Hiking Trail Bees

On Saturday we hiked the Cat Peaks / Cat Peaks Pass Trail at Usery Park. Near the end of the hike we heard a lot of buzzing. There were hundreds of bees flying around near the ground! It looked like several of them were fighting on the ground. We've never seen anything quite like it. Check out this video:

Keeping Cool In Arizona

If you live in Arizona, this is probably a "so what?" kind of posting. But for those of us originally from colder parts of the country this is interesting. Many places in Arizona use misters to help keep people cool(er). From what I've read the water mist can lower the air temperature by as much as 30 degrees! And since the humidity around here is usually about 3% or 4%, you don't have to worry about getting people wet. We've seen misters at outdoor malls, movie theater waiting lines and over patios here at Sun Life. One more for the "I had no idea" list.

Misters at the Santan outdoor mall in Gilbert, AZ.

New On Our Blog - Videos!

Taking advantage of the latest technology in digital video recording (OK, not exactly the latest, but it's sort of recent) we're happy to announce that we'll be adding videos to our blog!

As our first video we'd like show you a short clip of Jake saying "hello". More exciting stuff to come!

Hieroglyphic Trail

Today's hike is one we did last year in the spring. We must be in better shape now because the trail didn't seem nearly as tough as we had remembered. This trail is into the Superstition Mountains which are so named because black cats constantly cross your path, there are ladders everywhere that you have to hike under and the trail is littered with broken mirrors. Just kidding, of course! We're actually unsure as to the origin of their name. The trail starts out steep but levels off to a more gradual climb and goes up into a canyon about 2 miles away. At the end of the trail is a nice collection of Hohokam petroglyphs. The trail is misnamed as there aren't any hieroglyphs to be seen. Beneath the main area of petroglyphs are several pools of standing water fed by a nearby spring. We're always amazed to see standing water in the desert! The hike down had one exciting moment. Ross crossed paths with a swarm of bees! They didn't bother him at all and just kept flying along. He heard buzzing and saw several hundred at the tail end of the swarm. Different!

	Some of the many petroglyphs at the end of the trail.
	This critter was hanging out near the petroglyphs. It was about a foot long head to tail.
	Pool of water at the petroglyphs and the view looking back along the trail.

Sedona

Sedona is one of those places of which almost everyone seems to have heard. Maybe because there's a Kia minivan named after it. It's only a couple hour drive north of Phoenix so we decided to check it out. We went to REI and bought a day hiking book for Sedona so we could experience it the way we like. As we approached Sedona our first impressions were "beautiful red rock formations" which soon gave way to "where the heck is all this traffic going???" There was a lot of road construction and a lot of people visiting the area. Never a good combination.

We did 3 small hikes to get a flavor for the area. Our first hike was part way up the Cathedral Rock Trail. Cathedral Rock, according to our hiking book, is the most photographed formation in Sedona. We re-enforced that distinction by taking a few pictures ourselves. We only hiked far enough to get a good view of the formation. You can hike all the way up to the base, which most people seemed to be doing, but our limited time didn't allow this. Our second hike, the longest of the day, was the Boynton Vista Trail. It took us to the top of a small formation which had nice views of the area. The magic was lost when a fellow hiker sat down next to us and proceeded to belch non-stop. Our last hike was on the Sedona Centennial Trail. This turned out to be a paved path to a so-so overlook.

Now that we've been to Sedona we probably won't rush back. It's very pretty around there but we enjoy the scenery around Phoenix just as much and we don't have to drive 2 1/2 hours to get there. But if you're into art, new-age vortex sites and REALLY expensive hotels then Sedona is your kind of place!

	Karen at Cathedral Rock.
	View from the Cathedral Rock Trail.
	View from the end of the Boynton Vista Trail.

Lousley Hill

We've "discovered" a new regional park here in the Phoenix area. The regional parks are run by Maricopa county. Usery Park, of which we've written before, is a regional park. Lately we've been visiting McDowell Mt. Park which is near Fountain Hills, almost due north of us. You can't get there directly though as the Salt River only has a couple of bridges over it. It's about a 30 minute ride from our place. A nice trail in the park is the Lousley (not "lousy") Hill Trail. It's only about 1.2 miles round trip and climbs about 300', but the climb is pretty much all in one short spurt. The views from the top are really nice!

	Karen at the start of the trail. That's Lousley Hill behind her.
	Example of the wildlife along the trail. This critter is a Horned Lizard.
	Part of the 360 degree view from the top of Lousley Hill.

Vegas, Baby!

