Dam and Done: Along the Trail in Sabino Canyon, Pt 3

Here's the end of my photo tour of Lower Sabino Canyon; and not a day too soon! Tomorrow night is the Weekend Assignment, and I just got the email for my online FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) seminar's first assignment, due in a couple of days. Wait, haven't we been here before? Yes. I just about killed myself struggling through most of the first assignment for the 41-day version of the seminar, only to drop it in favor of this later 61-day version. Reason: I got a job and couldn't handle the heavier workload of the shorter seminar at the same time. Now I'm jobless again, and the coursework will be heavy but doable.

Well, anyway. Back to Sabino!

Let's start here, at a stone wall within a few hundred feet of Sabino Dam. My rocky trail started to run parallel to a road after about 0.4 miles, right by a convenient restroom building, with modern plumbing and everything. The side path to the restroom, it turned out, led toward Sabino Dam itself, which the main trail only looked upon from a distance, it turns out. The trail led past this nice old stone wall, and also some of that nasty orange netting as a temporary fence nearby.

Surprisingly, there was no wall or fence when I reached the actual dam. I could have waded right into the water at the top of it. Of course, this would be a very bad idea, especially in January.

Here's another angle on the dam. That path makes it look as though people actually do go down to the water to wade.

Here's the dam as viewed from the main trail. Can you see it? Perhaps it will help if I do some zooming and cropping on the next shot:

And now you see why I think wading at that spot I photographed earlier would be a bad idea, even in summer. It would be like swimming in the river just above a waterfall! Then again, I've actually swum in waterfalls before - Buttermilk Falls (probably the one outside Ithaca NY) and at least one little waterfall in the Adirondacks somewhere.

After that it was another half mile or so to the end of Bluff Trail, which deadends into Bear Canyon Trail. It was about 4 PM by then, and shadows were getting longer. I love the way the saguaros I photographed along the way were silhouetted beneath a patchwork of little white clouds.

From my Picasa album Sabino Canyon 2009

Here's one more shot for Carly's "Rocks or Stones" theme. I love the way someone placed different colored rocks along the top of this wall when it was built in the 1930s (probably). Were they being artistic, or just having fun?

The Bear Canyon trail at the end was desert scrub and grassland, with (unfortunately) private homes to the south of it, but an excellent view of the mountains to the northwest. I'm not going to show you any more photos in this entry, because I'm overloading the blog as it is, especially for those of you who are still on dial-up. But you may want to check out my Picasa album of the Sabino Canyon day trip for lots more photos of this beautiful place.

Karen

Rocks and Water: Along the Trail in Sabino Canyon, Part Two

Last night's narrative about my Monday hike in Sabino Canyon ended with me entering mountain lion territory before starting down a rather steep trail, bound for Sabino Dam. Let's pick up the story there:

Once I made my overly cautious way down the first step of Bluff Trail, the downward grade turned out to be more reasonable than I originally thought. It made its way up and down through the foothills of Sabino Canyon, not attempting to be the easiest or fastest possible route, but not being particularly devious or rugged, either. I spent most of the long walk panting, but my exercise-induced asthma never kicked in, and after a while my legs were pleasantly sore.

Soon the trail overlooked Sabino Creek on my left, which briefly widened into Sabino Lake. A couple of guys were down by the water on the other side by way of a different trail, but on my side it was a long way down. I stayed on the heights and kept going.

One of the more interesting and picturesque moments along the trail came not from the water on my left, but from the rock formations right in front of me, soon to be next to me and directly overhead. The trail got a little steep and tricky here, and I picked my way a bit. But it was well worth it for the view and the photos.

Meanwhile, though, the lake on my left opened out into a small sandy beach. Tucsonans sometimes joke about Sabino Canyon being the only place in the area where one can go to the beach. In fact in summer, people sometimes do go wading.

Here is one of the stone outcroppings along the trail, with a bird's nest on a sapling growing out the side of it. At first I accidentally saved this picture with the bird's nest on top. I still think it looks better that way.

A good look at the outcropping as I went past it made me almost wish I could try rock climbing someday. But even if I had the nerve, which I clearly don't, my poor coordination and often-injured ankles would make such an activity a very bad idea.

