Aravaipa Canyon

This Labor Day weekend Josh and I took a trip down to Tucson to see some friends and to do a little backpacking.  I've been hearing about Aravaipa Canyon from my friend Megan for years now, but somehow I managed to never get there while I was living in Arizona.  She organized a trip to the canyon for the holiday weekend, so we decided to pack up and head down south to join her and some friends.  We got in a couple of days of hiking and camping, and also got to visit with a bunch of our old friends in town.  It was pretty great.

Aravaipa is this amazingly gorgeous, riparian desert canyon about 1.5 hours northeast of Tucson.  It's like a different world than Tucson.  There are huge cottonwood trees and cattails, towering stone walls and beautiful side canyons.  We hiked in for a few hours before finding a decent camping spot, then we dropped our packs and continued up canyon and found a really great swimming hole up one of the side canyons.  The night stars were amazing, the water was cool (even though the temps reached 102 while we were there), and the vegetation was lush and green and beautiful.  The entire canyon is about 12 miles from end-to-end, and I think we saw only about half of that.  It's amazing how much slower you hike when you're trudging through the middle of a river and having to find your footing among the river rocks!  This place is definitely on my list of spots I'd like to return and spend more time in the future.

PIE!!

We've discovered that in New Mexico, every tiny little town has their own special festival of some kind.  Deming has the Duck Races.  Hatch has the Chile Festival.  Roswell has the UFO Festival.  And Pie Town, of course, has the Pie Festival.

Some of our cycling friends attend the annual Pie Festival every year, and convinced us to join them.  The area around Pie Town is really pretty, and there are some rock climbing spots that our friends are familiar with and have camped at before.  We decided to camp in one of these places the night before the festivities. We got rained on.  All night.

The population of Pie Town is supposedly over 2,000, but driving through town you'd swear that there couldn't be more than 30 people there.  Along the main road, the town basically consists of two pie shops.  Nothing else.  The Pie Festival in Pie Town has been going on for over 30 years, and from I gather, it's pretty much the most important day of the year.  I can't say I had huge expectations going into the weekend, so I also can't say that I was underwhelmed by anything.  It was pretty much as I expected.  There was some great people-watching, there were silly arts and crafts, and there was lots and lots of pie.  I may or may not have splurged to buy a Pie Town tshirt.

The pie-eating contests were definitely the highlight of the day.  I laughed so hard during the children's contest that my sides hurt afterwards.

And then Josh and Brianne found out that they are never likely to become competitive eating champions.  I can't say I'm sad that I didn't give it a shot... I just don't like pie that much.  Give me a mac'n cheese eating contest, and then we'll talk.  Overall though, the festival was a fun time.  Not sure I'll be itching to go back again next year, but in terms of broadening our New Mexican-experience horizons, I'm definitely glad we attended.  And the pie was pretty tasty.

Back to the old MC

Last weekend we visited the 2012 field school at Mule Creek.  Sam and Kelly came over to Albuquerque from their new place in Portales, and we all loaded up in Sam's new truck and headed south for a few nights.

It was great to be back in Mule Creek and to see the new work that this year's crop of students had completed.  We got to spend time hanging out with our friends, sitting with our feet in the creek and drinking beer, and I even got to dig a hole in the ground!  Not much more I could ask for out of a weekend away.  The students this year were totally different than the gang from last year, but still a pretty fun bunch to spend some time with.  The site is still turning up some pretty interesting stuff (ahem, although none as cool as what I dug up there last summer) and hopefully they are now in a better position to answer some of the questions they had about what was going on there way back in the day.

Josh is always a very good sport when we visit archaeological sites, even though I know he is usually pretty bored by it all.  So on the way home from Mule Creek, we stopped by the Very Large Array and allowed Josh's ubergeek to jump out of the truck and run around taking photos of big huge satellite dishes.  He was very excited about it.  [As an aside, I was admittedly underwhelmed/disappointed when I realized that there were not nearly as many dishes at the VLA as had been shown in the movie Contact.  Those jerks added like 100 computer-generated dishes in the background!]

Havasu Falls (aka Definitely The Most Beautiful Place in Arizona)

This past weekend, for what was a very-belated-30th-birthday-present, Josh and I backpacked down to Havasu Falls.  (I gave him the permits for his birthday in June, but reservations for these permits have to be placed a few months ahead of time.  And the weather in October is way better than in June anyway.)

We had a fabulous time on the trip, and I can say that this is by far one of the most beautiful places that I've ever seen.  And so unexpected, right in the middle of the desert!  A true desert oasis.  I can't recommend this place enough for those who are looking for a fun and beautiful trip.  The hike is 10 miles each way, and with the exception of the first (and, therefore, last) 1.5 miles, it's really not all that bad.  Josh has already written about our trip and posted some photos on his blog, so I won't write much here.  But I will post some of the photos I took on my camera.

(click on any of the pics for a bigger view)

And, of course, Red Wine in A Nalgene!

Mt. Graham

This past weekend we had made plans to kayak and camp along the Gila River for a few days, but our plans were sadly thwarted when it turned out that the river was too low.  A backup plan was created: camping up on Mt Graham, in the Pinaleno Mountains.

We camped with a few of my new coworkers, and found a great little campspot along Grant Creek, about five miles from the top of the mountain range.  I'd never been up into this mountain range before, and it's incredibly beautiful.  Luckily, we brought a few good tarps along, because we got rained on all night.  Poured on.  Hailed on!  Despite the rain, we managed to cook a tasty dinner, enjoy some wine, and have a great time.

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

I'm back in Gallup for a few day this week, and then I'm headed up to Wyoming for a little road trip action with Mom and Arlie.  And then Josh and I are going to backpack down to Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon!  Should be a pretty awesome couple of weeks, and there are guaranteed to be many pretty photos.