Christmas Feast

Brenda misses her turkey and all the trimmings, or maybe she just misses cooking for hours and hours. So this year she decided that she was doing it all. We got a fresh turkey, bread crumbs and all the rest and she spent a glorious Christmas Day making all her favourite side dishes. We had a roast turkey that was about 5 times bigger than we could eat, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots and turnips, homemade cranberries, and of course real stuffing right from the bird, all dressed up with her great homemade gravy. And to finish it off we had shortbread cookies, both Pecan and Butter tarts, along with chocolate mints, homemade turtles, and peanut butter balls. And to top it all off we managed to coax Ivan and Hailey in from their usual desert haunts to help us with the feast.

Ivan slipped in on Christmas Eve and we had a great session catching up on all the details of his travels this winter and his firefighting endeavours last summer. Although we both winter in the south and only live a few miles apart on the Northern Ranges we don't actually bump into each other all that frequently. Ivan's blog keeps us reasonably up to date on his activities but with my somewhat infrequent blogging we had lots to share.

While Brenda was working her magic in the kitchen Christmas Day Ivan and I took a whirl in the side by side out to the Petroglyphs along Vekol Wash.

It was a nice day for a ATV ride, not to hot and not to cold, and we wandered up through the Petroglyphs contemplating who and when they were put there. It turned into a sunny warm day and we sat on the side of the hill enjoying the sunshine and having a good chin wag. If anyone has any questions about the state of affairs in the world today or concerns about how they are turning out, you can let your minds rest at ease, I hazard a guess Ivan and I solved most of those issues over the past couple of days. Now if someone only comes to find out the answers.

We did have a couple of locals wandering about while we were there also.

All in all a pleasant day, topped off by a wonderful meal.

A Different Kind of Trail Ride

As Al from the Bayfield Bunch would say Yahooie Louie, Brenda has made it to Arizona. I ran into Sky Harbor to pick her up on Monday afternoon. Enroute I had some things to gather at Costco to start her re-provisioning of the place down here at Dogpound South. I guess the bag of spuds, package of steaks and jar of peanut butter that I had wasn't satisfactory.

I spent a large portion of the weekend dusting and vacuuming around the place here but as I expected she was soon redoing everything. Tuesday morning she was off to Fry's for a big grocery re-supply, so I headed off swimming so I was limbered up for the hauling the big load into the house when she got home. I am trying to get a swim in on most weekdays, nice to have the great Copper Sky facility so close, and usually for most of my swim I have the pool to myself.

On my last solo journey out into the desert with my ATV I met some hikers coming out of a wash, I stopped to chat with them and turns out they are from Canal Flats in British Columbia, having recently retired and moved there from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. Turns out they know our daughter Lacey. They also have an ATV and told me that they would give me a shout next time they were heading out.

Friday evening I heard from Paul and Linda, telling me that they and another couple, Brad and Carol were going to run down to Vekol Ranch late Saturday morning with the ATV's. I met them at their place a few miles from Dogpound South (DPS) and off we went. Now in the past when I am out there by myself I just poke along, but these guys cover ground in a hurry. Amazing how fast you can actually move with these machines and the suspension just eats the bumps. And seeing how I had no idea where we were going I had no choice but to keep up. That sometimes is a challenge as you want to stay far enough back to avoid most of the dust but close enough so when they take a fork in the road you don't miss the turn. I am a decent tracker and given time I could probably figure which way they went, but at the pace they set, pondering the turns would just put me further and further behind, so driver her McGyver was the order of the day. They did stop along the way for a cool beverage though.

As this was my first trip out with a group I had brought along my extra gas can, just never know how far this guys we're going and I don't yet have a good handle on how far my outfit will travel on a tank, so better safe than sorry. After asking that question they assured me they never really travel more than a tank of fuel on a trip as they would have to leave some coolers full of beverages home to make room for gas. I'll know for next time. Bigger coolers and smaller gas jugs, Got it!!

After a short break we headed south up Vekol Wash, under I-8, and soon arrived at a spot they call Vekol Ranch, an abandoned set of buildings. Rumour has it that it was inhabited as recently as the 1970's, but I am betting water levels dropping caused it to stop flourishing. The old well sounded pretty deep but a rock dropped down it just hit a dry bottom after a long fall so that probably confirms my theory.

Stone and Concrete

 The house was made out of cement blocks and all the walls and outbuildings were fashioned from stone. The fireplace below as well as a big fireplace inside the house were also built with stone. Probably hauled in from the mountains you see in the background and obviously, from the green tint, a copper rich environment.

Outside Fireplace and possibly Cooking Oven

We ate our lunch at this stop as well.

Lunch spot

After lunch we continued on south to another spot where some enterprising folks had built a kind of stone boundary complete with lizards, stone, and other figures outlined with local stones. A lot of work went into this and it appears that most folks are respecting the work and leaving it be.

Stone Art

It would be interesting to talk to the artist and hear just what it is meant to signify, I think it is pretty recent stuff, unlike the Medicine Wheel we came upon while riding up near Wickenburg. This was the southern terminus of our trip and we basically followed the wash back up to the Petroglyphs I was at a couple of weeks ago and then on to DPS. Overall we traveled about 50 miles through the desert and it appears that I had lots of fuel left, I think I am down to 3/4 of a tank now, so I might be able to leave that jug at home.

Petroglyphs

Yesterday I decided to take a run out into the desert and see what I could see. I have heard for years about these petroglyphs but they are a little far for a ride from DPS, about 10 miles one way with the CanAm although you might be able to knock a mile or so off of that on horseback. But that is just a short run with my new ride, so I made a loop of about 25 miles out of it.

