Tours--Assorted and Sundry

I've found myself on a few organized tours and a few de facto tours over the past few months, even though I've been roaming just around the western United States and everybody speaks English and I should be able to find my way around on my own. Sometimes, it's just easier or more interesting or more fun to join a group with a guide.

The most recent of these tours were in Sedona, Arizona with my friend Georgia two weeks ago. We covered everything from cowboys to vortexes. The Latin-style plural of this word is "vortices." However, as a native speaker of vernacular English, I find that "vortexes" sounds more natural. They are both listed in the Oxford dictionary. Georgia turns up her nose at "vortexes" and says that's only one example of why she no longer considers the Oxford dictionary to be an authoritative source on grammar. Interestingly enough, even as I am typing this sentence, the spell check in Blogger is now showing that "vortices" is misspelled and does not have a dictionary entry for it. Did I mention that I met Georgia in a writing group?

But back to the tours!  The classic tour in Sedona is a jeep ride in the red rocks. Our driver was a retired steel industry executive from Indiana who now drives jeeps while wearing a cowboy hat and spurs, with a bandolier full of bullets draped over the seat back. He never did use the spurs on the jeep--he probably didn't want to scratch the pretty red paint. But the jeep ride was fun and took us through some really pretty country.

Georgia smiling even though she had to get up too early...

We found a list of more unusual tours at Sedona Summit, the timeshare resort where we stayed. Of course, when staying at a timeshare resort, the tour to be avoided at all costs is the one that ends in a lengthy sales pitch. I refused to sign up for the sales pitch about 8 or 9 times, then snagged a list of resort activities. Patrick Houlihan, a former director of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, leads a few tours for Sedona Summit. I loved the Heard when I visited it last year, so we signed up for two local tours, figuring Patrick would give us an interesting anthropologist's perspective. And bonus, he turned out to be funny and entertaining, as well as knowledgeable.

We went out to hear about the vortexes Sedona is known for.Over the years, I"ve hiked to and stood on three of these vortexes. I myself have not felt the energy. Patrick took us to parking spots from which we could overlook the general areas of four of the vortexes. I couldn't tell for sure if he's a believer or not. At first, I thought no. Then I thought maybe. By the end of the tour, Georgia and I were thinking maybe he doesn't feel the energy himself, but he keeps an open mind. I can't help feeling a bit skeptical, mostly because these vortexes first became popular in 1981 when a psychic living in Sedona announced them to the world. She first promoted them in somewhat Buddhist-like terms. Later she switched to somewhat Native American-like terms. On the other hand, I have often felt some special energy when I've stood in a particularly beautiful, wild place. Usually that doesn't happen if there's a crowd gathered at the spot. And usually in Sedona there is a crowd gathered at a vortex. So, whatever idea or place helps someone focus on their own spiritual path is good by me.

 This photo shows the energy from the Bell Rock vortex sucking in Georgia's hat....

...and here the vortex is sucking my stomach fat sideways towards Bell Rock.

We made the short hike up towards a vortex in Boynton Canyon. On the trail, we met a man who handed us palm-sized flat pieces of sandstone carved into heart shapes and said, "I want to give you a piece of my heart." Patrick told us he's there every morning, and gives a sandstone heart to every woman he meets. He was quite sweet. And another night, I felt quite an energy surge from a Mexican waiter who kept pouring water for us. I theorized that perhaps he had been spending time at the airport vortex, which puts masculine energy into people, but Georgia scoffed and made some disparaging comments about precisely what energy surge I was feeling.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, further south in Tucson, my friend M and I joined the Tucson Hiking Meetup group for their weekly Friday night Sabino Stroll. It's a very easy two-mile walk up a section of paved road in Sabino Canyon. It's still light out when they start, but since Arizona insists on  marching to their own syncopated drummer and refuses to switch to daylight savings time, it gets dark early. The group advises participants to bring a good flashlight because rattlesnakes may be lolling about on the warm pavement after dark! And, apparently, scorpions are out and about in Sabino Canyon after dark, too. 

