AZ: Tucson Town

Text: Greg
Photos: Greg and Trina



We left the diner after a late lunch in Florence and tried to imagine the night of camping that lay ahead of us, rain pounding down, tent flapping in the cold wind, soggy dogs snuggled up to us. We were thus able to completely justify springing for a motel room for the night. Plus, hey, we'd been out for three nights already and could probably use showers. We'd get cleaned up and get a good night's sleep. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

The two motels in Florence were both booked full with mud-covered refugees from the nearby Renaissance Festival, so we continued on southward toward the bright, welcoming glow of Tucson that we couldn't begin to see because it was so foggy and wet.

As we rolled into the city, the sun peeked out from under the clouds and set the Catalina Mountains aglow for a few short minutes. After that it seemed that most of the glow was coming from row after row of carbon copy strip malls. We drove a long way through town but didn't find the strip of the cool, classic motels where we imagined ourselves spending a quiet night. We ended up just off the interstate in a motel that seemed just fine. Until we tried to sleep.

On the balcony above our room, all night long, staccato Spanish mingled with the clip-clop of high heeled shoes. Transactions went down, exchanges were made, services were rendered. Each time another, uh, customer passed by, the dogs would leap off the bed to protect us, barking and growling. All night long. Well, not really all night. Just until 4:30 or so. This was punctuated by speeding motorcycles, trucks and emergency vehicles passing by on the interstate highway. We could have slept better in a cold, wet tent flapping in the wind.











We did get cleaned up, though. And after a late morning, we decided to make it a "town" day. We'd explore the local art scene and check out the town. But we hadn't done much planning, so our results were somewhat underwhelming. We stumbled on one gallery that we liked, but most of the other art was too southwest kitsch for us. We did walk around the Presidio district and see a few of the designated tourist sights, but were drawn, rather, to the older homes and buildings in the area and to the winter gardens. We completed our day by stocking up on more food and snacks, even though the truck was still overflowing with food and snacks that we'd brought from home. Then we got out of town.















It was still chilly, windy, and a little bit wet when we drove east and hit the dirt road up Reddington Pass. There was a piece of the Arizona Trail near the top that we wanted to check out the next day. But as we ascended the ragged switchbacks, we wondered if maybe that was a dumb idea. Both sides of the road were lined with trash. The heaps of trash and the plastic shopping bags stuck on bushes and cactus were concentrated at several informal "shooting ranges" that we passed, where gang-banger types in hooded sweatshirts were blasting away with pistols, rifles, shotguns, and maybe even fully automatic weapons. We kept driving.

A few miles away from the most active shooting sites, we turned off onto a side road to find a camp. We rejected several on the basis of the accompanying heaps of broken bottles, piles of busted plastic, and mounds of shell casings. Then found a spot where very little shooting had been done, and called it home for the night. We set up our tent and a tarp barrier against the wet wind. Not long after dark, the sound of distant gunfire died down and we slept peacefully through the night.

AZ: Superstition Mountains in the Rain

As we fled southward we passed one promising sight of spring. Near the upper end of a reservoir where the water had killed all the trees, the whitened branches of the standing snags were filled with nests. Cormorants, great blue herons, and way off, aloof, watching and watched, a bald eagle and nest.

The herons seemed to be solitary, but the black shapes of cormorants were paired up and making lovey dovey neck dances with each other. Quite charming through the binoculars, though our cameras couldn't really bring it close enough.



Further south under skies darkening with clouds and the approach of night, we fell off the main road onto the grandiose Arizona Highway 88, which looked sorta like it might take us somewhere we could camp for the night. The pavement quickly vanished, the road narrowed through steep, cactus covered mountains and briefly skirted ledges above the green water of a reservoir.

We turned off the rough main road onto a dusky track and soon found a spot to camp amid the saguaro, cholla, ocotillo and other prickly plants of the desert. We took a short stroll as the light fell out of the sky, while hidden birds cast their night cries to the still air. A small scorpion was hiding in the rocks of the fire ring and Trina tucked her pant legs into her socks, "just in case".



A breeze sprang up while we sat around the fire, reading with dogs in our laps. A scent was carried our way and the dogs leapt up to stare into the darkness. Trina's headlamp reflected back in a pair of eyes looking our way from deeper in the desert. Sprocket wagged his tail and whimpered to be unleashed so he could run and play with the visitor. We never saw what it was, though. Desert fox? Coyote?

