Mount Lemmon Arizona

The talk on Christmas Day was of what to do? The cold front had passed in a series of prolonged heavy showers on Christmas Eve and at first Cousin David demurred from the idea of satisfying my curiosity about what lay at the end of the road that we could see winding up the hill above the house. On hearing our determination to drive up in the van he caved and decided to drive us and see for ourselves no matter how cold it might be.

It wasn’t that cold, which is to say we wore our puffy jackets above five thousand feet and the windchill made me feel like a small child coming in from playing in the snow but these days it wasn’t cold enough to put me off. We even saw a few snow patches near the end of the road around 8,000 feet. And yet they were bicycling. 

Cousin David thought the idea of us driving our van up Mount Lemmon might be too much. The road is wide and smooth and full of pull outs which most slow pokes I noticed declined to use. This is not a road to drive during busy times with any expectation of enjoying the road itself. I thoroughly enjoyed being a passenger. 

In discussing driving up the mountain I speculated  out loud the spelling probably indicated a person rather than a fruit. I expected amount Lemmon was named for some man prominent in the history of the area. 

The short version is Sara Plummer grew up in Maine and moved to New York to teach gym and art to young ladies and where she had pneumonia so at age 33 went West to Santa Barbara in 1869. She opened a bookstore met botanist John Lemmon and fell in love. 

I read her story on an Arizona Highways website  and I must say it’s worth a read. She and her husband traveled the west during the height of the Apache wars collecting specimens and painting. They were an extraordinary couple ending their marriage in their Berkeley home when he died and she subsequently lost the will to live. The mountain was named in her honor as the first white woman to climb it. That phrase has an old fashioned ring but I guess she worked and earned the honor. 

In 2021 you see a man in a top hat and he looks dressed up in fancy dress. All I could think was what an odd place to spot an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.  

David wanted to hike a trail so we stopped and looked for one. I found the altitude slightly debilitating and the cold air didn’t help, what there was of it at 7500 feet. 

We found areas that had been burned by a wildfire. 

The distant horizon was a mixture of blue shadowed ridges, puffs of wispy clouds and glimpses of the valley floor. 

The village at the end of the road, 8,000 feet up looked shuttered for Christmas and deserted not surprisingly. One restaurant was open the other wasn’t nor was the convenience store. 

It looked like what is was, a shabby collection of uninhabited buildings between seasons. It none of the flair of a dedicated ski resort as the season must surely be short but as a summer destination it looked like a construction site preparing for better years ahead. 

I’d like to come back in summer. 

This place must be a lively and welcome respite from summer heat. 

It was dark and damp on a sunless winter day. 

There is a windy point lookout with views across the city. Rusty took one look at the noisy yelling crowds taking selfies and turned to a quieter unused trail round the back. Good boy. 

An 800mm lens on a bridge camera, my FZ1000 gets you close. 

My boy finding his own trail. Dogs on leashes can go all over the mountain and we saw quite a few. 

We met the cyclist below at a pull out, Zach from Houston, struggling to climb the mountain stopping every twenty Mounties to climb and stopping every so often to descend frozen by the wind chill on a forty degree day thousands of feet up. Gnarly. 

Below 5,000 feet the grasses grew thicker and the air felt warmer, but around 4,000 feet the Saguaro reappeared as if by magic. 

David rode the brakes down muttering about the grade. I suggested using the manual gear box for engine braking to skate the brakes but he ignored me muttering about the strain on the engine. 

Which to me is weird inasmuch as the same driver will happily ride the freeway at eighty with a loaded car and no thought of the engine straining   Boiling your brake fluid would be a wake call though. I enjoyed my day off from decision making. 

And so back to Earth and Cioppino for dinner. 

Second Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day. Even a retired old fart, a young one like me, is forced to remember what day this is so let's start at the beginning: Happy Thanksgiving!  My favorite holiday is still excellent on the road. 

I gave thanks yesterday when I saw the roundabout sign marking a new intersection under the bridge from Pensacola Beach. Traffic circles beat stop signs and lights and when the protocols are ingrained you'll see far better traffic flow. Yield to traffic already in the circle. Simple. The British have been doing this for decades, so how much smarter are they? Precisely. Let's get with the program.

We went to the beach yesterday and ate fish. I had to walk the beast first of course. Rusty loves to see what's outside when we park the van in a new space, so I dealt with that while the women got in line. When we came back to the van after lunch I found a huge indentation in Layne's pillow so I think he slept soundly while we ate.

Some call the Florida Panhandle the "Redneck Riviera" because it's where southerners come to take a seaside vacation. Some Floridians  describe the panhandle as South Alabama as it's more rural and piney than the traditional Sunshine State scenes of palms and mangroves on postcards. It's only part of Florida because that was the shape of the land when the United States bought La Florida from Spain in 1819. The US got the land in exchange for boundary definitions further west and promised to pay Spanish settlers five million bucks to settle any claims they might have arising from the transfer of nationality (!).

Spain found Florida to be a  financial burden and wanted to get rid of it which was all well and good but then Mexico became independent and repudiated the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 which required some diplomatic finesse to fix the new borders.  I imagine residents of this area must have been feeling somewhat uneasy about their national status as they never knew if they were going to get cable TV in Spanish or English for all those years of uncertainty. Things were only settled between Mexico and the US by 1832 and only until 1846 when things took a bloody turn but that war did not involve Florida so who cares? Maybe we'll take a look at that history when we're in Big Bend.

When you look at Florida's coasts and see what massive money makers they are full of realty contracts and tourists it's hard to imagine what a pit Florida must have been in 1828 when Key West was founded. The peninsula was a steamy mosquito riddled mess, full of yellow fever which periodically killed anyone it came in contact with in the sparse settlements. There were no vaccinations in those days and no one knew where yellow fever, a deadly plague, came from in the first place. So they put the capital in Tallahassee, located in a milder climate, and held on hard to the panhandle as the only part of the state fit for human habitation. Except for Key West, the port city with a reasonable climate and lots of trade which made lots of money. 