Phil, the young man who leads the walk, is a scorpion expert. He brought an ultraviolet light and shined it over the rocks and there were scorpions everywhere glowing in the dark! (Note to self:  never sit on a rock in the dark in Arizona!) M and I hung to the back of the group on the way down so we could walk with Phil and catch all the scorpion action. Phil had two friends, a female college student and an older gentleman with a gray ponytail, who were also really into scorpions. So we're walking down this road, in the dark with our headlamps. Phil and the girl have ultraviolet lights and are scanning the rocks along the edge of the road. A hopeful boy is following Scorpion Girl, trying to make friends. She is lecturing him, in very scholarly style and a loud voice, about scorpions. I said to M, "This is like one of those crossover TV episodes where the characters from one show visit another show. 'Big Bang Theory' meets  'Survivor Man.'"

When Phil spotted a scorpion, he'd try to catch it and put it in a vial. I was puzzled, and asked him why he'd want to catch them. He collects them, and keeps "about 40 or so" in his house. Also, his brother has a business in which he sells scorpions to people who collect them as "pets" or feed them to "pet" snakes. Phil could identify the species of scorpion and knew what regulations governed collecting for each (as well as assorted other insects, arachnids, arthropods, and reptiles we encountered that night). I asked if any ever escape inside his house, and he admitted that it happened once, but it was no big deal, because it went into his roommate's bedroom and was never seen again! I said, "It must be hard to find roommates with all those scorpions in your house." Turns out the roommate is his brother.

Most of the scorpions evaded Phil that night. He said they're quick when the weather's so hot. And they were! He did catch one-- a big one-- which he placed on the front of his shirt and let it run around--on the front of his shirt--while he told us about scorpions. He's very knowledgeable, but I was so freaked out that I don't remember much of what he told us. He was confident that this scorpion would not sting him, unless it got inside his shirt somehow and got smashed against his skin and felt threatened. He repeatedly used his fingers to herd it away from his collar and sleeves while he talked. Then he set it back on the ground and it scurried away into the dark. 

As we proceeded down the road--in the dark--Phil and the older gentleman swept their flashlights along the pavement several yards out ahead. They picked out the reflected glow from the eyes of  wolf spiders standing on the pavement. There were even more wolf spiders than scorpions! (Note to self: just stay indoors after dark in Arizona!) The older gentleman was very knowledgeable about wolf spiders and filled us in on the health and activities of the spiders we met. For example, one was probably sick and starving because its abdomen was very small. The next was thriving, because its abdomen was full and round. And a pair facing each other from a foot apart were engaged in courtship behavior.

And then...Phil made the big find of the evening. A baby gila monster right on the edge of the pavement! It was only about eight inches long and really cute, even though it was a venomous reptile. I'd seen an adult gila monster a few weeks earlier, and it was shy. It crawled off the trail and took cover under a pile of branches. But this little one was fierce. Phil was shining his flashlight on it and trying to get close enough to take a picture with his phone. It hissed at him, twice, then jumped at him! At that point, he backed off because he didn't want to harass it (I don't think he was concerned about the venomous reptile thing at all).

 M and I were both thrilled to see the baby gila monster and cringed at the scorpion on Phil's shirt and found the whole scorpion crew to be delightfully odd. When we got back to my apartment, M made me turn on all the lights and investigate every piece of leaf or paper or dust lying on the carpet. And I was a little jumpy for a few days afterwards!

M was with me on another off beat tour last fall. We found ourselves in Monument Valley watching sunset and moonrise over the huge rock formations known as the Mittens.

Monument Valley is just astonishing. It's on the Navajo Reservation and the tribe limits access by outsiders. There's one dirt road you can drive on your own, and it's not very good, so even though I'm always saying how much I love my Subaru with all-wheel-drive, I felt hesitant to tackle it. Plus, if you sign up for a tour with a Navajo guide, you get to go on other roads and see more.

Our first stop was a demonstration hogan where a grandmother demonstrated traditional weaving and a traditional hairstyle. When she asked for volunteers, I shoved M out into the middle of the circle, and said, "You have to do it. You have the flowing black hair for it." And the rest of the women in the group, me and several Germans, all had short haircuts. One of M's great grandfathers was Navajo, and our tour guide was the first to take a long look at her face and ask her nationality. The lady doing her hair saw it, too, and asked.

You can see in this photo that she took an immediate liking to M. 

 It was another jeep tour, but this time with billowing clouds of dust.

