation numbers in TNF's Payson district and will send people like me to Apache-Sitgreaves NF, Coronado NF, or others, putting more stress on the land in those forests. I don't encourage using the land illegally, as that opens the door for litter, fire danger, and other abuses, but if you can find a way around corporate fees, I simply ask you show the forest all the respect you would have had you paid. Whatever you do, don't pay private fees to use national land. Our best chance of squashing this stupid idea is to make it unprofitable to the contracted companies.

Benzar provides the following contact information in her article: Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell at RecreationFees@fs.fed.us. Please take a moment to write to Mr. Tidwell and tell him that under no circumstances will you accept private park fees in NATIONAL Forests.

Look What I've Got....

Yessir! Still several months away, but I sure am excited. The Grand Canyon Rim to Rim is a bucket list kind of hike. I've been in Arizona for nearly four years; I've been waiting a long time for this one. Man, I'm wicked stoked...

A Quieter Canyon

The National Park Service has an interesting plan to increase flights over the Grand Canyon (that right, increase flights), while making the Canyon quieter overall. The plan calls for an end to non-tourist flights over the Canyon and the implementation of noise reducing technologies on low flying aircraft over the next ten years. Read more details here.

This is just another chapter in the ongoing saga in our National Parks' quest to balance recreation and conservation. Animals will certainly benefit from the quieter, more natural environment and hikers, who have often griped about the intrusion of noisy aircraft into their backcountry solitude, will appreciate it too.

Of course, the air tour companies and their lobbyists are upset. Ask the greedy bastards to make less noise with their aircraft and they start making more noise with their mouths. They're complaining about regulation, saying that it is unfair and will negatively affect their profits. This A.P. article cites the president of the United States Air Tours Association here:

"Steve Bassett, president of the United States Air Tour Association, said setting the goal at more than 50 percent is "unconscionable" and would drive the industry out of business."

Interestingly enough, a search for the United States Air Tour Association doesn't find a website for the USATA. The first link is a law suit they filed against the FAA, in which the court rejected the USATA's case. You should read the outlandish stuff they claim, such as their assertion that only half the Grand Canyon's visitors see the Canyon on foot. 

If air tours lose some money because of this noise regulation, too bad. The way I see it, they're lucky to make a profit off of a National Park in the first place. It's not just their land, it's ours. Parks should be run in such a way as to make them as pleasurable as possible for the largest number of people while keeping a close eye on the environmental impacts of recreation; those who wish to profit off parks do so at their own risk, knowing that environmental and recreational regulations will occur differently than with private land. They have no greater claim to the Grand Canyon skies than the people and animals on the ground.

I've taken a helicopter tour of the Canyon and it was terrific, but it wouldn't be any worse in a quieter helicopter.

Lake Pleasant

If you take I-17 take I-17 North out of Phoenix and head west on the Carefree Highway, you'll soon pass signs for Lake Pleasant Regional Park. Lake Pleasant is Arizona's second largest lake. The largest lake is Theodore Roosevelt Lake, if you exclude the lakes Arizona shares with neighbors.

Though I'm endlessly impressed by the desert and Arizona's landscapes, I have to say, Lake Pleasant doesn't do it for me. Originally formed with the creation of the Waddell Dam in 1973, a second dam, creatively named the New Waddell Dam, was constructed in 1993 and vastly expanded the size of the lake.  The water comes from the Agua Fria River and is also brought in by the Central Arizona Project Aqueduct from the Colorado River. It's a man-made lake, but that's not necessarily why I'm not impressed. It's $6 to get in and most of what you see are picnic tables, boats, trucks, awnings, radio towers, marinas, more trucks, barbed wire fences, asphalt, power lines, nondescript tan tanks with pipes, and other concrete monstrosities that surround what was probably a very nice canyon at one time. The wildlife is either on display, like the desert tortoise to whom the Maricopa Regional Parks has so generously donated several square yards of dirt. Or the critters have adapted to the environment, like the wake of vultures that has claimed the radio towers. Clearly, Lake Pleasant is really the native habitat of the jet-ski and Toyota Titan, the RV and the pontoon boat. Feral species.

If Edward Abbey didn't hate Lake Pleasant, he didn't know about it. I just tried to take some nice photos. It seems that when the sun's going down, the hills still glow Arizona-red under the tan paint and black tar.  More on our Flickr page.

National Parks Magazine, 1966

Finding information on the history of National Parks Magazine has proven surprisingly difficult. Apparently, it's been around for a long time. It's published by the National Parks Conservation Association and lots of archived back issues are available online.

This particular issue, from December 1966, came along with a slew of back issues of Arizona Highways that my friend scored at a bag sale in California. It's thin - less than 25 pages - and contains only four articles. One of them is about Mt. Lassen Volcanic National Park and another is about Cape Cod National Seashore, pictured below. There's also a really great article on the Appalachian Trail. Hiking the AT in 1966 must have been a fairly heavy affair.

