Old Bisbee, Chiricahua National Monument, Amerind Foundaiton, Saguaro National Park (East), Coranado National Forest, Biosphere 2, Tucson Tamales, Molino Campground

(posted from SkyBar Astronomy Bar, Tucson)
(This post covers 2 – 5 April, 2010)


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Monday, 5 April-

Last night was wonderful. The sleeping temperature was just right and the campground was completely quiet.
We drove into Tucson and along the way passed something I've not seen before-- a clinic for balance and dizziness. We were interested because a family member has recurring problems with dizziness. A clinic staffer had a Pennsylvania connection and provided a contact point for a specialist near home who she knows to be very good in assessments and has an extensive contact base in our home area for treatments.
We then looked up Desert Divers. We had taken a SCUBA-diving trip to San Carlos, Mexico with Desert Divers back in the mid-Eighties and wanted to see if anyone we had met then was still around. The business had been subsequently sold but we did learn that our trip leader, Wanda, now works as a nurse in a nearby hospital.
We then drove to the University of Arizona campus and spent a few pleasant hours at the Center for Creative Photography and the Arizona State Museum. We then walked over to the campus bookstore where we played with an iPad for a few minutes.
We had a late lunch at Tucson Tamales. This little tamale shop appears in the current issue of Arizona Highways as one of the top 12 restaurants in the state. We tried the 'Boise', which was sweet-potato based, the 'Tucson', which featured a jalapeno masa, and the 'Austin', which was a spinach and mushroom tamale. Good stuff!
We then used the GPS to find the nearest library for a wi-fi connection. The smallish library had wi-fi but not many seats and no electrical outlets. The librarian said we could pick up the signal outside if we liked so we went back to the van and worked from there. We had gotten lucky and were parked in the shade right in front of the library so this option worked out very well. We had a nice breeze coming through the van, a good, strong signal, and our view was of a city park with kids playing and people just out enjoying this very fine spring day.
Around 1800 we packed up and headed for our campground up in the mountains. We took the Catalina Highway up toward Mount Lemmon to the 4000-foot level and Molino Campground in the Coronado National Forest. There were only a few other campers in the campground and we snagged a primo spot and it's only $10.
We spent the evening reading through the various tourist brochures, the Tucson Weekly alternative newspaper, and the University of Arizona visitor's guide.


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Sunday, 4 April-

I didn't sleep well last night. I had picked up a newspaper to read about the rancher murdered last week in the New Mexico boot-heel and I'm also reading a Michael Connelly novel called 'Scarecrow' which has some vivid scenes. And then we had the almost-hourly vehicles coming past our way-out-in-the-boonies 'campsite' throughout the night. Around 2300, for instance, a lone motorcyclist roared through, apparently training for a Baja1000-like night race. Around midnight, five or six trucks and SUVs bounded past all bunched up together. Later, a passing vehicle caused me to load the shotgun. It came through at 0300 with music blaring and instead of continuing on through it turned off and bounced its way up nearby hill and sat there for awhile with the lights and music off. It eased back down a half-hour later and seemed to be working its way toward us, now without music, but then it turned a bit and its lights went out. I watched for a half-hour or so in the bright moonlight before going back to bed to a fitful sleep. What was THAT about?
This morning it all seemed innocent. There was indeed a 4 x 4 road to the top of the next hill which I hadn't noticed in the fading evening light. And once you come down from the hill, there's a dropaway turn on the main road which quickly obscures the vehicle, thus the disappearance of the lights. Our visitors were merely exploring, albeit at an odd time of night.
But we woke to a perfect morning with views all around. After breakfast we headed back out on FR 371, bound for Redington. Some 30 miles of potholes and washouts later, we finally hit hard road again near San Manuel.
We gassed up and iced up and set a course for Oracle. There we visited Biosphere 2, a prokect of the University of Arizona. You may remember Biosphere's original mission consisted of a having a team of 8 people live in the self-sustaining, artificial world of Biosphere for two years. Ultimately, they found that their half-acre plot was just barely able to sustain them. A second team then began another mission, this a one-year commitment but it was called off early for essentially the same reason-- they were not able to self-sustain.
Today, Biosphere 2's mission is to provide a controlled space for research. It has five artificial environments-- rainforest, savannah, ocean, desert fog, and desert.
After our Biosphere visit we took an afternoon nap in the van at the far end of the parking lot, then headed into Tucson.
As we neared the city we checked Catalina State Park for campsites and grabbed one of the last available. We then used the GPS to locate one of the Best-of-Arizona restaurants. It was closed for Easter Weekend. We then tried calling the other two on the list and one had closed for the day just a few minutes ago and the other isn't open on Sunday.
We headed back toward the campground but saw an upscale Mexican restaurant which claimed to make their food in the style of Mexico City. It was called Parilla Suiza. We had margaritas and fajitas which were quite good.
We then returned to Catalina State Park and took and after-dinner walk under the stars, then I blogged and Labashi read.