At one stop, we saw this petroglyph of Kokopelli lying on his back.

The evening before, in the jewelery shop inside the Navajo-owned The View Hotel, a young Navajo woman had told us a story about Kokopelli and a girl who refused his romantic advances. He followed her to where she was bathing in a pond, then hid underwater and used his flute to impregnate her. This petroglyph has to be about that story!

And finally, a tour that M and I decided not to take just a few weeks ago in Yellowstone National Park. When I was there last year, I talked with a man from back East who'd seen grizzlies and wolves on a tour with a wildlife biologist. We didn't see any! So I had it in mind that we could increase our chances of wildlife sightings if we found one of those tours. I did find a couple online. But they cost about $300 for a one day tour. And poking around on their websites and the Park Service websites, it didn't seem as if the tours provided access beyond the main roads open to everyone. So we decided to save our money--and then spent most of it buying jewelry and huckleberry ice cream in West Yellowstone anyway. But we put together our own "tour" of Yellowstone, which consisted mostly of driving over every one of the park's major roads and pulling over at geysers until we'd had enough and never wanted to see another geyser as long as we lived. We did go on one quasi-tour, a free guided walk with a ranger around West Thumb Geyser Basin right on Yellowstone Lake.

The ranger was a fun speaker, so people kept joining the group as we walked, until you could barely make your way through the crowd. 

But it was free! And I was really glad we didn't spend the $300 and get on the bus...

...because here's the gray wolf we saw on day 2 of our self-guided tour.

Ambushed by a Pregnant Realtor!

I've been in Tucson for a couple of weeks now. People here are always warning me about all kinds of dangerous desert denizens. I've seen two rattlesnakes (one was huge), a gila monster, and a scorpion. None of them came after me, though.

Here's the huge rattlesnake crawling away from me.

But one morning, I was driving around the Catalina Foothills area of town, getting a feel for the area, looking for cute patio homes at foreclosure prices. I saw a "for sale by owner" sign and followed it into a neighborhood that was obviously too expensive for me. As I pulled up in front of the house, a well-dressed woman came out of the house and got into her car. I rolled down my window and called out, "How much are you asking?" She told me, and it was way too much. I smiled and waved and drove slowly away, cruising the neighborhood. I heard honking, and wondered if she was telling me I had a flat tire. But I've been conditioned by my time in Tanzania to never stop when a stranger honks for fear of being robbed. OK, not really. But I kept driving. As I circled around a few minutes later, I heard honking again and noticed the same woman following me. So I stopped the car, and got out to talk with her. She was a realtor, and almost let me drive away, until she saw the out-of-state plates on my car, which marked me as a likely target--er--customer. She got out of her car and said, "I hope I didn't scare you." At which point, I noticed that she was about 8 months pregnant, and said, "No, you didn't scare me," and tried not to laugh. She whipped out her business cards and asked what kind of house I was looking for. I explained that I hadn't decided to move to Tucson, but maybe I would someday, and now I'm on her email list. Which, actually, I don't mind because I enjoy looking at the houses for sale. So, pregnant Arizona realtor: less aggressive than the "flat tire thieves" in Arusha, Tanzania but more aggressive than rattlesnakes, gila monsters, and scorpions.

My vacation rental is in the Catalina Foothills area, so it's right up against the Santa Catalina Mountains and the desert. Lots of birds. Lots of hiking trails. Beautiful early mornings. Scorching hot afternoons. At my first rental, the parking area included a gate onto the Ventana Canyon Trail, so I made that my morning workout. It wasn't a very vigorous workout, because the desert so captivated me that I spent a lot of time photographing flowers and sitting on rocks watching birds.

 Purple Paddle Prickly Pear

 Cardinal!

 Greater Earless Lizard

 Saguaro flowers and buds.

 Don't know what this little guy is--my entomology training is failing me.
*Update added May 23: My new hiking friend Andree suggested this might be a bee assassin. This would put it in the order hemiptera, or true bugs. I thought of that, but wasn't sure, because true bugs usually have a diamond pattern on their wings. But a ranger in Sabino Canyon told Andree that this is breeding coloration. So there you have it: bee assassin looking for love.*

 Cholla flower--not as spectacular as the saguaro flowers. Cholla specialize more in thorns.