That cool picture of the lynx is from the back cover. I wouldn't mind finding some more of these.

Sunset Crater etc.

Sunset Crater National Monument is an extinct volcano outside of Flagstaff. It last erupted a little less than a millennium ago. Today, the volcanic area makes up a series of black hills east of the San Francisco Peaks. I had never heard of Sunset Crater until I moved to Arizona and I haven't heard people talk too much about it here. But it's damn impressive. We walked around on a lava flow and took pictures of the black gravel hills with their sides blown into wavy dunes. We even camped out on a forest road just outside the monument (though still in Coconino National Forest). The ground was covered in medium grain black volcanic gravel that made it very hot to walk on during the day, but soft to camp on at night.

This is the view into Lenox Crater just before dusk. You can't hike up Sunset Crater anymore, but you can still check out Lenox Crater, which is a smaller volcanic crater.


Our campsite ended up being a pretty interesting place to be even beyond the black ground and hills. There were some interesting flowers, like virgin's bower and primroses (pictured below). Virgin's Bower is my new favorite flower.


While I was walking around looking at flowers, I came across what I thought was a cornmeal ring on the ground. I called Erin over and showed it to her and we speculated at the time that it was related to a Native American custom. That area around Flagstaff, including particularly Sunset Crater and Humphrey's Peak, are sacred to the Navajo. Turns out that, according to Thomas Raitt the author of "The Ritual Meaning of Corn Pollen Among the Navajo Indians," we were mostly correct - "In certain contexts the application of corn pollen to something functions as an act of sanctifying or consecrating that to a very special and sacred use." The circle we found likely asked for a blessing for the campsite, designated the spot as their temporary hogan. At least that's what I got from Raitt's article; if anyone reads this and knows first hand, let me know in the comments or via e-mail. In any case, we slept better there that night alongside that presumed blessing.






I'm getting a little out of hand with the pictures here, so I'll stop and let you see them all over on our Flickr page.

Javelina Homicide

Javelina, originally uploaded by Svadilfari.

A few months back, a new law passed allowing loaded guns in National Parks. The powers that be felt that appeasing the monomaniacal guntards was worth the risks.  What could go wrong? Well, this week two dead javelina were found in Saguaro National Park here in Tucson. One had been shot in the head, the other was too eaten by scavengers to determine the cause of death, but they were found together, so it seems likely that they were both shot. The Arizona Fish and Game Department is offering up to a $1000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the javelina killer. If you know anything about the killing, contact Arizona Game and Fish wildlife manager Diane Tilton at 310-7559 or  Operation Game Thief at 1-800-352-0700.

Javelina are peccaries, not pigs, and they are related to other species of South and Central American peccaries. They are also known as collared peccaries. They are fairly common in Arizona and they can be a nuisance. Though they rarely attack people, they sometimes like to eat garbage and dog food and most people know someone who has had javelina in their yard. Javelina are a unique native species, not destructive or feral like wild pigs. 

People do legally hunt javelina throughout the Southwest.  We non-hunters know that hunting is a tradition and, sometimes, a necessary means of population control, so it's not that the javelina were shot that is terrible; it's that they were shot in a National Park and just left there. The javelina are a part of Saguaro National Park, just like the trees, mountains, cacti, and rocks. We don't need armed people killing wildlife in our national parks. We don't need guns in our national parks. If Teddy Roosevelt could abstain from killing animals on his tour of Yellowstone, then what more precedent do we need? We need legislation to get the guns out of the parks. But first, let's hope the loser who shot these two animals gets caught.

Tucson Mountains at Night

View on Black
Erin and I tagged along on another stargazing journey with our friends Martha and James. James has been bitten by the astronomy bug and there's talk about the possibility of a new telescope soon. Very exciting. While we were out there, I took some night photos experimenting with cars, headlights, and desert roads. There all from the Tucson Mountains, which includes the west side of Saguaro National Park and the Tucson Mountain Park. The "View on Black" links go larger sizes of the pictures against a black background for optimal viewing. There are more Tucson Mountain night photos on our Flickr page.

View on Black

View on Black

View on Black

Signal Hill at Night

Check out this photo on a black background. They're all best viewed large and against a black background. 
Our friends James and Martha got some high-powered binoculars for sky watching and invited Erin and I to go try them out. We headed to the west side of Saguaro National Park, to a petroglyph site called Signal Hill, and spent a while looking at stars, planets, nebula, and star clusters. I also took some nighttime photographs. Photographing the desert at night is one of my favorite things to do. It's really dark, and sort of an inexact science, so the pictures never come out perfect. Still, I was pleased with a few of them and I thought I'd share them.

