Tucson Wash Trail

We enjoyed a pretty Arizona sunrise this morning. It's our last day here. We'll move on to Flagstaff tomorrow, and we'll be on a serious trek toward home with just a few more sight-seeing items along the way. 

We were slow getting moving yesterday morning. Possibly rattling our bones on our ride the day before made the difference. I noticed this sign...somewhere...in internet land. It seemed to capture the spirit of ATVing.

There was enough time to finish off the 8th thimble. I'm getting antsy to get home so I can wash and press these.

We're running out of our favorite ice cream bars. Not wanting to drive 30 miles into town for more, it seemed as if it was a good time to try out a new dessert recipe. As you might have noticed, I've been on a quest to turn dessert recipes into "for two" recipes as much as possible. This was one of these. I riffed off a recipe I found in Food & Wine for Maple-Apple Upside Down Cake. The original recipe was baked in a cake pan, and it made enough to serve 12. I wanted to see if I could pare it down to no more than 4 servings, and I wanted to bake it in my 8-inch cast iron skillet. It worked out great. Here's how it looked coming out of the oven. 

So far so good. I had to pare down the ingredients and adjust the baking time. It was finished around 10:30 a.m., and we had riding to do. We didn't taste it until after dinner, and oh my...it was a winner. 

I'm going to share my adaptation, but I need to warn you about the maple syrup. When I boiled mine to reduce and thicken it, I boiled it just a tad too long. Then, when I poured it into the cold cast iron skillet, it turned to hard candy almost immediately. So, watch your maple syrup and don't boil it for too long. Secondly, I suggest warming your cast iron skillet just a little bit so that the hot syrup doesn't harden when it hits the cold pan. 

Here's the recipe. I don't have the Paprika app on my computer (poor planning on my part), and so I have to share a screenshot from my iPad. 

Okay, so enough of this sugar worship. Let's get on with the riding. 

We drove north about 20 miles to the small town of Mammoth, Arizona. (It seems a strange name for such a small place. As with so many things, no one consulted me.) From there, we drove a short distance on a dirt road to a large staging area. When we rode in Colorado, we were sharing the trails with lots of people in all sorts of different vehicles. On these rides in Arizona, we've had the trails to ourselves. We started and ended by riding under this railroad trestle.

We rode past rocks in all colors, red, white, and black.

Through volcanic narrows.

Through wide open spaces and veritable Saguaro cactus forests. It was good to see so many healthy-looking Saguaros. Out here, they are free from molestation by humans and industry.

We passed by the abandoned McKinney dam. I tried to find some information about this, but The Google let me down. I believe that's the second time this trip. I might need to cut its pay if this continues.

There isn't a lot to say about the dam itself, but the recent rain left some moisture in the ground. The butterflies were there by the thousands. They land on the dirt and draw moisture from there. Surprisingly, there were thousands of little tiny frogs hopping around. They were so quick, it was hard to get a picture of them. I ended up taking a half dozen or so shots, just hoping I would capture something. In fact, I caught these two little guys. They are about the size of an almond.

Moving on, we headed up a steep incline. The roads were less punishing than the day before. Fewer rocks is easier on the body. These steep inclines are easy enough to ride up, but then scarier when coming back down. 

From the top we had a nearly 360 degree view of the valley below and the mountains beyond.

That the road we came in on in the image below.

We saw more bright yellow lichen at the top.

Riding on, we came to this watering hole. We'd ridden over a cattle guard at the beginning, and we saw lots of "leavings" from deer and critters of the bovine and equine variety. 

In many places, we felt as if we were in a botanical cactus garden, just looking at the varieties of cacti.

In the lower left corner of the image below, you can see a barrel cactus just finishing up its bloom.

A little farther on, we came to the source of some of the "leavings." They were a little nervous about us, but not overly so.

Riding on, we found another abandoned dam, but it wasn't mentioned in our trail book.

In the image below, Mike got off his ATV to scout out one of the scarier drop-offs of our ride. It was rocky and steep, but still doable. 

As we came to the end of the trail, we rode through more rocks and narrow passages to a graded road, and then back to the staging area.

There weren't as many wildflowers, but I captured these notch leaf phacelias. I recognize these from having seen them bloom in Death Valley.

We saw many of the same butterflies, but they rarely light. These are the cloudless sulphurs.

Seeing them in flight, I could see that their wings had black tips. I was motivated to find an image online so that you could see them too.

(Photograph by Donald Hall, University)

Okay, and that was the end of our ride, and pretty much the end of our day. Our shadow selves were standing tall after their successful ride and return to civilization.

We're still mulling over what today will hold. We may ride another trail, or we may take a hike in nearby Oracle State Park. Or we might hang out and do nothing. Any one of the three is equally likely. We'll see, and you'll find out tomorrow. Consider this your blogging cliffhanger.