Oreo Cupcakes and Jury Duty

This week has been great. Even though we were at home most days, I have a few stories to share!

First, I had my friend Roxy over one morning, and we made Oreo cupcakes for our guys! They were easy & delicious! What you can't see is the Oreo on the bottom of every cupcake. :) What's in the tin was my half, and they were gone in 24 hours…what?

Second: I got called for jury duty. For the 4th time. In 2.5 years. But just like every other time, I'm getting out of it. Why? Because the jury I was called for is in Iowa! 

For the record, I think that if the time were every convenient, I would probably enjoy being on a jury, or sitting in a room for several hours only to be dismissed. They just have a way of calling me at the wrong times.

The first time was when I was clinics at massage school, in January of 2012. Clinics only last 5 weeks there, and absence could lead to not graduating. Thankfully, they understood, and I was excused.

The second time was in April of 2012, I was just starting to work, and I didn't have a great excuse so I thought I'd go through with it, but when I called the day before to check in, the message said that no jury was needed and I was excused. 

The third time was in June of 2013, and I was a little busy with…you know…planning a wedding, getting married, honeymooning, moving to Arizona, the usual. I got excused.

But apparently they missed the "moving to Arizona" part because they "randomly selected" me again! Yes, I got my Arizonian ID and am registered to vote here, maybe I was supposed to "un-register" in Iowa? Oh well. Sadly, they decided to excuse me again rather than provide an expenses paid trip back home. ;)

Is it just me, or is 4 times in less than 3 years a little much? Do I just have a name that sounds like I'd be great on a jury? Maybe someday I'll have my day in court, but this is not that day!

Sabino After the Storms

Yesterday, Curtis' dad, Ray, came down to visit us! He's in Phoenix for work, and was able to get away for the afternoon. The fact that he was able to get out of Phoenix is a miracle within itself, thanks to all the rain that Southern Arizona got yesterday morning. Maybe you heard about it on the news, but they had to close the I-10 due to flooding. Tucson also got tons of rain, but thankfully Curtis takes the bus so driving wasn't an issue, and we now have lakefront property…to the lake in the parking lot. :)

As I've said before, I really don't think Arizona gets way more rain than anywhere else, it's just that we don't have the infrastructure to support it, so all the water goes to the roads. It's such a great system.

 On the "bright side", after all the rain passed, we were able to go hiking with Ray and enjoy watching the clouds overtake the mountains!

This scenery may look familiar if you've ever looked at this blog…hint: scroll to the top of the page! It looks a bit different with the low clouds! It's the beginning of the 3 mile paved trail that runs through Sabino Canyon. Curtis and I have enjoyed jogging, hiking, and boxing here. We continue to visit, even though we've seen a rattlesnake, javelina, and tarantulas here. Since it's one of our favorite and most visited trails, we decided it was the perfect place to show visitors.

You can usually see Cathedral Rock from here, but not today!

It wasn't too long before we saw our first wildlife… Road runners! Can you spot 2 in the above photo? (click the picture to enlarge it)

This bird is probably one of the closest creatures we have to a Velociraptor. He knows now fear! I was just 5 feet away walking alongside him and taking pictures as he creeped along.

See you later! Road runners are one of the crazy desert creatures that I don't mind seeing up close.

We left the paved trail in order to find letterboxes. Curtis and I had already found them, but it was fun returning to these spots that we visited in our first week of living in AZ together. Nothing about these trails is strenuous…well, unless you are hiking to Cathedral Rock!

Facing Southwest - The rain helped to cool down the area, but made it very humid and brought these pesky gnats with it!

Walking uphill on the rock face

Everything is so green! From this point, we could hear the sound of a rushing river - the river that flows through Sabino Canyon is usually just a creek or pools of water, but it was flowing pretty heavily today as you'll see later!

Parts of the trail had big puddles of water, then as we started heading downhill, there was a small trickle of water flowing down the trail as well. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange rock that caused me to do a double take and I realized…that's no rock!

Can you tell what it is?

Our first desert tortoise seen in the wild! This is another desert creature I don't mind seeing up close - he did a great job posing while I took his picture. :)

Curtis is a friend to all nature. He made and the turtle quickly became friends, and here they are hanging out. (Thanks, turtle, for playing along!)

Blossoms on the barrel cactus

After finding the letterboxes on the side trail in Rattlesnake Canyon (where we saw a turtle - and thankfully NOT a rattlesnake!!) we returned to the paved trail and continued to just past the mile marker to the first time the trail crosses over the river.

…Or in today's case, where the river crosses over the trail! This would be the furthest we would be able to go today. 

A ranger had warned us about this, but who wouldn't want to walk out just to see this? Yes, the river typically runs under the bridge. Actually, it usually just sits under.

We headed back and took another side trail to the West this time and were able to get 2 more boxes.

The view while getting the last boxes. :)

It was a great evening and we were so glad to get an excuse to go hiking! We had a great time visiting with Ray - it's always so encouraging to get to be with family. I'm also thankful for the rain and how it brings a whole new look to the desert, and brings out new creatures. :)

Happy Monday everyone!

Prickly Pear Lemonade

Today, we "leveled up" as "Arizonians". We are now on the level that involves eating a cactus fruit and making a lemonade out of it! Here's how it went:

It started when we got our Bountiful Basket on Saturday. Above is what the basket consisted of this week. As you can see, there are lots of lemons - and when your basket gives you lemons, you make lemonade! ;) 

Right in the front of the pile though, you will see the 4 roundish green things - those are prickly pear cactus fruits. We've seen them in the desert, either growing on the cacti or the remains on the ground after a javelina had feasted on them. Now, we had 4 prickly pear fruit - what were we supposed to do with them?!