One of the many advantages of wintering in the Phoenix area is that you are relatively close to Las Vegas. This winter we visited Vegas 3 times. We always drive as it's only a 5 or 6 hour trip from our place in Mesa.

So what's to do in Vegas? Some people go for the food, some go for the weather and some go for the friendly natives. Oh, and we've heard that some people actually come to Vegas to gamble! We'll admit that the bug sometimes bites us too. When it's time to play here's what we do: we wander through a casino looking for video poker machines. But not just ANY video poker machines. We look for the nickel machines! Being the big time gamblers that we are we can only handle losing 5 cents at a time. Now, this may be hard to believe but in some casinos it's actually very difficult to find nickel machines! Guess it takes higher stakes to make those new $2 BILLION casinos pay for themselves.

When we're not trying to fund our retirement at the nickel machines we like to just walk around. Walking up and down the Strip (Las Vegas Blvd.) is great entertainment all by itself! While walking we usually stop in most of the casinos and search out those elusive nickel machines. We'll each put in a dollar and try and take the casino for some cash. If we happen to double our money we cash out and head for the exit!

Vegas has changed over the last few years. It's NOT a family destination (as if it ever were!) and lately it's going more "upscale." Gone are the days of the $5 buffets, $1 shrimp cocktails and other cheap fare, especially on the Strip. Hotel rooms are getting more expensive too. We usually wait for a bargain and then book in advance.

Here's a list of our Vegas favorites:

Favorite hotel: New York New York
Favorite "loose" casino: Las Vegas Hilton
Favorite "hotsy-totsy" casino: Palazzo (it's brand new and so clean!)
Favorite buffet: Las Vegas Hilton
Favorite free attraction: The lion habitat at MGM
Favorite mode of transportation: Las Vegas monorail
Favorite free mode of transportation: Walking!

	The road from Phoenix to Las Vegas takes you over the Hoover Dam. They're building a bypass road which should speed up the trip considerably. Right now it's a slow go because of all the tourists walking around on the top of the dam.
	Karen in front of our favorite hotel, New York New York.
	Karen in front of the Bellagio. They put on a free fountain show choreographed to music. Very impressive, especially at night!
	Lion habitat at the MGM Grand. Nice kitty!

Desert Wild Flowers

The desert is in bloom! A couple of days ago we went for a hike in Usery Park to see the flowers. The first impression we got, even before we saw a lot of flowers, was how green the desert was! The ground is covered with small green plants. It almost looks like the desert has grown a carpet of green grass. Here's a couple of pictures of what we saw.

	Barrel cactus with wild flowers around it
	Karen and the desert in bloom
	Wild flowers

Desert Sunsets

The sunsets here in the desert can be quite spectacular. Maybe it has something to do with the dust in the air or the lack of humidity, but whatever the cause we've enjoyed a lot of beautiful evenings watching the sun go down. One evening, several weeks ago before the cold weather (highs in the 60's, lows in the 40's) set in, we spent the evening at Usery Park, a county park just a few minutes drive from our place. Here's what we saw:

Sunset at Usery Park.

Mexican Riviera Cruise

We went on a cruise at the end of November to the southern "Mexican Riviera." The excuse to take this cruise is that our 25th wedding anniversary is in March, 2008 but it was much cheaper to go now than to wait until then. We went on the Carnival Spirit out of San Diego and had the following itinerary:

Day 1 - San Diego, CA
Day 2 - At Sea
Day 3 - At Sea
Day 4 - Acapulco, Mexico
Day 5 - Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa, Mexico
Day 6 - Manzanillo, Mexico
Day 7 - At Sea
Day 8 - At Sea
Day 9 - San Diego, CA

On this cruise we had a balcony room. The weather was pretty awful in San Diego but we had hot, mostly sunny conditions in all our Mexican ports of call.

Acapulco is a big tourist town. We decided to walk around town but were accosted by people trying to sell us stuff every step of the way. They never took "no" for an answer! So our walk, as well as our desire to return here, ended quickly.

Zihuatanejo was our favorite port of call. It's a small fishing village and hasn't become totally commercialized. Walking around town there were a lot of small shops with tourist stuff but they are mixed in with restaurants, banks, grocery stores, etc. Movie buffs may remember that Zihuatanejo was the final destinations for the main characters in the excellent movie The Shawshank Redemption. We found a nice public circle under a banyan tree right on the beach in which to hang out. Locals mixed with the tourists. There were people selling their wares but they left you alone when you said "no." Quite a refreshing change from Acapulco! In case you're wondering, Ixtapa is a much larger city several miles from Zihuatanejo.

