Show Low Part 2

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We’ve stayed in Arizona enough to realize the state does not observe Daylight Savings Time (with the exception of the Navajo Nation). Normally we would be heading out of the state for cooler weather early enough in spring that this fact wouldn’t really impact us. However with us staying here for the summer, we really notice the lack of DST. I was pretty young when it was first enacted so I guess I have just become accustomed to longer daylight in the evening and a reasonable time for sunrise. In Show Low, sunrise is at 5:08 AM and sunset at 7:35 PM at the summer solstice! It turns out our next door neighbor is the early bird and with her washer and dryer in the shed a mere 15 feet from our heads, we have been pulled out of sleep by the humming of the washing machine very early some mornings.

We discovered there are a couple of decent disc golf courses in the area. The one in Pinetop-Lakeside is at Mountain Meadows Park. It isn’t completely wooded so we do reasonably well. Like so often is the case when playing a new course, the biggest challenge is figuring out the sequence of the holes. The 18 holes of this course are laid out in a relatively small area so we sometimes need to walk to the basket just to confirm which one we are aiming for. Another course is at the town park in Show Low. This course is much more spread out so there is less confusion about which basket is the correct one. The park also has a ball fields, tennis courts and playground equipment that the course need to work around. The biggest problem with this course is how heavily treed it is. I don’t think any trees were irreparably harmed during our play but quite a few were hit!

Another hike we went on was at Woodland Lake Park. This park is adjacent to the disc golf course in Pinetop-Lakeside. We parked along Woodland Road and started out on the Big Springs Trail. There was a neat covered bridge that heads back to a gated community so we couldn’t explore it close up. There were multiple geocaches that helped us pick which trails we would take. Like all the other trails in this area, signage is exceptionally good so getting lost wasn’t really an issue. We eventually work our way down to Woodland Reservoir. This area is much more crowded with a few kayakers out enjoying the weather. A small scale covered bridge is part of the paths around the lake.

Private Covered Bridge

Dock at Woodland Lake

Small Covered Bridge by Woodland Lake

Coot with Two Juveniles

After circling the lake, we headed up the Hitching Post Loop to lead back to the car. Along the trail, we could hear a large crowd and continual Jimmy Buffet music - I could hear Chris singing along behind me. We never did see exactly what was taking place but it didn’t sound like something we might expect during a Covid times. We did a slight detour for another cache near a Nature Center. There was a pretty pond near the cache with a mother duck and her 5 young ducklings near the shore.

Heading on Hitching Post Trail

As we were enjoying the serenity of the location, a young couple approached with their dog. It saw the ducks and made a beeline for them. The next 90 seconds was somewhat incredible to watch.  The mother duck, seeing this 25 pound dog heading her way, got the ducklings to go into the reeds along the shore while it started to swim the opposite way. It seemed to be making sure the dog was chasing her and not her children. The water wasn’t super deep so the dog could sometimes run while other times swim. Mom duck led the dog a good 100 yards away all the while, the dog owner chasing the dog along the shore trying to get it to stop. Once the duck felt the dog was no threat to the ducklings, it simply flew back over to find them safe and sound. Our route turned out to be 5.5 miles and was quite enjoyable.

Mom and 5 Ducklings

We decided to give the Maverick Trail another try. This time we headed about 10 miles from camp to a trailhead along alone Pine Dam Road near Burton Road. We were going to head west on the trail until it intersected Burton Road again figuring it to be in the 4 to 5 mile range. It’s a bit confusing at this trailhead since the trail seems to be going either north or south. We head south and shortly turns to the southwest. This part of the Maverick Trail was excellent. Not too rocky or many sections with loose dirt. Much of the ride was gently rolling and was a rather pleasant bike ride.

Well Marked Trail

Another View From Trail

Rolling Hills

There is a fairly steep hill about half a mile before we hit Burton Road again. While I found it rideable, I needed to stop frequently to catch my breath. My average speed up the hill was nearly the same as Chris’ speed walking while pushing her bike up. Once up top, there is a nice view. There is also a good downhill to get to the paved road. It was a bit eroded from water and ATVs but not too bad. Once on Burton Road, we headed south to look for another cache along the Ghost of the Coyote Trail. Okay, maybe I was just slightly curious about the trail’s name. It turned out this trail permits mountain biking but it is far from suitable for mountain biking. I ended up needing to walk the last the tenth of a mile while Chris stayed with the bikes. Sections of Burton Road while paved, have terribly wash boarding like you would find on a dirt or gravel road. It was the oddest thing. Along the way we pass a side road with a name worthy of stopping for a picture! The ride ended up being about 9.5 miles and was a pretty good combination of dirt trail and lightly traveled paved road.

