Pinal City adventure

I heard about Pinal City ghost town and looked into it. I discovered that Pinal City was a silver mine boom town that lasted from 1871-1894. It is also know because Wyatt Earp spent time in Pinal before moving on to Tombstone and being part of the O.K. Corral history. Wyatt's common law wife, Mattie Baylock is buried in the Pinal City Cemetery.
I talked Josh and Shelly into making a trip out there with us Tuesday morning. Bellow you see the remains of the smelter foundation. We also found a geocache near these ruins.

Bellow you can see the ruts worn into solid volcanic rock by the wagon wheels and the mule hooves wore pockets in the middle.
Here is all of the cousins lined up in the ruts
I grabbed a shot of everyone as we were headed back to the truck and van. It was 95 degrees by the way


Josh driving over the cattle guard, he scraped a little, likely sounded worse inside! We later went looking for the cemetery but the directions I found on line were lacking greatly.

Lower Calf Creek Falls near Escalante Utah

After visiting Lower Calf Creek Falls as a kid, I have wanted to go back to see it again. Now about 16 years later I was able take Tara and the boys camping and meet my brother Brighton there. Calf Creek runs between Boulder and Escalante Utah.
Click on the photos for a larger view however they are reduced from the original size

The Navajo sandstone canyon walls

The trail is about 3 miles one way with markers showing points of interest along the way
I had heard about some pictographs made by the Fremont Indians so Brighton, Cody and I left Tara and the little boys back at the trail and crossed a beaver damAt the base of the pictographs, there was a lush area totally enclosed by 900 foot cliffs and trees. The water seep keeps everything green.
It is easy to imagine the Fremont Indians drinking of the refreshing water and enjoying the shade. Push play bellow to see a short clip.

The pictographs

Further up the canyon it became very green

Lower Calf Creek Falls

Brett enjoying the cold water after the long hike

Ashton was running all over the place!

Cody was enjoying NOT having to carry the pic-nic lunch pack for a while

Back at camp Brighton was playing rocks with Brett

Tara making dinner

Cooking the foil dinners that were AWESOME~!

The last morning before breakfast

On the way back I took a scenic detour over a road called Hells Backbone. There was some snow and I jumped out the the truck to get some. I ran back and threw snow balls at everyone in the truck... Ashton decided to eat the snow!

The bridge over Hells Backbone. There is a 1000 foot drop on either side. Before the bridge was built, folks crossed the thin ledge on foot or mule. Boulder UT was the last US town to receive its mail via mule train and this was the route.

I added one last attraction to the trip by stopping by Horseshoe Bend near Lake Powell. We met some German tourists on the trail and I got chatty with the family. It was amusing to see how they were fascinated how our kids had similar ideas and manor-isms as theirs did. Kids will be Kids right! Then I met three Professional Photographers at the lookout and they oogled my lens. I let each of them take a few shots with it on their cameras. Made some new friends there!

It was a great trip and we wish you all could have been there!

It's all about Brett

I have been taking Cody out climbing with me for quite a few years now and Brett is always sad that he can't go on the more extreme climbing trips with me. Now that he is almost 5 and getting more stable, I figured it was time to get him out and climbing. In the San Tan regional park there are a few small peaks that are about a 500 foot climb in elevation from the 1500 foot trail-head. I chose a peak that was 2091 feet tall and we set off.



Instead of following the main trail, I had discovered a vain of rock that looked like it had allot of quartz in it so we followed it up hill. Brett needed to take a break at each of the mines we found. There are four total that we discovered on this vain.



After the mines it got quite a bit steeper and I took time to teach him to use the bigger rocks as footing instead of the loose scree. He did quite well.



Finally after dodging cacti and working our way to the top, Brett made his first summit!



It was nice to have him with me and I asked him if he liked climbing. He said "Well, I like little mountains better not like this..." I asked if he would go again and he said "well if we find a not so steep mountain".



Good job Brett!

Weekend at the cabin

While I was installing a Home Theater in Chandler AZ the home owners Realtor commented on the quality of the work I was doing and asked for my card. We got in contact and he offered me a trade. I would connect his theater in a custom log home out side of Payson AZ for a weekend staying the the cabin. We pulled in Sunday morning and left Monday afternoon but it was quite relaxing end enjoyable. I just wish our lives were not so busy so we could have more thoroughly enjoyed our selves. We toured the trout hatchery, explored on some county roads, and I hiked up to some waterfalls early Monday morning while Tara and the boys slept in. I think we found a new spot to go back to when we have time to camp near the cabin we stayed in.

Life is for the birds

I took a sanity break from my camera and now that the weather is cooler (85 deg at 6 am) I decided to get out and take some wildlife shots this morning.






We had some lightning the other night. I simply cannot take a lightning picture. I have hundreds of all black pictures and the lightning happens right after the shutter fires. It never fails. I told Tara I need a second camera... one takes a picture and right as it finished, I take one with the next camera. that ought to show the lightning gods who is da boss.