Manzanillo was a bit of a surprise. The cruise ships dock at a working port like in Mazatlan. A shuttle bus takes you to the downtown area. We were amazed how heavy the car traffic is in this town! There is a shopping district which caters to the tourists but it also offers the locals places to shop so you couldn't really call Manzanillo a "tourist town" - yet. Next to the shopping district is a very nice park where you can watch the hustle and bustle of this busy town.

Of our 3 ports of call we'd definitely go back to Zihuatanejo, maybe go back to Manzanillo and would not go back to Acapulco.

We had one last adventure in store for the ride home. Returning to San Diego we were greeted by more rain. (Note: we've been in San Diego, a town famous for sunshine, 3 times now and it's rained each of those times!) On the drive out of town we ran into a snow storm in the mountains! Luckily the roads had been treated with sand and the snow wasn't accumulating much. We made it home just fine.

	Karen at the mandatory lifeboat drill. You can't get out of it so you might as well have fun at it!
	Quiet street in Zihuatanejo just outside of the tendering pier.
	An interesting Coke truck in Manzanillo.
	Sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

Gold Prospecting - Dry Washing

After several trips out to the gold fields with our metal detector we still hadn't found any gold. Unfortunately that's not really all that unusual. Finding gold is part skill and part luck. So far, no luck.

One day we were metal detecting on a RRPC claim near Morristown and came across 3 other club members who were dry washing. We had learned a little about dry washing from Steve at A&B Prospecting while he gave us a lesson in gold prospecting, but we had never seen one in action. One of the guys was nice enough to take some time and show us how it worked. The main attraction of dry washing is that while the gold you find is usually very small, you have a much better chance of finding some gold. The more we thought about it the more it seemed like a good idea. After a day in the field it would be nice to have something to show for it!

Before jumping in and buying a dry washer we tried a manual version: we bought several sifting screens and a shovel. It's a cheap way to do it but it's very inefficient. The amount of material you can process manually in 30 minutes would take about 3 minutes with a dry washer. But doing it manually paid off - we finally found some gold! It was only a couple of tiny, tiny flecks but it was gold. Buying a dry washer now seemed to be the way to go. All it took was a trip to A&B Prospecting, a credit card and we were the proud owners of a dry washer!

How it works: The dry washer's basic function is to capture gold and discharge other material. It does this using the principle that gold is going to be heavier than the other material. The dry washer has a fan in the lower box that blows air through a finely perforated screen. A leaf blower (sold separately!) provides the air to run the fan. The lighter material is blown upwards while the gold settles. The fan has an offset counter weight that causes the lower box to shake. This causes the material to move downward. The gold is caught in the "riffles" while the dirt, small stones, etc. (called "tailings") drops off the end. It's noisy, dirty and back breaking work but you can process a lot of dirt this way! There's a lot more involved with actually getting the gold (clean up, classification, panning, etc.) but that's the basic idea.

We've been out with our dry washer several times now and have come back with gold each time. Keep in mind that we're talking about VERY SMALL amounts. All the gold we've found so far would fit on the top of a pencil eraser. We know we aren't going to get rich, but coming back with something to show for our efforts makes it a whole lot more fun!

Below are a couple of pictures showing Karen working the dry washer. Please note that Ross usually does most of the shoveling - Karen is doing it here because she is much more photogenic than he is.

	The dirt is shoveled into the top box. A "grizzly" (metal screen) keeps the bigger rocks from going into the lower box. Notice the material moving down the lower box and the tailings pile at the bottom.
	In this shot you can see the leaf blower behind the white bucket and the hose that provides the air to run the dry washer. Covered in dust and shoveling dirt into a noisy machine - doesn't Karen look like she's having fun?

Comet Holmes

In late October the Astronomical Community was surprised and delighted by the unexpected brightening of Comet Holmes. It very quickly increased several million times in brightness and became a naked eye object in the constellation of Perseus near the star Mirfak. Even under the bright city lights here in Mesa it was clearly visible. I spent some time observing it through my telescope and then took some pictures of it. One was posted to the Sky & Telescope website. That one is presented below. I also got a decent shot of Albireo, one of the most beautiful "binary" stars. It too is shown below.

	Comet Holmes
	Albireo

Gold Prospecting - Metal Detecting

One of the most popular methods of prospecting for gold is using a metal detector. As the name implies a metal detector will alert you when you pass the coil (flat piece at the end) over something metallic on or in the ground. It normally make a high pitched whine sort of like a mosquito but when it detects metal it shrieks. We usually use headphones with it to pick up some of the softer "returns" that could indicate a more deeply buried object.