View from Atop Hill

Rutter Trail Down Hill

Appropriately Named Road

Having seen what the trails were like in the vicinity of the Country Club Trail, we headed back over there with the mountain bikes to check them out some more. We started out on Forest Road 185 instead of the trail just because there were a few geocaches along the road we had not gotten yet. Being open range cattle area, there was a large corral with a ramp. I presume the cattle are rounded up by cowboys, placed in the corral and then loaded onto a truck. This one was metal and in good shape. We have seen others that seem to be beyond hope.

Ramp at Cattle Corral

We were planning on trying out the Chipmunk Springs Trail. We knew we would intersect it after a mile or so on the forest road. When I saw a trail to my right, I assumed we were there and turned. It took Chris awhile to catch up and inform me I turned too early. Back to the road and another 0.15 miles we spotted the correct trail. We crossed over a wet area (possibly the spring the trail is named for?) and found it odd to see such green vegetation growing in a mostly dry landscape.

Sign for Chipmunk Trail

Band of Green from Spring

The trail turned out to be excellent for biking. From our starting point it is a generally uphill ride but not noticeably steep or rocky. This trail actually leads to the Los Burros Trail we are hoping to hike in the near future although we don’t make it the full distance. But it did turn out to be a very pleasant 13 mile bike ride, especially the slight downhill be had most of the way to the car.

Pretty Singletrack in Woods

Fence Line Crossing

When we first arrived here at Juniper Ridge, one of the residents told us that we would like the weather - it would only get above 90 degrees on a few days. Of course, what they weren’t counting on was a record breaking heat wave that would hit the region. Phoenix had the hottest July on record this year and 34 days this summer with a high over 110 degrees! Of course, Show Low doesn’t experience that type of heat but we did stay in the mid 90’s most of the month. We generally have a wide temperature tolerance so we found only one afternoon where we turned on the air conditioning. From the sounds of it, our neighbors had theirs running most of the summer.

We did however make an addition to the motorhome to help things stay cool - window awnings. There have been many times where we thought awnings would be a wise investment to help keep the sun out. We took some measurements and placed an order in late June. A few weeks later, a big semi pulls up in front of our rig and dropped the package with the two awnings. We have one over the passenger side window and a second, large one on the two windows on the driver’s side. We went with the style that has a partial see through fabric that will block about 90% of the sunlight but let us see through them from inside. It’s a good compromise from the cave-like feeling that opaque awnings can give. Installation was pretty easy only taking us a few hours over three days to get up. We did need the assistance of one of our neighbors for the large one just because of the long and awkward nature of the awning. We could immediately feel the difference inside on the hot days. I’ve also found I am able to close them by reaching out the window from inside the rig.

Small Awning Closed

Small Awning Open

Large Awning Covers 2 Windows

The slower travel pace allowed us to get caught up on a lot of small, annoying issues on the rig that never seemed to rise to the level of being dealt with. One of our exhaust fans had developed a rumbling noise like a bad bearing but the motor really cannot be serviced. A replacement fan was ordered and turned out to be a very easy install. A month after going full time, I had clipped a wooden fence at a dump station and taken off the passenger side mirror. Surprisingly the thing didn’t get damaged from the fall and I had been able to reinforce the mounting holes and reattach the mirror. Of course the six pin connector that permits for mirror adjustment, mirror defrost and a right turn signal lamp had pulled apart. Since Chris doesn’t drive the rig, we had just manually aligned the mirror and lived with it. Now was the time to deal with it. Documentation was lacking so knowing which of the six wires on the mirror attach to the six wires on the motorhome was problematic. Fortunately as a former electrical engineer it wasn’t too difficult to identify which wire did which function. With a new connector and crimping tool ordered from Amazon, I had it put back together and working in a couple hours.

Another hike was along the Los Burros Trail located southeast of us in the Sitgreaves National Forest. It’s a bit of a drive to the trailhead with the last 8 miles or so on a gravel forest road. The main trailhead has a small primitive campground next to it but since the campground is closed for Covid, we have to go to a different spot to park. The full trail is 13 miles long - a bit longer than we wanted but there multiple options to shorten the loop to something more manageable. We started out on a very pleasant morning for the hike. Being at 8000 feet elevation helps with the temperature.

