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Author Archives: Teri J Pieper

Ramsey Canyon

From Bisbee we drove to Sierra Vista and a lovely musical evening with Jennifer and Judy’s friends. The next morning after a hearty breakfast we headed to Ramsey Canyon, a Nature Conservancy Preserve. Ramsey Canyon is known far and wide for its excellent birding. But not in December. It is a lovely landscape with some interesting human history as well. Just downstream from the TNC property is the Arizona Folklore Preserve, a place where Notable Exceptions (Jennifer and Judy) have performed several times. We made a short stop there to admire the grounds.

Ramsey Canyon has a wonderful mix of deciduous and evergreen trees and succulents too. Some like ponderosa pine and Douglas fir were familiar to us. Others like an unusual madronne and sycamores were new to me.

Tree huggers at the Arizona Folklore Preserve
Fall colors in December
Sycamore
Amazing mix of plant life
Arizona gray squirrel
Nearly at the top of the canyon trail
A tiny stream is rare in Arizona
An original cabin
This house was built to replace the previous one
The newer house was built with this view!
Folks at the visitor center said the fall colors were mostly finished. They must have been amazing before we arrived!

Bisbee

Have you been to Bisbee, Arizona? It’s a fun little town built into steep canyon walls in the southeast corner of the state. Just downstream from Bisbee is an active open pit copper mine. Mining is what brought the white people to Bisbee and there is a great museum that tells many of the mining stories.

Bisbee is full of old brick buildings. Like many towns from that era, it suffered from structure fires and so most of it was rebuilt with brick and stone. There are lots of little shops and restaurants and lots of good music and visual art too. A person could spend days poking around in Bisbee.

There are many old stairs like this between streets and houses
Someone’s roof seen from the street above the house
Apparently, all the honeybees have been overtaken by the invasive killer bees in Arizona.
Larger than life fly art
Seen in the museum
Flowers in December
Audrey’s Place
The Courtyard, a music venue
Reuben
Tarantula Hawk Wasp

The Lunatic Fringe Luthiery

Gretchen Baer car art

Here is the road trip worthy song that Jennifer and Judy performed when we visited the Luthiery:

 

 

Saguaro National Park

The magnificent saguaro is an amazing plant. They stand straight without any branches or arms until they are 70 or 80 years old! The provide food for people and wildlife. Birds create cavities in them for nesting and roosting. Even after they die, they stand for a long time, continuing to provide wildlife habitat. And there are many more kinds of cacti in and around the park. The big succulents bloom in the summer while wildflowers bloom much earlier in the year. This is a place to return to time and time again.

We traveled in style
Saguaro forest
This flower was at the visitor center
Many-armed saguaro
Howard is 91 and has been driving across the country from Maine for over 40 years to visit this region!
A saguaro snag
Jennifer and Judy worked on their not so Junior Ranger Badget

On the Road

Here are a few photos from a recent trip to Arizona. I met two friends in their RV near Phoenix. From there we went to Saguaro National Park and then to SE Arizona. It was a fun and interesting road trip.

Home, the morning I left. 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
A stunning sunset for much of the flight.
Nice to spend time with Wyatt Ann again!
Rooty Tooty Galoot pretty much rules the roost.
We visited the Biosphere 2. Interesting place. If you go, try to get a history tour.
This blimp hovers over Sierra Vista and watches comings and going through much of Cochise County.
Not unusual for southern AZ
An over the top holiday light display in Mesa.

December Day

December weather has not been ‘normal’. But what is normal anymore? Normally there would be lots of precipitation, mostly snow, and fairly mild temperatures. There was early snow and then it just got cold with a thick inversion that kept the sunshine away for the most part. The snow on the ground has begun to lose its moisture and shrink.

Lucky me, I went away for nine days to sunny Arizona and while it wasn’t particularly warm most of the time, it was pleasant for the most part. Today was the first day back so the dogs and I got out a couple of times to see what had changed while I was away. Not much. It’s not a colorful world.

Photos from Arizona will show up here in a day or two.