Arizona Fall Trips

 Week of Oct 18th

I helped Lindsay out at the Florence Military Reserve for the week doing invasive plant surveys. Mostly pretty boring, but the camping was beautiful with the sunsets and full moon

10/29-10/31

We did a camping trip up to Sedona.

Day1: We picked out our campsite and drove up to take a tour of the Sinagua cliff dwellings and pictographs/petroglyphs at Palatki. We then hiked up Cathedral Rock to watch the sunset over the red rocks. It was very beautiful!

Day 2: We hiked up the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon. It was a beautiful meandering trail through the golden fall colors amongst the red rocks. It crossed the creek many times and at times resembled the famous "Subway" from Zion NP. At the "end" of the trail, you can continue by walking up the creek. Most people turn around but we had brought our water shoes. The water was super cold and definitely made our feet numb, but we continued, all alone, for another 1.25 miles or so through the subwayesque canyon.

We went into Sedona and grabbed some ice cream, then we hiked to Devil's Bridge. It's a natural arch that is strong enough for people to stand on. With its social media popularity, there is a long line you wait at in order to get your picture taken on the arch. This made Elisha very nervous because lots of people get really close to the edge and seemingly put themselves at risk

Day 3: 

We did the Soldier Pass and Brins Mesa loop. It was a cool and diverse hike, which included a giant sinkhole (Devil's Kitchen), the 7 sacred pools, and the soldier cave all amongst the red rock beauty. The cave was really cool b/c it had several little arches and an "upstairs" that we climbed up to. We also hiked to the top of Brins mountain which had amazing 360 views of the area.

Week of Nov 1.

I helped Sky out with all the Tortoise techs to do a tortoise survey at Imperial Wildlife Refuge along the Colorado River in California (near to Yuma).  It was a ton of hiking (18ish miles per day) and super beautiful. It was like walking on the moon or mars. It was so desolate and rocky. The mountains in the area were incredibly jagged and we found some cool slot canyons and even a badger. We camped along the Colorado, which was nice. The sunsets and sunrises were incredible, and I wrote a little poem about it.

The Colorado. So distant from her home in the mountain heavens where moose calves dance in the cool waters and where the wildflowers emerge from the fading snow that brings forth her annual vernal pulse. While the swift water and cascades of youth are but a faded memory, the river is wiser, gentler. Old age has failed to diminish her spirit. The fox and javelina that find respite from the desert heat along her cool banks and the cottonwood that sip from her tranquil flow bring her much contentment. But it is her old friend the sun--the one who makes her shimmer and glimmer, the one who warms her banks in the morning and kisses them with red gold in the evening, the one who has never left her side--that brings her true joy.

In a busy and chaotic world this joy can be elusive, but you will find it there. You will find it along her banks, especially at such a time when the sun greets her with warming rays or when she whispers goodnight with her pellucid but ephemeral paintings of the crepuscular sky.

11/6-11/7

Trip to Flagstaff and Meteor Crater.

Saturday: We drove up to Camp Verde where we visited the Montezuma Castle National Monument cliff dwellings, which were super impressive. We enjoyed some Indian Fry Bread at a local stand. We then drove up to the Montezuma well, which is this large sinkhole with hundreds of thousands of gallons welling up to it each day. It also had some cliff dwellings around it.

Next we drove up to Flagstaff where we visited Walnut Canyon National Monument and hiked down to the bottom of the canyon. The canyon has hundreds of cliff dwellings and on the trail you can walk through several of them. We camped up on the rim in the pine forest and had a really nice campfire.

Sunday: We drove to Meteor Crater, which is where a large meteorite came crashing into the desert between Flagstaff and Winslow Arizona. They have a really cool space science museum, a 4D theater, and you can even touch one of the large meteorite fragments. We took the tour of the rim with a guide as well. We had Phó for lunch in Flagstaff on our way home.

I had written, for a facebook, a little thing about the meteor and how it is related to the currently relatively clean air we breath and IQ that I thought might be interesting to share here as well.

This meteorite fragment is part of a much larger meteorite that caused mass destruction on the Colorado Plateau near the Painted Desert around 50,000 years ago. Interestingly, despite the destruction it caused at the time, the meteorite played a large role in improving both human health and intelligence (at least as measured by IQ).

While radiometric dating the meteorite to try to determine the age of the Earth, the scientist involved discovered that all his samples were highly contaminated with lead. In doing so he learned that all humans (and much of the planet) were highly contaminated with lead, with a huge source being leaded gasoline. Additional research following the lead contamination discovered while dating the meteorite eventually led the EPA (via the Clean Air Act) to begin phasing out lead in the 1970's and to ban leaded gasoline entirely in 1996. Since then the amount of lead on the average freeway has dropped 97% and the average amount of lead in the blood of Americans has dropped 94%. In separate studies lead in the blood has been shown to decrease human IQ, especially if the exposure occurs while one is a child.

So not only did this meteorite help us determine the age of the earth (4.5 billion years old), but it helped us learn we had a major lead contamination problem within humans, which led to rules that helped to clean the air we breath. For a much more thorough and interesting story about all of this, check out RadioLab's "Heavy Metal" episode.

11/12-11/14

We took a trip to Quartzsite. The first evening we hiked up the small Q mountain to watch the sunset. The next day we hiked into the Palm Canyon in Kofa wildlife refuge. The Canyon is home to some of the last remaining native palm trees in Arizona. We continued hiking high up into the canyon to get a nice view. We then drove on a rough road towards the King of Arizona mine, where we hiked to Polaris mine. You could still peer into the different mine shafts. As usual, Quartzsite provided a beautiful sunset on the drive home. On our last day there we hiked up Cunningham Mountain for nice views of the mountain ranges around as well as the Colorado River in the far distance. We also did a little exploring of Quartzsite's tent city.

The week of Thanksgiving my brother flew in, and we did some mountain biking in the Scottsdale area as well as played TopGolf with my work buddy Chad.

We all drove to Tucson for Thanksgiving where we celebrated the holiday with my parents, grandma, Gerry and Connie, and Aunt M. Johnny also came over for some spikeball. Elisha and I went to the U of A basketball game with Grandma and Mary. I also did plenty of mountain biking in the area

12/3-12/5

We again went to Tucson to help take care of my grandma as well as to see the musical Hamilton at the Centennial Theater on the U of A campus. As part of the date, we went to a restaurant along University Ave to see all that was going on at the happening night life part of Tucson