 Bee pollinating saguaro. Bats pollinate them, too, but I haven't been awake late enough to see that. Click here for a TED video on pollination that includes some incredible footage of bats pollinating saguaro flowers (thanks for the link, Janet!).

 Saguaro forest in the middle ground. And you can't see it, but there's a ravens' nest in one of the little caves up high on the peak in the background.

I was sitting on a rock at the edge of the trail with my binoculars trained on the cliff, waiting for some raven action. It's more like a monocular for me. My contact lenses are formulated to correct both horrible distant vision and always increasingly horrible reading vision. So my right eye sees through the binoculars fine, but my left eye (with its bifocal contact lens for close and middle vision) sees everything in a blur through the other side. Just something for serious middle-aged birdwatchers to think about before buying off on the whole monocular contact lenses thing.  Anyway....as I was waiting on those ravens, two ladies hiked by fast. Just past me, one of them said to the other, "Oh, I've never seen one of those before." And they just kept on walking fast! I jumped up to see what they'd spotted, and it was a gila monster!

 No, it's not a good picture, but it's all I got! He's in there, the orange and black spots underneath the branches. He was about 12 inches long.

I can't believe those ladies didn't stop to watch him. I guess that's the difference between a workout and a nature walk.

My first rental had a lovely second-story deck that was shaded in the mornings, with a couple of saguaro and a nice mesquite tree surrounding it. The downstairs neighbors had a big bird feeder, so the mornings were a frenzy of birds...

 ...and javelinas!

 Curve-billed Thrasher on a saguaro flower.

White-winged Dove on saguaro.

 Gambel Quail

 Gila Woodpecker...

 ...digging under the rocks.

 He briefly wondered if I was a threat to him with my camera. But he decided no, and went back to work...

...and emerged with this dead lizard for breakfast.

But I had to leave the first rental and its lovely deck, because the downstairs neighbors not only feed the birds, they smoke--a lot. The cigarette smoke permeated my rental and really made me ill. But the wonderful Canadian owners of the condo refunded part of my rent because, they said, they didn't want me to be uncomfortable or suffer ill health effects in their condo. As sad as I was to leave behind the deck, I feel much better in my new rental. Renting to snowbirds (retirees who spend the winter here and the summer back home in a northern state) is huge business here, so it was really easy to find another rental on homeaway.com. 

This is the almost-courtyard outside my new front door, where I sit in the evenings and read and watch the hummingbirds fight and gaze at the Santa Catalina Mountains in the background. Plus, the pool here is better!

 Meanwhile, back in Ventana Canyon, hiking really early on a Sunday morning...

...with my really fun new friend Sue, whom I met at a hiking event I found on meetup.com, we found more desert denizens--not dangerous, but a little creepy because of their near-perfect iridescent gray protective coloring.

 Can you spot the 3 inch long Canyon Tree Frog?

 Thanks to Cynthia for the ID!

 There are five Canyon Tree Frogs in this photo. Start at bottom left with a vertically oriented frog nestled into a crack. Got him? A bit to his left, find a wide crack in the granite and follow it up until you are about one-third down from the top of the photo, and find a vertically oriented frog nestled in the crack. Diagonally to the right of that frog, just below the black band in the rock, find three frogs huddled together, one horizontal and two vertical above him.

About a week and a half into all this blissful desert hiking, I realized that I'd barely ventured into Tucson at all. So I drove down to the University of Arizona and cruised the prestigious Sam Hughes neighborhood. The adobe houses were adorable, nicely maintained and painted in a surprising array of colors, and xeriscaped to die for. But I didn't get any pictures, because apparently parking is a problem so close to the university, so the streets were lined with "Parking by Resident Permit Only" signs. I headed over to 4th Avenue with its collection of student-oriented bookstores, cafes, bars, and tattoo parlors. And there I saw the most impressive, and puzzling, desert denizen yet....

...a giant Easter Island head sitting outside a bar. He started his Tucson career at a miniature golf course.

I think I need to spend some more time in the city and develop a feel for what Tucson's all about. I thought I was getting it when I saw the gila monster on only my second day here, but this Easter Island thing has set me back a bit. Anyway, I'm going to a Padres (AAA league) baseball game tonight, so that will be a good start.