Peg Leg on the beach was recommended by Therèse our local guide and she was spot on. We had the best fried grouper bites ever, delicate batter and moist fish inside. The cooked oysters were excellent too, one a weird cheese and jalapeño concoction and the other a classic Rockefeller. The boiled shrimp were not brilliant but I didn't want to  sound the grump horn so I supped my beer and enjoyed the atmosphere on the deck. 

My friend Webb who follows assorted sports as well being something of a gymnast himself as befits a solo sailor of some repute, told me Manchester City was facing off against St Germain des Pres. Manchester versus Paris and he knew Therèse's ancestry rooted in France...so we had some rivalry ready to go when Therèse spotted the game on a television:

Perfidious Albion smacked France and I allowed myself, a non sports fanatic, a mild gloat so the day was perfect...

I enjoy the possibilities of van life created by the mobility of a 21 foot Promaster which we can drive and park pretty much anywhere a car can go. However there are also some drive up possibilities for people in boats:

When I lived and traveled on a sailboat I did this a couple of times but this kind of drive up is really meant for people in power boats easily maneuvered. Pretty cool though. 

The place was vast, no one wore masks so thanks for the patio dining. 

We were in two cars so Therèse and her sister in law went for a drive through Fort Pickens, a National Park site but we had chores to do, some light shopping. It's getting dark early, so by 5:30 it feels like the middle of the night.

Rusty loves moochdocking, and takes advantage of sunny lawns, watching the world go by, and then he goes inside and collapses on the bed.

Therèse's sister in law has an allergy to dogs she says but she noted yesterday that she hasn't met dogs like Rusty and she said she actually liked him. He is pretty non intrusive as you can see. He doesn't bark (unless there is a reason) to the point I'm not sure what his bark sounds like, and he won't beg unless you induce him to annoy you and he spends his time minding his own business. 

Have a good holiday if you are in the US and I have to go as this second Thanksgiving appears to be on track to be as elaborate as any and I wasn't expecting this. Seven people and a million dishes. Here we go.

Work Day

We are on the road tomorrow and I am ready. I have had a grand time hanging out with northern cousins and I'm looking forward to coming back next Fall when we drive south from Alaska, but I have to say the road life suits me as much as I expected it might. More friends to visit but more road miles to mash as well. Excellent.

I crept out of the house this Moochdocking Tuesday morning and walked Rusty as far as he wanted to go through this neighborhood where fences and trash cans are not allowed, where leaves are neatly piled in the gutter and lawns are properly mowed. 32 degrees is too cold for me but for a few days its an enjoyable change.

The end of season vibe is strong here with leaves changing color and falling everywhere but I still have the sensation of being on vacation. We are hoping to cross the Mississippi at the beginning of September, breaking new ground as it were aiming for central Texas and later the Big Bend. It will be a return to van life after finishing our last goodbyes. Poignant but necessary goodbyes.

Monday was a work day in the neighborhood chased by a single trash collector in his automated truck, heated closed cab and all. We paid a fair few tips to our trash guy in the last weeks as we piled stuff at the curb in the October heat.

After the collection that recycling cans with yellow lids and the trash with green lids disappear out of sight into garages, by local rule I'm told.

I have read that the best thing to do with the fallen leaves is to mulch them back into the soil as nature intended but around here they follow the modern fate of disappearing in the name of tidiness. One can only suppose they will eventually go back to the soil by some devious path. I hope.

Rusty was walking slowly and carefully eyes wide open in case other dogs might appear.  One loud barker came on a front lawn held at bay by the permitted buried electric fence. Rusty ignores barkers and wanders on in silence.

I don't know why, but I was slightly surprised to see a school bus in such an adult oriented community but there it was:

I saw lots of decorative cabbages and I'm not sure what they are but they look just right among the leaves. 

Winter? Winter!

Rusty was ready to get back indoors. He doesn't seem to feel the cold but he loves hanging in Lynn's home. She is completely easy and he has a selection of couches, carpeted rooms, my bed, his bed and so forth. I shall pry him back into the van tomorrow...

He gets bored by the conversation and ends up doing this, pulling down a cushion and using it as a pillow:

Lynn put us to work helping her manage her extensive list of neighbors and friends at holiday time. She makes rather delicious nut clusters and I was curious to see what was what.

Three chocolates, dark milk and white were heated first and then Mr Muscle mixed them up while Lynn threw some Spanish peanuts into the mix. More heavy stirring...how she does it by herself I don't know because it is a heavy mixture.

Wax paper covered in chocolate land mines. Quite delicious though you have to wait till morning to allow them to set. In the meantime clean loose chocolate from face hands and clothing if, like my wife you are messy (!).

All work and no play makes me a tired boy so David pulled from Kitchen Patrol and we went and drank beer and talked at Yard House. I had Guinness which they seemed to offer in an endless supply so I did my best to make a dent in there overhead stainless tubes supplying the draught pumps.

Our instructions were to bring dinner home so David the tech geek got the menu on the phone and we pondered options, sausage salami garlic broccoli (!) olives and so forth split in two halves on the mobile menu. Time meanwhile for yet more Guinness. Yum. 

So the fuzzy photo was not helped by two factors: quantities of Guinness as drunk by me the passenger had the predictable effect, and the weight of the damned pizza was the second factor. I have never before picked up a pizza box that nearly upended me. This Chicago deep dish stuff is no joke, thick and as dense as a brick and quite delicious. Well, we got that done. That may also explain the tardy nature of this post. Apologies.