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.

Mohave and Blacktailed Rattlesnakes

OK, here are some more rattlesnake pictures. We've seen a lot of them this summer, I assume because the rains have bred lots of mice and lizards for them to feed on.

Anyway, this first picture is probably the most interesting. My wife discovered this three foot long snake about dusk on the concrete slab in one of the rooms of her parents' partially completed home (they are also building down here). I lifted it up with a stick and dropped it into a plastic barrel (with lid), then drove about a mile away to release it. It had markings I hadn't seen before, so I took some pictures of it as I released it and then looked it up on the internet when I got home. It turns out that having white bands that much wider than the black bands on its tail identify it as a Mojave Rattlesnake, supposedly the most dangerous rattlesnake in The United States. Most rattlesnake venoms cause tissue degeneration, but the venom from a Mojave Rattlesnake is a neuro-toxin. It causes brain and spinal cord damage, and victims often die of suffocation if not treated soon.

And yes ... this area turns out to be part of the normal territory of the Mojave Rattlesnake.

And this picture shows another Blacktailed Rattlesnake, which seems to be the most common variety in our neighborhood. They are fairly passive and actually quite pretty, but this particular snake was the largest Blacktailed Rattlesnake we've seen and it was only fifteen feet outside the dining room window of our new house. I estimated it to be four feet long. Again, I loaded it into the barrel and relocated it a couple hundred yards away, taking some pictures of it as it crawled up onto a rock.

Green Hillside

The summer monsoon rains have really made the hillside green this year. I haven't seen it this lush in quite a while. Here is a picture of our paritally completed house from the road further down the hill. I'm afraid it may look this way for a while, since it probably won't get stucco'd until we get enough things finished on the inside for us to be able to move in. The house is watertight as it is right now, but I won't rest easy until the stucco is on.



This is Thompson Peak. It is almost directly above our house to the west, although this picture was taken from several hundred yards south of our lot. It is really pretty to hike in the ravines and along these ridges, especially after all the rain we've had.

Sunflower Yucca

Who said plants can't grow well in dry, alkalai soil. Take a look at this huge sunflower that
grew on our lot. We're going to submit it to the Guinness Book of World Records.

OK, not really. This is the underside of a dead yucca plant (Spanish Bayonet, I think) that
Alice found while helping Eric clean up dead brush on the lot. Sure looks like a sunflower,
though, doesn't it?

Cluster of Bees

My wife discovered this cluster of bees on the side of the large ravine that runs across our property. The dirt wall was vertical and the cluster was about 14 inches long from top to bottom. The bees are stacked one on top of another to a thickness of about three inches.

The bees were very passive with only a few of them flying around, but the ones on the outside were moving slightly. I thought possibly they were trying to keep a queen warm or something, except that it wasn't a particularly chilly day. They were gone the next day and left no trace that they had been there.

Harley-Davidson Club

My sister and her husband belong to a Harley-Davidson club in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their local dealer arranged a trip to Phoenix where he transported the bikes while the club members came out by plane. The weather north of Phoenix was wet and cold, so several of them decided to come down here and see our little building project.

It was great to see my sister and her husband, and the rest of her gang were awfully nice folks as well. A couple of them thought we were crazy to tackle this house by ourselves, but then we weren't the ones riding through cowboy country all dressed up in black leather pajamas.

Ringtailed Cat, Christmas Parade, and Palominas Drum and Drill Team (18)

One of our neighbors dropped by recently to show us this picture of a Ringtailed Cat that had apparently been chased by her dog onto part of her house. It appears to be a young one, and it stayed up there all day before slipping away after dark. They are known to live in the mountains down here but aren't often seen during the day, so I scanned the picture and added it here.

Once again we all went out to watch the local Palominas Christmas Parade. Anyone and anything is pretty much allowed to march in it, as you can no doubt tell. Old equipment is always well represented. The machine below is a 1949 Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor.

Two years ago the parade included the "Palominas Drum and Drill Team", but for some reason it was missing last year. To the great joy and relief of everyone it returned this year in all its glory, although the temporary absence seemed to have diminished the discipline and precision of the members a bit, if not their enthusiasm.



In case the picture doesn't show it well, those are hand drills they are carrying.

Road Damage

One afternoon in the middle of August we got about three inches of rain in less than an hour (I measured it). The ground was already pretty wet from rains the previous days, so pretty much all of this one just rolled down the mountainside taking everything with it. This is ... was ... the road up to our lot, and some of the rocks you see here are eight to ten inches across. The damage was much worse in other areas, and the washes were just roaring with water. It took me all day to repair the road so that vehicles could get through. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever be able to sell the Caterpillar when we finish the house.

This is the same road a little further down the hillside. It's not easy to tell in this picture, but the road is now about two thirds its previous width and the chasm to the right drops straight down about seven feet.

Amazingly, the drainage measures we had taken to protect our lot worked great and we had very little erosion anywhere except the normal washes. The house held up fine and was clean as soon as the water ran off the slab.

Rock Wrens in the Vent Tubes

Here's a curiousity. We accidentally left a couple of four inch vent tubes (these will feed outside
air to the fireplace) uncapped. Some Rock Wrens, as shown on below in a picture I stole from an
Audubon Society website, made nests in each of them. The nests were just twigs and stuff, but it
turns out these particular birds make a walkway of small stones at the entrance to their nests.
No one has figured out why, supposedly. I took the bottom picture looking into one of the tubes.
Each pebble is almost the size of a quarter, so these little birds had to work to get them up there.
The birds squawked and scolded us a bit if we got too close to the tubes, but otherwise pretty
much ignored us and often perched within a few feet of us while we worked.