Been a While...

It has been a couple of months since the last blog post.  The time gets away from me, especially since the weather was miserable April and May and I had a lot of work (still more to do) on our new site at the park.

We took some friends, Sally and Ron, on a ride to Jack's Peak.  Faithful blog readers may remember photos from last year.  This is the site of the big wireless towers which cover this area.  BORRRIINNG ride, mostly county roads but this ride had a new feature:  ladybugs.  We took the trail to the top of the mountain and stopped for lunch.  

Every inch of this pine tree was covered in ladybugs.  One of the weather channels had a radar picture showing a massive cloud of ladybugs so this must be a banner year for them.

I have put up hummingbird feeders, cake feeders for the acorn woodpeckers, and a box-type feeder for loose birdseed.  There is a particularly quarrelsome pigeon which likes to attack the box feeder and fight over the feed.  The fact that the box is full of birds already doesn't discourage additional birds from flying over and trying to land.  There is a dead tree across the lane; occasionally I look out and see dozens of these birds perching, just waiting for us to refill the box.  Makes me think of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Pigeons!


Another interesting and beautiful bird common here is the 
 Acorn Woodpecker.  One enterprising bird has discovered that hummingbird nectar is quite tasty.  

We did another all-day ride with Ron and Sally to a place called the German Mine.  It's a 50 mile ride round trip.  Doesn't sound like much but most of the ride is on rough trails and average speed is less than 5 mph.

The old cabin for miners.

That's my Polaris in front, with the red "ribbon" on the winch.

Mike on an "up" portion of the German Mine trail as we were going back.  The trail is up/down/narrow so no matter where you are, you will encounter one of the above conditions.  I am at a curve looking back down the trail.

On the way back, we detoured to find a "seasonal" pond.  At this time of the year, there's quite a bit of water but by the end of the summer, this pond will be substantially smaller.

Yes, I Am Still Out Here

On December 26, bad weather blew in from the west and we are still having uncharacteristically cold, wet, and windy weather.  Winds in AZ topped out at 40 mph gusts, we had torrential rain at times, and many days the temps did not rise above 45 degrees.  Obviously, going out riding on the mountain trails did not hold a lot of appeal.

I have a bunch of unrelated photos which I will post with appropriate captions.  We are back in NM at Burro Mountain Homestead now, getting our new place organized and refurbished.  The site itself had not had any maintenance in probably at least a decade, maybe longer, so there is cleanup and painting to last for a while.

A very cold Bob Brown.

 Our new neighbors on Sunrise Ridge at Burro Mountain Homestead surprised us by showing up in January in the park in Arizona.  You can get an idea of how pleasant the weather was by Bob's photo.

Why you don't go out alone.

We went out for a ride one day with a couple of others from the park.  One of the guys had an older four wheeler which stopped dead miles from the park.  We managed to tow it back and he told us later than the local mechanic told him to get the backhoe and bury it in the desert.

Buzzed.

We were up at Flag Hill one day and got buzzed by a small plane.  There are a lot of small airports in the area and there must be lots of recreational fliers.  This guy, in my opinion, was way too close to the top of the ridge as he came past us.

Cocktail Hour

We met this delightful couple at the park.  Nancy and Paul live at Grand Junction, CO, where it was substantially colder than Hope, AZ, despite the poor weather we were having.

St. Patrick's Day

We had decent weather for St. Patrick's Day.  Paul and Nancy came over to help us celebrate the day.

A few days before we were to leave for New Mexico, our neighbors on the south from last year, Mike and Colleen Fennimor,  volunteered to take us on a ride we hadn't been able to find.  It took nearly all day to make this ride and get back to the park but it was well worth it.

View from the top of the Yuma Mine Overlook trail.

Looking down at the Yuma Mine from the top of the ridge.

Part of the trail to the top.

The day before we were returning to NM, we decided to have a couple of beers and burgers at a local cowboy bar down the road from the park.  No matter what time of the day, early or late, the parking lot is always full.  (Note to C'ville people:  this place reminded me of an upscale Westerner.)  There was the usual pool table, loud music, plenty of beer drinkers.  We walked across the building to the "restaurant" to order the burgers and then returned to the bar to wait for the food. 

We chatted up the guy sitting next to us who clearly had been on that bar stool quite a while.  While Mike was keeping up the conversation, I started looking around at the signs on the walls.

We planned our trip back very carefully, as it is 380 miles and we do it in one day.  Just one tiny oversight:  the highway we chose led right past the Renaissance Fair location and the fair was that weekend.  Took over an hour to go ten miles.  One bonus, though, was that the wild flowers were spectacular nearly all the way home.  That's what you get from all that rain all winter.