Armed with our metal detector, RRPC membership and maps we headed out to our first prospecting adventure. We chose the "Lucky Strike" claim (all claims have names, some descriptive, some cute) north of Phoenix. Nobody else was out there when we arrived. We learned very quickly that almost all of the targets you find are going to be worthless. If you're lucky they will be at or near the surface so you won't waste too much time on them. Several times we ended up digging quite deep only to find a bullet or shell. Our effort that first day didn't produce anything of value but we did have fun!

Since then we've been out "nugget shooting" (as metal detecting for gold is called) quite a few times. So far, no luck. But if bullets, shells and beer can pull tabs ever become valuable we'll be rich! We'll keep trying and we've also branched out into another method of gold prospecting - dry washing. More on that later.

Karen metal detecting for gold at the "Lucky Strike" claim. We didn't find any gold but we had fun and the scenery sure is nice!

Gold Prospecting - Getting Started

OK, so you've decided you want to become a gold prospector. Where do you begin? You turn to the internet, of course! We found a pretty good site about gold prospecting in Arizona: www.arizonagoldprospectors.com. Even though it gave us some good information it didn't really answer our questions of what kind of equipment we would need, where to go and basically how to get started. A little more searching yielded a gold prospecting store right here in Mesa, A&B Prospecting. We went there and were given a great introduction to gold prospecting in general and one method of looking for gold, metal detecting, in particular. Steve Robertson at A&B was wonderful in sharing his time and knowledge with us. Steve has been gold prospecting for over 50 years and really knows his stuff! We ended up buying a Tesoro Lobo Super TRAQ metal detector and other basic prospecting equipment like a good digging tool, jeweler's loop and collection vials. The other basic requirement we learned was that we needed to join a prospecting club.

A very brief description of how gold mining claims work: someone finds a likely place that gold may exist and then spends some time looking for gold there (more on other gold mining techniques later.) Once they think they've got a winner it's time to register their claim. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) controls access to mineral claims on public lands. You file your claim with them, pay a small fee of $25 initially and $125 per year maintenance fee and you've got your claim! Claims are generally 20 acres in size. You now have the exclusive right to prospect for gold on that land. Anyone else who tries to prospect there is a "claim jumper" and while it's not like the old days where people were shot for such illegal activities, violence has and does occur. Don't do it! As you might imagine most of the productive areas have long since been claimed and many of them are owned by prospecting clubs. There are many clubs, but Steve recommended one of the largest to us, the Roadrunner Prospector's Club. Once you join the RRPC (or any of the clubs) you get the right to work any of their claims. So we drove down to the RRPC's office in Phoenix the next day after buying our metal detector and joined the club. It's possible to prospect for gold without joining a club but you'll have to be willing to do a lot of searching in very inaccessible areas. Some people do and are successful but it's far easier to buy into a club and get access to claims that are proven to contain gold.

A Quick Update

Yes, we know we've been bad keeping this blog up to date lately! But we do have (a pretty lame) excuse. We've been doing some new things so we can report on them to you, dear reader. So what new activity could we be involved with now? Want a hint? We're doing something that was VERY popular back in 1848 and 1897. No, we're not living without electricity nor are we using horses to get around. We are (drum roll) gold prospecting! In case you're wondering, 1848 was the start of the California gold rush and 1897 was the start of the Yukon gold rush.

It all began with a TV show we saw while in Maine this past summer. The Travel Channel was showing a program about different kinds of treasure hunting. One of the segments dealt with gold mining and talked about panning in California and metal detecting in Arizona. It was quite intriguing! They showed a guy walking around, waving a metal detector over the ground and then coming up with a nugget of gold! It looked so easy! We can do that, we said (you probably know where this is going, don't you?) So we decided to pursue it once we got to Arizona. More to come...

OH OH - Another Cute Cat Picture!

We bought Jake a kitty bed yesterday. It's a tight squeeze (he's a big kitty!) but he seems to like it.

Update From Maine

Here we are just past the 4th of July and we've been in Maine almost 2 months now. The weather hasn't been all we had hoped for. Lots of cloudy, cool weather and enough rain to keep us off the hiking and biking trails. Most of the hikes around here involve travel over exposed granite rock which gets VERY slippery when wet. We've only hiked 5 times so far this season! Twice up Gorham Mt., twice up Flying Mt. and once at Cutler. The 2 mountains are here on MDI (Mount Desert Island) and Cutler is an almost 3 hour drive "down east." It's one of Maine's "public reserve" lands, areas set aside for recreational use like a park. Cutler is unique in that it has a few miles of Maine sea coast. A hike of about 1.5 miles takes you to cliffs overlooking the ocean. The view is spectacular and you don't have to share it with lots of other people. On our July 3rd trip there we saw a total of 8 other people. We think it's well worth the long drive!