Guess I'll settle for walking past the rocks instead, on a well-defined nature trail. Here's the view looking back.

I still have more photos I want to show you, but I don't want to overload any one entry. We'll get to the dam and the home stretch tomorrow night. See you then!

Karen

EMPS: Cactus and Rock: Along the Trail in Sabino Canyon

Last night when I read Carly's EMPS assignment, Rocks Or Stones, I knew where I wanted to go, but not whether I could do it. That question was answered at 8:05 AM Monday. My recruiter called to say that the CPA firm that hired me last week emailed that they were indeed pulling out of the location where I was working. I'm unemployed again. I'm disappointed about this, and a little worried, but not devastated. The silver lining, at least for the day, was that I could indulge in a fairly ambitious rockhunting excursion.

("It's not fair!" John grumbled later. "I have to work all day, and you get to go for a hike in the country!")

The Santa Catalina Mountains are a collection of rocks.

A mountain, if you think about it, is essentially a really big rock with bits broken off and stuff growing out of it. So I headed for the mountains. I've done this before for other photo challenges, but usually I've taken Catalina Highway up Mount Lemmon. This time I had a different destination in mind.

"Salt potato rocks" along Sabino Walkway.

Here we are in Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, part of the Coronado National Forest. I used to come here several times a week in 1986, when I was new to Tucson and vaguely working on a book about local Critters. It's probably been well over a decade since my last visit, and I've been meaning to go for some time. Sabino Canyon is only about ten miles from my house, and it's a beautiful place. I've also been interested in checking on its recovery from a major flood in 2006, which took out one of the nine stone bridges along the 3.8 mile, pedestrians-and-official-vehicles-only road. I saw little evidence of the damage today, largely because I didn't stick to the main road. I took a few of the trails instead - over two miles' worth. That doesn't sound impressive until you look at the terrain I covered, which I'll be showing you over the next few nights.

Rocks abound, especially in creek beds, making for natural building material.

The roads, bridges and buildings of Sabino Canyon were built by three Depression-era agencies: the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC). Between 1933 and 1937 they built roads, bridges (originally called "check dams"), picnic tables, fireplaces, restrooms, a ranger station and a few other large buildings, mostly out of stone. Many of these are still around, but some were destroyed or damaged in the flood. But a group called Friends of Sabino Canyon has been working to preserve and restore as much as possible.

One of the nine stone bridges on the main road.

Back in 1986, I used to occasionally take the tram to the top of the road, back when it cost (if I recall correctly) $3. Later I used to stick to the Lower Sabino Canyon and Bear Canyon area. Prices have gone up over the years, of course. Admission used to be free, and now there's a use fee. I bought an annual pass for not much more, so I can start coming here often - not as much as in 1986, but enough to make the pass worthwhile. I did not spring for the tram ride, which is now $8.

A rock. Not exactly an ancient petroglyph!

I started out on a trail to the right of Upper Sabino Canyon Road, called Sabino Walkway on the map. It ran parallel to the road for half a mile, and most of the many walkers and hikers were using the road instead. But I stayed on the trail, taking pictures of rocks and desert and phainopeplas, a kind of bird that lives on mistletoe berries. It had been chilly in the city, but once I got going I was warm enough to stuff my jacket into my oversize purse, and use the latter as a knapsack.

A route to the Dam - but not the best route.

When I crossed Bear Canyon Road I saw this sign, and asked a couple of middle-aged hikers for advice. They suggested that I should keep going, and then take the main road to another trail that went down toward Sabino Dam on the right. "There's plenty of water down there," they promised.

No, I wasn't eaten by a mountain lion.

I followed their directions, and soon passed a very different sort of sign. Right after this, the road dipped rather steeply downhill, and before too long I reached Bluff Trail.

This photo doesn't really convey the angle of descent.

The steep beginning of it, which I remember taking on a regular basis when I was two decades younger, was a little daunting for someone who has had several seriously sprained and broken ankles since then, and done precious little hiking in recent years. But the couple I'd spoken to had been unconcerned about my ability to handle the trail, and the memory of my younger self pushed me on. After the first step, the initial stretch of the trail wasn't so bad.

