Today's Hike

View from the Old Baldy Trail on Silly Mountain.

Superstitions

Superstition Mountains in the distance. Picture taken today on the Vista Trail at Usery Park.

AHHHHHH!!

Critter

Karen checking out a desert tortoise at Lake Pleasant today.

Lake Pleasant

Today we visited a new place (for us), Lake Pleasant. It's a reservoir north of Phoenix. We did a hike and went to the visitor center. Nice trip!

Trail Critter

Horned lizard seen at Silly Mountain. They sure blend into the landscape!

Moab, UT

After a couple of aborted attempts we finally made it to Moab, UT. We're going to be visiting both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We're staying at the OK RV Park in Moab. We brought our camping equipment but decided to rent one of their cabins instead because, well, it's COLD here! It got down to under 40 degrees last night. Here's a picture of the cabin. It has a bed, a futon that converts to another bed and a 3rd bed above the futon. It also has electricity, a refrigerator, cable (we brought a portable TV along,) air conditioning which won't get much use and, best of all, a heater! The campground bathrooms are a short walk away. Luxury camping indeed!

Picture

Just a nice (I think) picture of the desert.

Today On Silly Mountain

We went hiking at Silly Mountain this morning. Karen headed back after our climb up the Palo Verde Trail and I continued on. After reaching the saddle below the summit I headed down and had a couple of interesting things happen. The first was coming across a guy on horseback coming up a pretty steep section of the trail! I was amazed that the horse could make it up the trail with a rider on its back. We exchanged greetings and I continued down the trail. The next interesting thing was meeting up with a park ranger headed up the trail. He was the law enforcement kind of park ranger, not the "Ranger B" kind. We chatted for a few seconds while he caught his breath. He told me he was on his way to the summit because people had called in reporting someone signaling up there. When I got back to the car I look through the binoculars and saw a young guy with a large (maybe 2' X 2') sheet of some material flashing it towards Phoenix. There were quite a few people up there and I'm sure it was innocent. Maybe it was a group of scouts practicing signals with a group on some other peak. Who knows. But it was something you don't see every day.

New Tablet: To iPad Or Not To iPad

After several months of debating whether to get a tablet, and which tablet to get, we bought one yesterday. Before revealing which tablet we bought I thought I'd go through some of the thinking and reasoning that went into our decison.

When idea of getting a tablet came up it was because of the iPad 2. After resisting the siren call of the original iPad the iPad 2 just too tempting. We went to the Apple Store several times too seae the iPad 2 and play with it. Just too cool! But after using it in the store and thinking (a lot!) about it I started having reservations. Besides the cost ($499 for the 16GB wifi only model) my biggest hesitation is that the iPad is basically a big iPhone without the phone! Did I really want to spend that much money simply for a bigger screen? Well, yes, I did but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

After looking at the iPad 2 at Best Buy (my iPad 2 lust knew no geographic limitations!) I took a look at some of the other tablets that were out there. Most of the offerings were running the Android operating system. The exceptions were the Black Berry tablet and the HP Touchpad. The HP Touchpad was discontinued very shortly after it came out (but it seems to be back on the market - maybe.) The Black Berry didn't have a 10" screen so I didn't really consider it either. That left the Android offerings.

The more I thought about Android the better decision it seemed to be. I know the Apple App Store has a lot more software available but I can get most of those apps on my iPhone. Android's very configurable user interface and widgets were very appealing. Another big selling point was Flash. Apple's iOS does not support Flash while Android does. It makes a difference! Many times I've tried viewing web content on my iPhone only to see a blank box and an error message saying I need Flash. So it boiled down to cost and features. DUH!

Yesterday I finally decided to pull the trigger and buy a tablet. I considered the Motorola  Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy but ended up buying the new Toshiba Thrive. Features that matter to me were very simular on all tablets. What sold me was the price. The Thrive was $100 less than the other 2. There seems to be a bit of a price war brewing in the tablet market.

So far I'm very happy with the Thrive! Android Honeycomb 3.1 is very stable. And the Google integration (I use gmail, docs and other Google products) is wonderful!

Something You Don't See Everyday

Gondola in the desert. This was taken at the Venetian in Las Vegas.

Good Hand!

Too bad it was only a nickel bet!

Las Vegas

We're in Las Vegas again for a few days. We were across the street from the Bellagio around 8:00pm when their fountain show started playing. We couldn't hear the music but part of the fountains were visible. It looks really good at night.

Colors

We were treated to some cloud cover while hiking Silly Mountain today. I noticed that the subdued lighting brought out the colors on the rocks. The camera on my iPhone doesn't do a good job with color balance. There were lots of greens and yellows on these rocks. Trust me.

Flagstaff

We're back from a couple of days in Flagstaff. We had originally intended to spend 2 nights there but a bed bug problem (yikes!) forced us from the somewhat affordable Motel 6 to the quite unaffordable Hampton Inn. The Hampton Inn was twice the price of Motel 6 so we only stayed 1 night. We got a couple of hikes in including the Sandy Seep Trail. Here's a picture of Ross on that trail.

Another View

We hiked Silly Mountain again today. This is another view from the saddle near the summit.

Today's Hike

You can't really tell in this picture but we had a rare cloudy morning here in the Valley of the Sun. That makes for much cooler hiking. As we've been doing the last couple of weeks we hiked Silly Mountain today. This picture was taken at the saddle near the summit and shows Karen coming up the trail.

Problem Fixed

Seen inside the men's room at a McDonald's near the Tempe ASU campus. The door lock was broken and this was the fix to the problem. Notice the thought that went into this solution; it's more than long enough to be held by either hand while seated on the "throne."

Seen On Today's Hike

A pincushion cactus in bloom surrounded by bushes.

Water Over Path

Today we took our folding bikes to Tempe Town Lake and rode on the multi-use path. The path is routed under most road crossing which is one of its many appeals. The downside to this is that flooding does occur, especially after we get a good monsoon rain. We had one of those a couple of days ago and the water filled the retention ponds. Here's what we found today. The water was only a couple of inches deep so we were able to ride through it. Note the water flowing over the edge of the retention pond's wall on the left.