Shortly after arriving here we went into Bar Harbor and bought 2 used bikes from Acadia Bike, one of the bike rental companies around here. Last year we also bought 2 used bikes from them. We left those bikes in Arizona, so now we have bikes in both locations and we don't have to drag bikes across the country. We do most of our biking here on the carriage road system. Built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., this approx 50 mile system is open to pedestrians, bikes and horses but no motorized traffic is allowed. It's some of the best biking we've found so for!

	Taking a break on the carriage road at Bubble Pond.
	Part of the Cutler coast.

Quick Update: Southwest Harbor, ME

We're now in Southwest Harbor, ME for the summer. Our RV arrived on schedule much to our relief and, honestly, our surprise (see posting "The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla".) The weather here in Maine hasn't been the greatest. Mostly it's been cold and rainy. It's still pretty early in the season so things are bound to get better.

Our trip from Mesa, AZ to Detroit wasn't very pleasant. Ross got sick the second day out and Karen got it the day before we arrived in Detroit. We didn't get a chance to see everyone we wanted to see because we spend the first several days recovering from whatever it was we had. We were in Detroit for about a week and then left to meet the RV when it arrived in Maine.

We've started our summer jobs working at the West Marine in Southwest Harbor.

More to come, just wanted to let everyone know where we are now!

New (Old) Hobby

For those who have known me (Ross) for a long time, you may remember that I used to be quite involved with the hobby of astronomy. Now that we're going to be spending a lot of time in Arizona, some of the best weather for astronomy, I decided to buy a telescope and get back into the hobby. I bought a Celestron NexStar 5 SE, a 5" telescope (click here to see a picture). It's small enough to be very portable but the optics are better than the 8" telescope I used to have at about half the cost. And it's fully computerized. In the old days we used to have to find things in the sky by finding bright objects and then "hopping" to the (usually) dim objects we wanted to see. It was slow, sometimes frustrating and often unsuccessful. Now you just tell the control pad what you want to see and the telescope automatically moves to it! I can now see in an hour what used to take all night to see! I'm really quite impressed with how far things have advanced.

I also recently bought a Meade DSI (deep sky imager), basically a digital camera for the telescope. For the technically interested it's a CCD camera. 20 years ago CCD cameras had just come out. If you wanted one it would cost at least $10,000! This camera was a tiny fraction of that and performs circles around the old ones. The software compensates for may of the tracking and exposure errors. Here's a couple of the pictures I've taken after just a few minutes of experimenting. As I learn how to use the camera better the pictures should get better too.

	A section of the moon.
	Saturn.
	Polaris, the North Star, is actually a "binary" or double star. Here you can see the bright primary star and, to its immediate left, the dimmer bluish secondary star. Click on the picture to see the 2 stars more clearly.

The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla

Since we now have a place to go to in the winter and we still want to be in the RV in Maine in the summer, we decided that once we got back to Maine we really didn't need our truck anymore. Our RV park in Maine lets you store your RV there for free during the winter. Our Toyota Corolla, which we left in Maine for the winter, is 9 years old with almost 150,000 miles on it. We decided we would trade it and the truck in on a new Corolla once we got back to Maine. One Saturday a couple of weeks ago we stopped in at Superstition Springs (SS) Toyota here in Mesa to see what a new Corolla would cost. We explained our situation to our salesman, Roger Cary, before we did any looking. He still showed us the car and had us take a test drive. Then he wanted to know what we need in order to "make the deal happen." We explained that since we were going to trade in our truck on any new car that we bought what we would need is for them to move our 5th wheel from here in Mesa to Southwest Harbor, Maine for us. We were sure that that would end the conversation. To make a very long story a little shorter, and to our eternal surprise, they finally agreed to our terms! We still can't really believe it! We drew up an agreement which they signed, moved our junk from the truck into the new Corolla and drove home in it!

So now the plan is to drive the Corolla from Mesa to Detroit for a visit and then wait to hear when the 5th wheel is to be delivered (our agreement specifies a time frame for delivery). We'll then drive to Maine and meet our 5th wheel there to make sure it gets placed in the correct site and is set level. Of course we're staying on top of the situation to make sure our 5th wheel actually ends up in Maine, but the general sales manager, Brad Johnson, seems to have everything on track so far. We'll let you know how it plays out.

Our new Toyota Corolla.