Christmas Vacation Part One

So we just got back last night from our Christmas vacation back home to Mass. We were there for a week but it felt like two days, if that. I'm writing this as I "work from home" and Eric watches nature shows from our long DVR list.

Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures. I don't really know why, but I'm guessing it was because we were just too busy. It was weird being in MA because it felt like we had just been on vacation to AZ and were coming home to MA, but when it was time to leave to go back to AZ, it felt like we were going home! Follow?

I won't give a detailed blah blah blah of our itinerary, just the highlights as I remember it and I'm sure Eric will fill in the rest later.

Wednesday Sean, Caitlin, Eric and I went to Quan Yin vegetarian restaurant in Worcester. This was a place we used to frequent when we lived in the Woo and we were so excited to be back. Everything on the menu is vegan. YUM. While we were waiting for our food a local "gangsta" came in and asked if it was a restaurant. We told him yes. Then he asked if it was all vegetarian and we told him yes. He was confused and make a comment about how skinny he was already and while holding his stomach said something like "I need some meat" and left. Ahh Worcester, we then started to remember why we love that city so much.

After Quan Yin we obviously went to Wholly Cannoli to get Dynamite Sticks. YUM. They have a new store next to where their old one was. It seems like the Phantom Gourmet's taking to the Dynamite Sticks may have helped out this once tiny Worcester pastry shop.

We left Wholly Cannoli to go to the Living Earth to pick up some food for the week. It felt like we never left Worcester.

Now the action picks up, Woo-billy style. As we were driving away from the Living Earth, a big pick up truck with blazing Red Sox stickers comes barreling down the already tiny-without-huge-snowpiles-on-either-side street. In the opposite direction on the street, because the sidewalks weren't plowed, was a man in a wheelchair wearing all orange and a woman walking next to him in all orange. The truck didn't slow down and nearly missed them. It was frightening, but not entirely surprising.

Next we were driving down May St. to get home. A bus had just let off a bunch of kids from school. I was looking out the window when all of a sudden I saw a weird dog hightailing it up the street. I yelled, "Look at that weird dog!" and Eric says, "That's not a dog, it's a coyote!" And it was running toward the kids. We kept driving.

Finally we were waiting to take a left turn onto Southbridge St. The light turned green and the car in front of us started to turn when all of a sudden they slammed on their brakes because a Jeep had just run the red light from our left. We proceeded with the turn and only to see a cop turn on it's lights and pull over the Jeep! Classic.

And that was just the first day.

Weaver's Needle

I can't get enough of the Superstition Mountains. Maybe it's the name, or maybe it's how utterly quiet it is there, or maybe it's the unbelievable landscapes, but I'm completely hooked and I'm not even looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine! Friday afternoon I headed out to the Superstitions for the night with my friend Chris, who is also an ASU grad. student. Chris is a much more experienced hiker/camper than myself. I bought new backpack for the occasion and a Camelbak hydration system. I finally got to try out my bivy tent for the first time. Chris knew a good spot where he had camped before and where you could get a great view of Weaver's Needle. I was not disappointed.
Weaver's Needle is a volcanic plug. It's the imposing rock formation in the far background of the is picture. I had seen pictures of it before, but it's much bigger in real life. This picture was taken probably between 2 and 3 miles away.
I took these two pictures at night. They're long exposures. They look dark at this small size, but if you click on them you'll see that they're detailed pictures. Those lines aren't shooting stars, they're regular stars moving across the sky. I left the camera shutter open so long that it tracked their movement. There are some planes that sneaked in there too, probably on their way to Sky Harbor.
Though shooting stars are too quick to be picked up by my camera at 200 ISO, we did see some. I never saw so many shooting stars in my life until I moved to Arizona.
It's rained a lot here recently. The desert was green and intersected with many streams. Usually those washes are dry, but they were all flowing when we were out. It was really cool. You can see how the canyons and rock formations are made when you watch the water flowing through it's ancient paths through the desert mountains. There was evidence that a few days earlier water levels had been much higher.


This is how Weaver's needle looked from our campsite.
Here is an example of the kind of rock formations you find in the Superstition Mountains. I'm assuming they're natural. These rocks were right next to our campsite. They look like children's blocks stacked up.

