Humphreys Peak AZ

In what was later to become a cherished tradition we broke the tent trying to set it up at the Chaco Canyon campground. While pushing the pole through the tent sleeve the metal joint caught the sleeve and ripped it from the tent. While this allowed our tent to emulate a wind sock, it did not provide suitable shelter. After the tent raising folly we ate dinner and went to a park astronomy program and looked at Venus and the moon in the mini observatory.






The next morning we checked out the ruins and petroglyphs. They had little brochures along the way that told the history of the site and a very informative visitors center. Did you know the people there kept semi-domesticated turkeys by breaking one of their legs?

The final bit of road leading to Chaco Canyon was quite rough. The kind of washboard that feels smoother as you go faster. Thus as we made our way to and from at a good clip while our suspension was put through it's paces. Upon reaching Mesa Verde we parked and I heard a sound, I turned around and worked my way toward the hissing. I squatted down and there I found the inner portion of the rear tire had peeled away. The tire was rapidly deflating, but as luck had it we were safely parked. We had a full size spare, full of air, that I put on then and there.



















After a tour or two we went to the campsite. As it turned out we got our campsite for free. It must have been destiny. So we camped, showered, and did laundry at long last. Then we traveled to Flagstaff on the spare tire as tire selection in Cortez was not even fair. A new set of four tires made the trip much more expensive. The alignment was also out so we camped at a horse camp after getting an appointment for repair the next day. We awoke early and twiddled our thumbs till the auto repair place opened, and unloaded the entire vehicle so the alignment would be correct when it wasn't stuffed to the gills. We took a picture to make repacking easier.












Then we drove up to the base of Humphrey's Peak as if going to the snowbowl. We met a deaf young man who was not only highpointing, but apparently had decided to run all the peaks as well. It was very pretty on the way up. As we neared the top and got out of the trees we turned up a ridge, the top is not shown in the picture, but farther along.



Gnats appeared and became thicker and thicker with each step toward the summit. The dry volcanic soil did not seem like it could support them, but they were so thick breathing seemed impossible without a protein infusion. Perhaps the steady stream of fools capering along the path nourished them. On top we paused long enough to take a quick picture before trying to escape.











We had a fun time running on the way down some of the way. Tiffanee took some lovely photos of irises and we made tracks for the Grand Canyon where the promise of a shower pulled us like a magnet.

PS. In other humorous news we are falling further behind in posting. Apparently it is far easier to hike up a mountain than to write about it.

Holes and Hills - Wheeler NM

(May 31, 2006) A hole in the ground, it goes down into the earth to 1950s rebirth. The cafeteria is strange and reminds one of movies and hiding from fallout. It was closed mostly, as when in use it heated the cavern too much. So now it is tacky "futuristic" decor with vending machine cuisine. (We did not take the picture of the cafeteria.) The natural formations were much more beautiful than the man-made ones.






From there we traveled to Rockhound state park and paid to dig in the dirt and smash our hands with hammers. The park is especially known for its thunder eggs, but we mostly found perlite and a giant sparkly purple rock that Tiffanee made me carry out. It was exactly the same as all the other sparkly purple rocks that littered the area, but Tiffanee liked "that one". (It is legal to remove rocks from this park, unlike most.) From there it was onto Truth or Consequences, NM (yes that name was surely ingenious). I told Tifffanee for every summit we would visit a hot spring. I am quite a ways behind on that still. (June1,2006)



We passed through Taos (where the traffic was amazingly slow) and the Taos Pueblo on the way to Wheeler Peak. The structures were nifty and very organic looking. (Which is not terribly surprising since they are made of mud and straw.) Tiffanee had fun telling me about the history of the Pueblo revolt. The church was interesting because of the mix of Catholicism and native beliefs. There are two main great houses and one supposedly is primitive and one is more modern. To be primitive apparently involves using propane tanks and Coleman stoves, lanterns, and gas lighting. Tiffanee was hungry, but when it came to deciding what to eat it became very complex, or at least it must have been for it defeated us and we drove away with no food added to our bellies. (June 2, 2006)




Instead a quick linner of canned chili was prepared before we started our hike to Williams lake where we camped for the night. It was a short hike, but despite our preparation Tiffanee looked tired. Finding the perfect spot for the tent was probably more exhausting than hiking though for her. Decisions really take it out of her.