Petroglyphs

 The whole hillside is covered with this prehistoric art, obviously someone or probably many someones had a lot of time on their hands. I need to go back and take some better shots but I think I will wait till it cools off a little more, it looks like a snake rich environment, and although I didn't see any I wished I had some tall boots on while I was clambering about.

Ribs

I did find this Millipede, who had not survived the summer heat or something. Usually they are a kind of reddish colour and this fellow looked pretty bleached out so he might have been there a while.

I am guessing that the artists who did these petroglyphs were actually just killing time while they watched this vast plain waiting for dinner to come walking by. It must have been a much wetter time as I can't imagine a lot of game wandering around there now, although I have seen deer in the mountains to the south before.

Today was the first of the winter series barrel races so I headed up there for a while and took a few pictures.

Sue Coleman

Connie Volk

Jasmine Naffarate

C.C. Cochran

Always good to see fast horses at work. I think they had about 40 riders and the weather was beautiful, mid 70's.

Brenda headed down to Toronto for her Rare Disease conference, she will be there all week, returning to Alberta on Friday. After a day or two of resting up from the long flight home she will be joining me down here at DPS.

Desert Rain

Yesterday I headed into town to Fletchers Tire for a 12:00 appointment to get my summer tires balanced and installed. I headed next door to Dave's BBQ for lunch. Great rack of ribs, and big enough to bring some home for todays lunch. It was pretty slow getting the tires done, took three hours. Once that was done I headed home. Donally's invited me to dinner with them Connie and Les Volk and Rene' from the Pinal Country Cowboy Church. The dinner was excellent and the company great.

Today Century Link was coming to work on our internet, it has been a little slow so they figured it needed a tune-up so I was home for the morning till they got done.

After lunch I thought Blue II and I should head for the desert for a look see at what was happening out there.

There's a roadrunner with a rider in that tree somewhere.

There was a storm rolling in from the south but it looked like I had time to make a loop out the wash then back in on the road. I dawdled along checking out some side trails and I guess I should have saved them for another trip because once I got around to the road that storm was moving fast in our direction. We jumped up into High range for the road ride back and Blue II is a lot faster for a lot longer than the original, but we still got caught in a downpour the last few miles home. Needless to say with rain and thunder the dogs were glad to see me home. It is still raining lightly an hour later but it is clear and sunny off to the south so I expect we will start drying out soon.

Where does the Time Go?

Wow, it just seems like yesterday we were back from our Picacho Mountain ride and here we are a week later. Over the last week we have done a few interesting things and really haven’t had to much time to lay about so I guess that makes the time fly. We got home last Sunday morning and Bill and Margaret were here to greet us. Margaret was flying back to Terrace for a visit with her mom Liz and Bill is going to hold down the fort here with us at Dogpound South. Shouldn’t be to long before Brenda puts that handy kind of guy to work around the rancho here. So I thought I better get him out on a horse before he got put to work.

We took a spin up Vekol Wash and because there is a minimal amount of cactus along the trail this is one that we take the dogs along with us.  Tuesday was a day to catch up with our neighbours and we stopped by the McKinney’s place to convince them that they better be coming with us on Wednesday up to Black Canyon City. We also had a visitor from above, now we know Ivan has headed over the hill to the East so wonder who is controlling this surveillance drone.

Well we were up at Terri and Chucks place talking trailriding we managed to also get ourselves invited to dinner there and enjoyed some great steaks and all the trimmings.

Wednesday we were off to the Black Canyon Trailhead north of Phoenix to connect up with the Skyline Trail and cut through to the Little Pan Trailhead. Wow, is all I can say, each and every time we get behind “K” and Teresa they take us on an even more beautiful trail.

Here is a shot of our trail leader and friend “K” and his partner Amigo.

This trail has a lot of ups and downs we crossed that river below and began yet another climb up to the ridge tops. It is hard to isolate just a few pictures here so I will share some of my favourites and you can follow this link to all the rest I took that day.

Coming round the mountain, Brenda and Willow

The crew from the left Chuck and Terri and their dughter Taylor, Brenda and I, Lisa (Terri’s friend) and our guide “K”

K’s better half Teresa was down below this old Indian Fort holding onto the horses.

The ride was fantastic and I could have gone back the next day and done it all over again, but Thursday was our day at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. There were a lot of beautiful horses here but my favourite event was the traditional dress class. Tough to imagine racing across the desert on a raid dressed in this fancy get up but I suppose it would reflect the sun back into your opponents eyes and blind him. There was a trade show associated with this event but it didn’t take us long to figure out that we didn’t have a high enough limit on our credit line to do much shopping there.

Friday Bill and I headed into Casa Grande to pick up a few supplies for a project we have next week and stopped in at Eva’s for a little sustenance. Of course after all that shopping and a filling lunch we thought we should take another spin up the wash and loosen up some muscles for the horses.

Saturday was the T.A.C.C. Gymkhana and Willow and I were heading out early in the morning for that event. It began with a Horsemanship Clinic where we did some groundwork and then it was onto the gymkhana events, starting with barrel racing, and a pole race and the surprise event was a cloverleaf barrel pattern. My niece Caron has ridden Willow pretty regularly at our gymkhana’s back home so she is pretty familar with the regular barrel and pole patterns but that fourth barrel in the cloverleaf pattern threw her off her stride for a second or two. Not that it matters she is still a much faster horse than I am a rider so with me holding her back we occupied our regular spot far down the time list. Nevertheless we had fun and that is what it is all about and we are figuring out the technical issues and our times are getting faster each time. By the time I am seventy and Willow is 26 we should be ready to take on the next faster class…lol.

As you can plainly see we are moving so fast that the camera can’t keep up.

 

Follow this link if you want to see the rest of our gymkhana pictures.