This path, which I think was the Black Mesa Trail, lead from our camp toward Weaver's Needle. Chris and I went to bed really early Friday night because it was cold and what little wood there was around was too wet to start a campfire. It got cold. Real cold. Water condensed on the inside and the outside of my tent and when I woke up around sunrise, it had frozen into sheets of ice. My sleeping bag is insulated to be warm down to 15 degrees, so I just closed up the top and I was alright, but I was astounded by how cold it got. I left the tent intending to get some pictures of Weaver's Needle during the sunrise, but it was so cold that I just rushed back into my sleeping bag! When we finally got up, around 8:00 AM, we scrambled up this path, chasing the sunlight that was shining on the rocks higher up in the canyon. We climbed up on the rocks and sunned ourselves like cold blooded desert denizens. So much for being homeothermic!
Here's our camp. Chris's tent was behind the acacia tree. I walked into the prickly pear in the foreground a couple times.
Above, another picture of Weaver's needle while the sun is waning. Below are some photos I took of desert textures, particularly of different cacti.
This is dead prickly pear.
This is an up-close shot of our desert nemesis, the jumping, or teddy bear, cholla. They drop nasty cholla pears that are covered in the sharpest, barbed spines. I've avoided them so far...
I have not, however, avoided prickly pear. This is a close up shot of a prickly pear.
Here is an abandoned dove's nest in an ocotillo.
A dead tree seems at home in the desert landscape. It's interesting how the cacti huddle beneath it's corpse an gather a little bit of shade.

As usual, my feet were the bane of my hike - I walked pretty much all the skin of the small toe of my right foot, but it was totally worth it. Next time I'll know to protect that area with moleskin or something. That Saturday afternoon we hiked out, gave some folks some directions, hung out on overlooks, marched up switchbacks, and checked the view. Chris is a good guy and encouraged my tyro's distracted fascination. I've always loved New England's ghosts - not literal specters, but the feelings and presences of the place. I think I've found Sonoran ghosts in the Superstitions...and I'm hooked.

The Gold King Mine Museum and Ghost Town

While in Jerome, Erin and I visited the Gold King Mine Museum and Ghost Town. As it was Thanksgiving day, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It is definitely a tourist trap. It's kind of like paying $6 to walk around a quasi-organized junkyard. That doesn't sound too cool, but it ended up being a pretty rad trip.

Ok, we didn't take this picture of this dude(I ended up finding it online), but we met him and he's awesome. He was working the saw mill when we were there. He asked where we were from, and when we said "Tempe" he said, "Is that part of that rat race down there in the Valley?" He asked what we were doing there and I told him I was studying at ASU. The next day we ran into him in the center of Jerome. He was driving an antique car with a California Highway Patrol car door fastened to the front of it and the biggest shotgun I have ever seen hanging out the passenger side door. He was just getting to the car as we passed. He stood on the door frame of the driver's side door and addressed me with, "Hey, you a professor yet?" Then he directed our attention the CHIPS door and said, "I ran into someone on my way back from California." He called the car his "going to town car" and when I said "That's a big gun!" he just said, "Yep."

As if that dude wasn't awesome enough, while we were at the Ghost Town, he introduced us to a mammoth donkey (Pictures are forthcoming...we took pictures of the donkey with a Holga camera, but forgot to get some digital pictures). The donkey's name was Pedro Gonzales Gonzales Gonzales. The dude had a dirty "Vote for Pedro" patch on his hat. Anyways, we were looking at these goats and hanging out with Pedro Gonzales Gonzales Gonzales when the awesome dude came along and started feeding the donkey and the goats donuts. It was hilarious.
The donkey didn't like the cream inside, so the awesome dude fed the goats the cream part and the donkey the pastry part.

We saw this bus on the way into the ghost town. I want it really bad. It's a cabin bus.
I think this dirty mannequin is supposed to be a hooker, but I don't know why.


When I was young, I went to my Uncle Burt and Aunt Mary's trailer in the woods in Douglas. Uncle Burt had a huge collection of broken down cars, trucks, and RV's. If only they had known that such a collection could qualify as a ghost town, perhaps they could have capitalized on all those wrecks!
"If Clinton's the answer, it must be a real stupid question."


This sign is paid for by JFPO, or Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, Inc.

I have read some reviews online of The Gold King Mine Ghost Town, and some were rather disparaging. Sure, there are a lot of busted buildings and wrecked cars, but fun is what you make it. This place is really quirky and the people there are friendly and interesting. Also, for six bucks, it's a pretty cheap way to spend an hour or so just poking around in neat old stuff and watching hoofstock eat donuts.