Once again we awoke early, but not as early as on Guadalupe. We left camp sometime after 6am and were on the Summit by 9am. The trail went fairly directly from our tent up the gully you see in the picture. Our tent is the baby blue speck. From there it went onto scree and merged with a main trail on the ridge top that led to the summit. On the other side of the ridge there were some skittish goats.


It was a nice easy hike. We called Tiffanee's mom from the summit to let her know we were alive took our requisite picture and headed back down the way we came. On the way we were greeted by what Tiffanee termed "a bold marmot." I think most marmots are fairly bold especially when they smell gorp. (June 3, 2006) Next stop: Chaco Canyon.

Lessons Learned: Them's the Breaks

So we were working on the house on July 2nd, and because we had rented a dumpter we were doing demolition. We were working on one of the bedrooms on the second floor known as the burlap room because previously the walls and ceiling were covered in burlap. Scott was knocking down plaster with a shingle remover and I was shoveling it into 5 gallon buckets. (Scott says I should mention that I suggested that we should stop for the evening because it was getting late but he said we should keep working because we only had the dumpster for a limited time. And he wasn't tired.) To make things easier we had lined buckets up along the wall where he was working to catch the falling plaster so we would not have to shovel so much. Scott started at the top of the wall, standing near the top of the ladder and worked his way down. About half way down the wall he ran into trouble and learned a few things:
"If you are planning to take plaster off lathe with a shingle remover be aware that the installers might have randomly decided to put a vertical piece of lathe on the side of a stud for no reason, and if they did your tool will likely catch on it. If you are standing on a ladder which is positioned on rubble when that happens the ladder will tend to slide in the opposite direction. If a brick hearth juts out of the floor and catches the leg of a sliding ladder, the ladder will tip over. If you fall off a ladder don’t land arm first, and if you insist on doing that (due to physics) don't stick your thumb in a 5-gal bucket when your hand goes outside of the bucket. It turns out that is bad for you. Quite educational really."

After he fell I asked if he was okay since I didn't see what had happened. Very calmly he immediatly said, "Emergency room." I ran downstairs as fast as I could without evening seeing the injury and grabbed my purse and tote, the cell phones, and Scott's wallet. By then he was walking out the front door and I saw his grotesque malformation. (See x-ray above.)

I drove to the only emergency room I know how to find here, with Scott giving helpful driving advice and colorful commentary along the way. When we got there the people looked at us somewhat askance since we were covered from head to toe in dust and soot. (Which is in the walls from Pittsburgh's industrial days and coal heating.) Luckily Scott's hands were clean because we had been wearing nitrile gloves. As we were being taken back Scott started to get dizzy and mentioned it to the nurse. She kindly informed him that he was hyperventilating. He said, "Oh, thank you" and stopped. Then she asked another nurse to get him some pain meds that the doctor ordered. Nurse 2 replied,"I'll get them in a minute. I'm busy." I was more than a bit upset by this point and countered in my best teacher voice, "Could you please hurry, ma'am. He is in a lot of pain." Scott very sweetly suggested I be calm and that she was probably doing her best. Eventually she saw his hand and was taken aback by the unnatural position of the thumb. After that she was much more helpful.

After a while x-rays were taken and the doctors came by. They put his thumb back in place and showed us one fracture on the x-rays. (A second worse fracture was not immediately evident.) They put on a splint and Scott was discharged and told to follow up with an orthopedic surgeon.

One week, two doctors visits, one MRI, two pins, and one surgery later he is once again writhing in pain. Some things never change, hopefully this is not one of them.