Starting Along Los Burros Trail

Scary Looking Insect

Odd Plant Along Trail

We had started south from our trail head and in 1.5 miles we are near the closed campground and find our short cut trail. In 1.6 miles we will be back on the main Los Burros Trail instead of the 5 miles the main trail takes to get to that same point. The trails are in great shape and it’s a very pretty hike. We could tell from the tracks that mountain bikers use the trail as well but we didn’t come across any. In fact, we saw only a few people in our total hike. Coming around Wishbone Mountain, we cross over the forest road again and considered walking it back to the car but it really didn’t appear to be a shorter route. By the time we made it to the car, we had gotten in 10 miles of hiking with about 1100 feet of elevation change - a tiring but nice hike.

Our Short Cut

Deer Intently Watching Us

Odd Trail Sign

Another Pretty Section of Los Burros Trail

Nice Clearing View

Los Burros Trail Track

One of the geocaches I had hidden in 2013 back in the Rochester NY area was a hand made cryptex (think the Da Vinci Code book/movie). In April of this year, the thing went missing. The friend that has adopted the cache could not find the device and didn’t have the ability to duplicate it. With the limited tools I had along, I too was not able to make a replacement. But now at Juniper Ridge, I have access to a workshop. I checked with the guys that run the facility to make sure they had no issues with me working on a project made mostly of PVC pipe and fittings and was given the okay. I tried to remember how I had created the first one and headed to the hardware store to pick up the required parts. It took quite a few visits to the shop over the course of a couple weeks to do the work. Fellow woodworkers in the shop initially were baffled at what I was making, but as it came together, they began to understand. The idea is that each of the six dials each have 8 letters and the dials need to be turned to spell out the proper word to have the device open. There are over 250,000 possible combinations although most of them are not real words.

Parts for Cryptex

Cryptex Completed

It was during this time that the comet NEOWISE was gracing our night skies. Of course, we were having a string of cloudy nights. When we finally had a clear night, we drove up the dirt road next to the resort to get a bit more darkness than we have from our rig. It took some time to be able to spot the comet but eventually did so. I came out a few nights later to do a time lapse session to see what a star trail photo of the comet would look like. Even though the comet was in the series of shots, it didn’t look any different than a normal star trail.

NEOWISE with 200mm Lens

NEOWISE with 500mm Lens

Star Trail

We took our bikes out for another section of the Maverick Trail. On our drive there, we stopped at a spot we had seen from State Route 77 many times and wondered what it was. A dirt road leads back the mile or so to an earthen dam. It’s over 100 feet tall and 800 feet wide - not a small amount of dirt and gravel. It apparently dams up Show Low Creek and forms Schoens Lake. Not sure how deep the lake is but based on the level of the spillway tower, the lake could get pretty deep. No water was flowing out the downriver side of the dam.

Schoens Lake with Spillway Tower in Foreground

Downstream Side

View Along Road from Dam

The starting point for the ride was the intersection of the trail with Pinedale Road and we intended to head west to the town of Clay Springs where the Maverick Trail starts/ends. Turns out the first mile of the trail more or less parallels the road and has a rather rocky (but dry) wash to walk the bikes across. Other than that initial stretch, it was a pleasant ride and we thought it was supposed to be nice weather as well.

View at Beginning of Ride

A few miles into the ride, we could see dark storm clouds forming and of course it looked to nearing Clay Springs. We pushed on but we intersected another trail. One way would go to Clay Springs and potential rain. The other way would head to a geocache about a mile north. We go with the easy call and head out for the cache. There were surprisingly more dirt roads back here than one might expect and we took the wrong one initially, but we eventually made it to the cache. The weather looked quite threatening so we decided to head back to the car and hope to stay dry. It wasn’t the planned ride but it was still a nice 12 mile outing.

Storm on Horizon

We had one more stop in the area and the rain seemed to be heading the opposite direction so we went to the town of Pinedale. We really only had one destination. An actual covered bridge. Supposedly the first covered bridge in the state. The town’s website states the bridge was built in 1976. So it’s not all that old. We found a picnic pavilion open at the closed town library and had our lunch before heading home. Based on the large puddles in the resort, the rain we saw had reached Juniper Ridge.

Pinedale Covered Bridge

Ever since Covid struck, I had been avoiding getting a haircut. For awhile, Arizona had closed all such businesses but they have been open for some time, but it just never seemed a safe decision. Initially I thought I might let it grow long and either go for a pony tail or a man-bun. But it got annoying well before I could pull either of those off. So Chris has taken up cutting my hair in the interim and am pleased with the outcome. Chris had last gotten her hair cut back at the end of December and was getting rather long. She surprised me one day and asked me to watch a YouTube video on how to cut women’s hair. Apparently her hair length had gotten past the point of her fear of me cutting it! So I watch the video of a flamboyantly gay guy explaining how to cut hair and sit Chris down in the chair and have at it. I think it turned out okay and Chris might even agree with that.