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Saturday, 3 April-

This morning we returned to Chiricahua National Monument to check out the visitor center. We noticed several people waiting for them to open and that seemed surprising until we learned there's a shuttle. Hikers can catch a shuttle to the top and then hike down to the center, making it a descent almost the whole way.
We read the animal-sightings board and saw that a mountain lion had been sighted at Echo a few days ago and a family of four coati had been seen just a half-mile above the visitor's center on Wednesday. We took a short walk on the Lower Rhyolite trail but didn't see any wildlife other than a few birds.
We then drove the 75 or so miles to the Amerind Foundation, a private organization which studies anthropology and archeology of Indians and runs a fine museum. After the museum visit we had a picnic lunch on the ranch grounds.
We then drove on to the Saguaro National Park – East. We arrived just in time to see a lecture about the jaguar, grizzly bear, and Mexican wolf in the Park and in southeast Arizona. The last grizzly was shot in the Twenties, the last jaguar in 1950 and the last Mexican wolf in 1948. However, a jaguar was seen and captured as late as 1996 but it was a lone male. Trail cameras have captured photos of jaguars in Arizona but there is not yet evidence of a breeding population of them.
We then drove the eight-mile auto tour route through the saguaro 'forest', a quite remarkable change to what we have been seeing. Not only do the saguaros make an unforgettable sight, the whole area is teeming with cactus, particularly prickly pear and chollas.
We drove the auto route slowly and about half-way through stopped and made supper in the shade of a mesquite.
After the National Park, we headed northeast to the Coronado National Forest and Forest Road 371. This rugged, very rocky dirt road took us up to the mountain top on 5-mile-per-hour climbing switchbacks. We didn't have a lot of camping spots to choose from but finally found a very nice spot fo r the night about ten miles in just before dark.
I spent the evening catching up the blog and Labashi read.

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Friday, 2 April-

After a wonderfully quiet night at the Douglas Wal-mart we drove northwest to Old Bisbee, a turn-of-the-century mining town. As we approached the town we saw the massive Lavender mine and then the Queen mine. We stopped at the first parking spot to get a look further into town and decided we already have free parking and it's a short walk so why get into the pay-parking thing at all? That turned out to be a great spot to watch the tourists suit up for their trip down into the mine. Our vantage point was from across the highway but we had a good view. After suiting up they each sat astride a bench on a small rail cart- maybe six or eight people per cart and a dozen carts in the train--- and were towed down into the scary-looking mine opening.
We walked into town just as the town was beginning to stir. By the time we got oriented at the Visitor Center and began walking up Main Street, many of the shopkeepers were opening up. Bisbee was a rich town at one time due to their copper, silver, and gold mining activities. The brochure says they were the biggest, most prosperous city between St. Louis and San Francisco at the time.
But as they grew rich, many of the people moved out of what became Old Bisbee to new Bisbee. The old town was virtually abandoned for years until artists and other hippies (as the sign at the Lavender Pit says) took over. Today Old Bisbee has the intriguing and pretty-much-intact architecture which some guides say makes it the best-preserved turn-of-the-century town in the Southwest.
We explored Bisbee for about four hours, enjoying the art galleries and antique shops and a very nice little hippie bookstore-- a Whole-Earth-Catalog type of place with used books and records, art supplies, and a much more interesting magazine rack than your local Borders. I loved looking through the build-your-own solar power and wind-power magazines and all the various magazines offering advice on how to live an alternative, self-sufficient, off-the-grid lifestyle.
In that same hippie bookstore I bought the latest copy of coffee-table magazine Arizona Highways for their restaurant reviews. We took their advice on the best lunch place in Bisbee and had lunch at the Cornucopia Cafe. Labashi had the quiche and I had a chile-jack sandwich and sweet-potato-red-pepper soup plus their don't-miss fresh-squeezed tangerine lemonade. Good call, Arizona Highways!
After we finished walking the town, we took a break at the library and I posted a blog update. We then drove north to Tombstone, arriving in mid-afternoon. We only spent an hour and a half there, however, yet felt we had seen everything. Allen Street reminds me of the main drag in Skagway (AK). Tourist shops overwhelm any sense of history.
We then drove northeast to the Chiracahua National Monument. We were surprised to see the campground was full but figured we'd be able to find a dispersed camping spot in the Coronado National Forest nearby. That thought was confirmed by a ranger we met along the way so that took the pressure off. We went ahead and drove the length of the dead-end road. It steadily climbs out of the Bonita Creek valley and then gives terrific views of rock columns all lined up facing the setting sun.
As the sun set we rolled back down and out of the Monument and headed up the dirt road leading into the National Forest. A few miles in we came upon a rancher out of his pickup to close a gate at a corral. He told us we'd find a place to get off the road a few miles up at the North Fork and that indeed proved to be the case. There we found a string of road-side pulloffs, five of six of them already occupied by others with the same idea. But the last in the string was open and gave us a beautiful spot beside the creek. We had supper and then read until our early bedtime. For some reason we were both very tired and it was only 2130. I suppose some of that comes from our bodies thinking it was an hour later. Arizona does not participate in Daylight Savings Time so we had dropped back an hour two days ago.

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