At first we thought we had to wait until they turned red for them to be ripe, but learned that they come in both red and green. They are ripe when they are firm, if they become squishy or start to yellow then they are becoming overripe. They came with the thorns all removed, so we didn't have to worry about being attacked by our fruits. We learned about all the best uses for them, and decided to juice them and add them to our lemonade.

When they are ripe, the rind is very easy to remove - you just chop off either end and then make a slit down the side, and you can simply use your fingers to pull off the rind and it comes clean off! The fruit tastes sweet but has many hard seeds on the inside. After chopping it up, we threw it in my Vitamix and blended it into juice. 

The bowl on the left is the prickly pear, the right one is the lemon juice. We blended them both thoroughly and then Curtis did a great job straining the juices and getting rid of all those seeds. We then made lemonade without the prickly pear, and then when pouring glasses of lemonade we would add in the prickly pear juice.

Finished product! The cactus has a distinct taste that overpowered the lemonade. I liked it best when Curtis added a little rum… :)

Recipe for our Cactus Lemonade!

1.5 cups fresh Lemon juice

5 cups water

1 cup sugar

juice of 4 prickly pear fruits

Mix first 3 together and pour into glass (about ½ to ¾ of the way full) then fill the rest of the glass with some prickly pear juice.

If the prickly pear taste is too strong, rum helps, but only if you are of legal drinking age. 

Enjoy!

Being an Arizonian is fun! :)

Kellogg Mountain Trail

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Another Saturday adventure! Today we were up bright and early and got a good start on the adventure. It ended up being a great example of "Early bird gets the worm" - and the "worm" for us was a beautiful drive up the Catalina Highway and a quiet, peaceful hike on Kellogg Mountain trail. We were able to enjoy the cool mountain air and watch the clouds move in, but made it home safely before the rain came. Maybe waking up early can have some great benefits, right Curtis? :)

Catalina Highway is a road that goes up and through the Eastern parts of the Catalina Mountain range and up to Summerhaven, the town on top of Mt. Lemmon (the highest peak in the Catalina Mountains). The road is about 26 miles to the top, and Kellogg Mountain trail is around mile 17. Catalina Highway can have heavier traffic consisting of both vehicles and bikers, but since we drove up so early it wasn't an issue this morning. We've driven this road many times, sometimes all the way to the end, and other times we drive only to a trailhead. There are so many vista spots and trails that branch off the highway, and we have only gone on a fraction of them. 

The scenery was much more green than we have seen before. We also enjoyed seeing waterfalls running off the tall rock faces as we drove past. It's very evident that monsoon season has brought plenty of rain this summer.

A letterbox series planted by our good friends is what brought us up here. The carves were excellent and the trail was beautiful and rewarding. We didn't see anyone else out there until we started heading back, which made it even more enjoyable and ideal for boxing.

The trail had a few steep spots, but nothing too strenuous. We got some great views to the East that only got better as we hiked further!

The above is facing West. Yes, it's true, we're still in Southern Arizona! If you ever want a taste of Colorado scenery, all you have to do is drive up a mountain. :)

Facing South. I tried to take lots of panoramas, but this is the only one that pieced together right. Oh well. It looked like the Santa Rita mountains got hit by the rain before the Catalina Mountains did.

After finishing the letterbox series, we had the choice to head back or continue on the trail to reach Mt. Bigelow. Of course we chose to go on! It was only about a half mile to the end. Sadly, there is no easy way to reach the top of Kellogg Mountain - but even if we did, there were lots of trees so there wouldn't be one good spot with a good all-around view.

We reached the top of Mt. Bigelow in no time. We attempted to find a Geocache that was supposedly up there but had no luck. There wasn't really a great 360 view up here either, (unless you're authorized to climb up the fire watch tower!) but we wandered around and saw all we could!

Facing South toward Micah Mountain and Rincon Peak

Kellogg Mountain is the closest peak to the South of Bigelow.

We took a side trail to the East that resulted in amazing views.

The Flowers of the Catalina Mountains. :)

This one was camera shy so I had to hold onto it!

Bam! All the next pictures of facing East. I could not get enough of this view!

Hello down there, Kellogg Mountain!

We found this perfect spot on the mountain side. There was a rock face that welcomed us to sit down, relax, and take in the beauty. The only sounds were birds chirping, it was cool with a light breeze, and we were together. This is my new favorite place in the world. :)

A kissing picture only seemed necessary in this setting. ;)

We sat here for a long time just enjoying. Of course I got lots of pictures so that we can remember this perfect spot! Sorry about the picture overload!

Okay, enough with that. We finally decided to head back. I think altogether, we only hiked about 2 miles round trip - we just made it longer by stopping and taking it easy. It wasn't until we were back on the trail that we started seeing other hikers, and then as we were driving down the mountain there were so many cars driving up!

We pulled off at one of the vistas when we spotted this long chain of waterfalls flowing down the mountain side. You might need to click on the picture to see them better - it was much cooler in person, and it was actually loud for being so far away!

Zoomed in on some of the waterfalls. This water source is what flows into Sycamore Reservoir and Seven Falls - two other hikes we've done in the Catalina Mountains that took place before I was actively taking pictures and blogging. I guess that means we have to do them again so I can share with you how great those hikes are! ;)

Facing East - the second time I came down to Tucson to visit Curtis was Thanksgiving 2012 with my family, and we drove up Catalina Highway on Thanksgiving day. We had stopped at this same spot to take family pictures. Such good memories. :)

Facing West. It's not this green year round! Drive up and enjoy it now! :)

It was only noon around this point, so it seemed necessary to stop at Culvers to keep the adventure going a little longer. Later this afternoon, Curtis and I did something else new together - watercolor! Well, I used to do it quite a bit, so I convinced Curtis to try it out with me. He was a great sport and played along, and he is actually has some artistic talents, even if he doesn't think so. ;)