Ravine and Perched Rock

More scenery pictures. This one points to the west and was taken from the ravine that crosses our lot. We can look straight out onto this tree from our dining room window.

This is part of the next canyon to the south of our lot, maybe 600 yards away. It's really pretty and Alice walks the dogs over there most mornings. The picture is deceiving in terms of scale... that rock is at least twenty feet across. I'm not sure what keeps it perched there but I make it a point not to walk under it.

Cattle Ponds and Tadpoles

Ranchers used to build cattle ponds out here by mounding earthen dams across washes. This one is about 500 yards south of our lot and due to the monsoon rains now has standing water in it. After the first really heavy rains of the summer, we can hear loud croaking all night as the big toads come up out of the mud to breed. It's quite amazing that they survive the rest of the year deep down in what is by that time mostly dry cow poop.

Here is the result. I took this picture in the shallow fringes of the pond but it was like this all over. There are probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of these tadpoles in there right now. With a little luck the pond will stay wet long enough for most of them to grow into snake, lizard, roadrunner, and raven food. It will take a lot more luck for any of them to survive until next summer.

Grass Growth

These pictures were all taken on our lot. All this growth happened in less than six weeks and although the green is pretty, it will soon all be brown and I'll have to hack it down for protection against grass fires next spring. I've been told that the grass down here is mostly not native ... supposedly there are about four major species that were imported decades ago from Africa by cattlemen. Some of it is higher than my waist and still growing. (Note: it ended up being literally chest high that year). It's also really tough stuff and we had to buy a commercial weed whacker to cut it. Beats me how the cows are able chew it, or why they would want to.

White House, Deep Blue Sky

This picture looks straight south at our house from the road leading up to it.

This picture looks north at our house from the southern edge of our lot (across a large ravine). 

This side of the house has the master bedroom (left) and the dining area (right). At the middle under the overhang is a side entry with sort of a mud room entrance.

Notice how blue the sky can be ... one of the nice effects of living at 5,000 feet elevation. Sometimes the color is so deep I just stare at it..

Hillside Greenery

After one of the driest winters in history, we've had possibly the wettest summer season ever recorded down here. My unofficial tally so far, as measured on our lot, is well over twelve inches of rain in just a few weeks. That may not sound like a lot to most people, but down here it is a lot and it causes a lot of damage. The Coronado National Monument, about two miles southwest of us, got eight inches of rain in a day and a half and the road damage alone is being measured in the millions of dollars.

Anyway, here is an updated picture of our place on the hillside showing all the greenery. Our house is the white one -- at least until we get it stucco'd -- in the center.

This picture shows the southern third of the Huachuca Mountain range, which really is quite pretty. We live on the lower slopes of Bob Thompson Peak at the left, but Miller Peak at the right is actually 2,000 feet taller (about 9,500 feet elevation). There are excellent National Forest hiking and mountain bike trails throughout the range.

Hike up Bob Thompson Peak, part 5

Here's another picture of Montezuma Peak, just west of Bob Thompson Peak. Again, you can see how steep and rough the terrain is. Pretty country, though.



One last picture of the hike. This is Eric grabbing a snack, with Arka hoping to get some of it. It was pretty warm by the time we headed down the mountain and the dogs would move from tree to tree ahead of us looking for shade. They drank almost as much water on the hike as we did.

Eric is 13 1/2 years old and average size for his age ... so yes, Arka is a large dog.

Hike up Bob Thompson Peak, part 4

This view looks westward from Bob Thompson Peak to Montezuma Peak about a mile away, and a ridge runs northward from there to Miller Peak. Just a few hours after we took this picture a fire started on the other side of Montezuma Peak and the high winds pushed it along that ridge. National Forest Service Trail 103 runs along that same ridge and is heavily used by illegals and smugglers. There have been at least five man-made fires in this same spot in recent years, all caused by camp fires they didn't bother to put out. The fire didn't reach Miller Peak, but it dipped down into Ash Canyon and threatened several homes there. It took almost 500 firefighters and half a dozen helicopters three days to get it under control.



This view looks southwest from Bob Thompson Peak toward the San Jose Mountains in Mexico. You can see how steep the hillside drops off. My GPS said that we climbed 2300 feet in about 1.1 mile, but most of the actual slopes were about 40 degrees with lots of loose rocks. It was easier going up than it was coming down.

Hike up Bob Thompson Peak, part 3

Here I am at the top of Bob Thompson Peak. Miller Peak is about three miles off in the background.

And here is Eric at the peak. It was pretty windy up there.

While we up on the peak, we met a Border Patrol agent who had helped apprehend a couple of illegals further down the slope a few hours earlier. He had some interesting stories about the Mexican military running cover for drug smugglers along the border.

Hike up Bob Thompson Peak, part 2

This is my son Eric taking a break on the slope. He carried half of our water and Gatorade, and held up just fine on what is a fairly steep hike over lots of rocks. I think he actually enjoyed the hike.

This is a rare picture of Eric's old man in the wild ... emphasis on "old". He held up OK as well.

Hike up Bob Thompson Peak, part 1

I finally talked my son Eric into hiking up Bob Thompson Peak with me. This is the mountain that rises about 2300 feet above our lot to the west, roughly 7350 feet at the top. It isn't the tallest peak in the Huachuca range, but the view is pretty impressive. We took two of our dogs with us ... the large (140 pounds) Anatolian Shepherd Dog is Arka, while the smaller mixed breed is a stray we call Zorra (Spanish for a female fox) who just showed up about 18 months ago and decided to stay.

The next few pages show several pictures from the hike, including this one taken part way up the ridge line. Mexico is in the background.



A bit further up the climb we found this lookout spot that was probably created and used by smugglers (people or drugs). The rocks were definitely stacked by hand to form a hiding spot and there was a lot of trash around, including several large window screen frames ... for what purpose I cannot imagine.

Snow Storm

These are a couple of pictures taken from our lot the morning after a snow storm in mid-march 2006. Not such a major event, but we don't get much snow here and what we do get usually doesn't last long.

Fence Party

Our four acre lot and all those around us are zoned residential, but most of the land adjoining the neighborhood is still used for grazing cattle. It turns out that, at least in this county, the burden is on the homeowner to keep cattle out rather than the burden being on the rancher to keep their cattle in. Everyone who runs cattle nearby tries their best to control their cattle, but we and our neighbors had to put up about 2000 feet of fence in this particular area at our own expense. We all pitched in the money for materials and several of us provided the labor to put it up. I had never played real cowboy before so it was an interesting experience for me. Stringing the wire turns out to be pretty easy ... the hard part is driving the stakes, especially into the mixture of rocks and soil that passes for ground out here.

This fellow in the picture is the one who organized the fence party.

We rigged a way to spool out the barbed wire from the back of my truck. Thankfully the rocks weren't too bad in this area and I didn't lose any part of the undercarriage or blow a tire.

Here is another neighbor who guided the spool as I drove.