And after that? It got modestly hairy at times, but the spectacular views made up for it. But you'll have to wait to see those tomorrow night, and possibly the next as well.

Karen

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Weekend Assignment #166: Name the three songs you listen to when you totally want to rock out. Note that they don't actually have to be rock songs -- they can be in any genre whatsoever, and from any era. They just have to be the songs that get you pumped up and ready to go.

Extra Credit: And name one song to cool you back down.


The song that comes to mind first is (as you probably guessed from the header) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. (Blogger doesn't like the link to the Wikipedia article, so here's a link to a page that can get you there.) The Devo cover of the song is fun, but the Stones version is pretty much the only non-Beatles recording I'd consider naming the best rock song of all time. In fact, Satisfaction probably is the best rock song of all time. According to the Wikipedia article, different All Time Greatest lists have put it at #1 and #2. And yet, we don't have it on CD. Odd, that.

In the Beatles oeuvre, uptempo division, there's lots to choose from: their cover of the Isleys' Twist and Shout, and their own compositions I Saw Her Standing There, Back in the U.S.S.R., Helter Skelter, and so on. I think I'll go with Get Back, 'cause of the Tucson reference in it.

I should have picked something from my favorite Beatles album, since I took the trouble to photograph it and fix the perspective. The vinyl version of Revolver was the first Beatles record I ever had. But what's rocked out on it? Taxman? Got to Get You Into My Life? Well, maybe. My favorite song on it is In My Life, but that's not a rocker, either.

The third selection has to be something by The Clash. There's plenty to rock out to in the first two albums, but I favor London Calling, the first Clash LP we bought and a little more sophisticated, but not as experimental as Sandinista! Let's go with the title song, London Calling itself. Or, if you like, we can skip ahead to Rock the Casbah from Combat Rock.

To cool down in tempo, but not in impact, my eye tonight falls on Simon and Garfunkel. The Sound of Silence isn't exactly slow or peaceful or comforting, but it does end with a definite movement in the direction of silence and introspection. Their older recording of the song, from Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., is less rocked out, and thus better for the Extra Credit here.

Having said all that, I must tell you that my current musical obsessions are none of the above. For about a month, I was playing the Beatles remix CD, Love, a couple times a day in my cubicle at the office, popping it in my computer and playing it though headphones as I worked. Now it's on light rotation on my computer and in my brain, along with the Back to the Future soundtrack. The heavy rotation goes to the new series Doctor Who soundtrack CD by Murray Gold. It's not exactly rocked out, but there are a couple of songs I'm obsessed with (I came up with an alternate lyric for one line that doesn't make sense), a nice rock instrumental in Westminster Bridge, and some rather haunting melodies in the more traditional scoring, especially The Girl in the Fireplace and Doomsday.

*****

There's another reason I named this entry for the Stones song. As of tonight, the daily nagging from Symantec to renew my Norton software was down to 1 day from expiration, so I renewed. It took hours and hours and two reboots, filled up my hard drive and tied up my computer's RAM and dial-up bandwidth, so that I couldn't really do anything else except read a few emails and struggle to clear a little disk space on my C drive. So I've barely touched the Round Robin postings again tonight. Sorry! I'll get there.

One more thing that was less than satisfactory today: you may have noticed that I finally put a comment policy on my sidebar. There have been several comment spams this week, plus a random insult. Much as I love getting comments (and I really, really do), a comment that has nothing to do with the entry is a letdown. It's just empty words. If you're going to tell me this is a "cool blog", or words to that effect, you should be prepared to show that you've actually read something in the cool blog. Otherwise I'll probably assume it's just a lame excuse to add a link. As for the insult, it was so non-specific that again, I have no reason to think the person actually read the entry, or anything else. It wasn't controversy, or dissent, or a genuine criticism, or a basis for discussion. Therefore it's gone now. I'm never thrilled with actual criticism of my words, but I'm far more likely to let it stand than random name-calling. I'm itching to tell you what this particular insult was - the disemvoweled version is only 4 letters long - but that's giving it more attention than it deserves.

Karen