Large on Black

Large on Black

Large on Black

Large on Black

Large on Black

For more nighttime Signal Hill photos, visit our Flickr page. The "On Black" option comes from Big Huge Labs, which is a cool website that you can link to your Flickr page and use to modify photos, order prints, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Garden of Gethsemane

From the Reverse - "THE LAST SUPPER - "Take, eat; this is my body." St. Matthew 26:26. The breaking of the bread at The Last Supper is the central piece among several sculptured religious representations by Felix Lucero in the Garden of Gethsemane on the west bank of the Santa Cruz river at the Congress Street bridge, Tucson, Arizona."

Felix Lucero Park, more commonly known as the Garden of Gethsemane, sits next to the usually-dry riverbed of the Santa Cruz River here in Tucson. The park, which is very small, contains sand and plaster sculptures depicting people and scenes from the New Testament, such as the Last Supper pictured on this postcard. Lucero was a homeless WWI veteran who lived under the Congress Street Bridge and built the statues over a series of years out of material he recovered from the Santa Cruz River.

The legend goes that Lucero was injured in battle and made a pact with the Virgin Mary that if he survived he's dedicate his life to making religious art. Apparently, they both made good on their respective ends of the deal.

Here's the info if you want to visit the park. The city likes to advertise it as a tourist spot, but be aware that it's a favorite hang out from vagrants, the homeless, and less savory characters. Considering Lucero's story, I'm happy to share the park with homeless folks - perhaps they have a better right to be there than I do - but I take a friend with me on the visit all the same.

Address: 602 W. Congress St., Tucson, AZ

Directions: To Felix Lucero Park, take I-10 to exit 258. Head West on Congress St. for one block. It's located on the western bank of the Santa Cruz River, at the corner of Congress St. and Bonita Ave.

Hours: Daily 7:00 AM - Sunset.

Phone: 520-791-4873

Cochise Head in Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona

From the reverse: "Cochise head, the bare rock top of a ridge in the northern part of the Chiricahua Mountains, which, silhouetted against the sky resembles the profile of Cochise, famous Apache Indian chief, may be seen from Highway 86 near San Simon and Bowie; also from Massai Point near Chiricahua National Monument, "wonderland of rocks", from which this picture was photographed."

The inscription on the back reads:
To: Mr. Grover Reese
Homer Michigan
Route 3

Apr. 1st, 1951
Hi Grover: Read your card and was Happy to hear from you. So Armstrong had passed on. Sorry to hear you are not so good. I surely hop that Drew help you. More sorry to hear you wouldn't be able to make the trip down here this winter but surely hope you will be able to make the trip in the fall. Carl's working at the Post(?) helping the roofer he works 6 days 10 hrs a day each week is hard work too. I am doing pretty good. Folks send best wishes. Now take care of Grover for me,
Mae."

I couldn't find much on Grover Reese except that he lived in Calhoun, Michigan (Homer is a township in Calhoun County), that he registered for WWI, and that he passed away sometime between 1977-1996. Ancestry.com has tons of great records, but you need to pay to see them. I like looking up people on postcards, but I don't want to spend money on it. In any case, it looks Grover didn't make it down to Arizona and missed out on seeing Chiricahua National Monument, at least for the 1951 winter season. I hope he made it down eventually; it's a really cool place.
As I always note on these postcard inscription entries, if you find this and you're related to Grover Reese, let me know and I'll send you the postcard.

The Grand Canyon - 1930 Home Movie

This home movie was shot and edited by Arthur and Kate Tode and is currently in the collections of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Films. I couldn't find much on the creators, but the footage is pretty cool. It's a silent movie and, at 16+ minutes long, I suggest hopping around in it to see different shots. Enjoy!

Wildflower Desert

It's been a very rainy winter so far in Arizona and they're predicting more rain for this coming weekend. Winter rain means great wild flower blooms in the spring. This issue of Arizona Highways from February 1963 has a photograph by Chuck Abbott on the cover showing spring blooms near Wilcox, AZ.

I'm looking forward to a great wildflower spring this year. Here are some photos I took at Lost Dutchman State Park (R.I.P.) a couple of years ago during another great spring bloom.

Zion National Park, UT

From the reverse: "Towers of the Virgin, Zion NP. Dominated by towering West Temple, highest point in Zion National Park, the Towers of the Virgin present a striking vista from the main highway near the South Entrance."

From the reverse: "Great White Throne. Nearly twice as high as the tallest building in the world, the sheer walls of Great White Throne in Zion National Park rise 2,447 feet above the floor of the canyon."

I was really excited to find these cool postcards from Zion National Park. A friend and I visited Zion a couple years ago and spent a few days in Kolob Canyons. What a beautiful place! Kolob Canyons is in the less visited section of the park. It's about an hour north of the visitor's center. We saw very few people, but we did see eagles and Kolob Arch, which is the world's largest natural arch. With all the available water, us Arizona boys felt like we were staying in the Ritz Carlton. Here are a few of my pictures from that trip.


Kolob Arch


La Verkin Creek