A little rain had spattered the tent by morning. We packed up and made Trina her coffee, but we didn't eat breakfast, thinking that we'd rush on down the road and grab a civilized meal in the next town. Foolish thought, it turned out. The road wound deeper into the Superstition Mountains, and soon we were surrounded by deep craggy canyons, hidden green pools, cactus covered slopes, and towering yellow cliffs that glowed under the dark skies. Despite the wind and spatters of rain, we found ourselves unable to "rush" toward breakfast or anything else. Instead we kept leaping out of the truck to take a better look at the surroundings.











Our closer examinations led us to discover that the yellow of the cliffs was the result of a layer of bright lichen that coated most of the light colored rock, perhaps enhanced by the moist day. We also found hidden flowers blooming amid the crags. The dogs romped with a little too much abandon, at least until they re-acquanted themselves with the nasty cholla cactus, and re-learned to avoid most of it. We finally fed ourselves from our vast stockpile of food and gave up hope of reaching civilization, opting instead, to enjoy ourselves more slowly than we had "planned". Which is always our best plan.

























We did eventually make it out of the mountains, skirted the wicked edge of the greater Phoenix area, and bolted southward as the rain began in earnest. On the way into Florence I took a rainy dashboard photo that was almost exactly like the rainy dashboard photo I took last year on our way into Florence. I'm not sure if it's always rainy in Florence, or if we just go to Florence whenever it rains in southern Arizona.

AZ Fossil Springs

Words: Greg
Photos: Greg and Trina



We woke to panicked cries of woodpeckers mingled with the quieter twitters of other birds. Fishscale clouds rushed over from the south, but the air was calm and the river pool was a mirror where a great blue heron hunted on stilt-legs in the shallows. Patches of blue sky between the clouds competed with the bright flash from the wings of western bluebirds.

We lingered a short while, then headed for new places. The dirt road rattled us onward and upward onto a high mesa. We left the truck and rode our bikes on an old road where patches of snow lingered in the shadows and where a cold wind cut over the ridge and through our clothes. "Hey, this is like home!" Maybe too much like home.







Seeking warmth, we hoofed down a trail through juniper and scrub into a canyon where a small stream of clear water flowed through wide sandstone pools past the camouflaged trunks and bare branches of sycamore trees. We followed the stream downward to where sandstone and rubble turned to flowing pools of arresting green. A huge spring poured crystal water into the flow, creating a bright oasis of vibrant water plants and mosses. Ranks of bare trees lined the pools, waiting for spring, waiting to leaf out, to shade this sanctuary of wetness amid the dry country that surrounded it. Wild creatures, I'm sure, are attracted to the water, but we saw only birds and the smallest of creatures.







On a warmer day, we might have been tempted to enjoy a dip in the cool water. But the early afternoon's thin warmth was blowing away to the north as clouds poured our way. We climbed back out of the canyon into the cold wind and into the truck where we rumbled into a mountain town for lunch. Rumors in the local cafe were that it would surely snow the next day.

Snow was not really in our plan for this trip. We pointed the truck southward on fast pavement toward lower elevations and hoped we could dodge the storm.

AZ: Navajo Rez Mural Project

Photos and text by Trina



Our drive south took us through the Navajo reservation where we noticed these huge, old and peeling photographic murals on many of the delapidated and abandoned buildings. Turns out they're part of a street art project by Chip Thomas.



A doctor who has worked on the Navajo nation since 1987, Thomas taught himself black and white photography and did his first photo installation on the Navajo reservation in June of 1990 2009 (corrected per Chip's comment below), after seeing similar murals on the streets of Brazil.





Perhaps I haven't dug deeply enough yet, but in researching Thomas' project, I haven't been able to find anything in his words addressing the "why" of the project, other than the fact that he saw something similar by someone else somewhere else and liked it, but it seems fairly obvious that the imagery, especially its monumental size, speaks to Navajo pride and identity based on sheep herding as a lifestyle. From what I've read on his blog, he seems to be working pretty intuitively, not thinking a lot or pontificating a lot about why he's doing what he's doing, but it seems to work nicely, even at its most random.





For really edgy street art that is very consciously making political statements and pointed cultural critique, check out Banksy.