I’m using iNaturalist both to document interesting living things and to help ID stuff, especially wildflowers. Here’s a map of my observations; the Michigan dots are from a trip a few years ago to see the Hippie Modernism show at Cranbrook.
The live map is here – you can make it go fullscreen.
Hippie Moderism 4evah.
I wanted to say a little more about the Chiricahua Mountains; when I met Drew in El Paso he told the that the Chiricahuas were an absolute must-experience and he was right. They’re an ecological Four Corners: Rockies from the north, Sierra Madre from the south, Chihuahuan desert from the east and Sonoran desert from the west. Add in the effects of altitude – a change in vegetation, etc. every thousand feet – and you have one of those meeting places in the landscape with incredible diversity. The part of the ride that took me through Cave Creek Canyon was my favorite – I’m a sucker for bosque dells.
I’d mentioned that hummingbirds woke me up in Portal; “In fact, thirteen species of hummingbirds are know to occur in the Chiricahua Mountains, and many of these are Mexican species that are rarely seen in the United States.”*
One of the big draws is the Elegant Trogon* – I was told I was a week too early to see one, but B’s feed on Strava indicates it was more like 4 days. Ah, well – a good excuse to return with birding as a focus. I did see a Gould’s turkey, so that’s 2 new wild turkey subspecies this trip (the other is the Rio Grande turkey). Merriam’s wild turkey is a possibility in a week; I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
One last reason to dig the area – Portal has very dark skies. The stars at night are amazing!
*pronunciation note – I’ve always said ‘trogon’ with a hard G, but I heard someone say trojawn in Portal. Google search says hard G is correct; maybe the J person was from Philly – or maybe Google is wrong?
Goog maps has a 10 layer limit /and/ a 5mb per .gpx file limit. Bah. So I combined 3-5 tracks at a whack using GOTOES and then layered ’em in. Voila:
This post is going to be 95% travel narrative, because sometimes the story of one damned thing after another is a reasonably interesting yarn. The last post ended with me pushing off to Lordsburg. I felt OK as we headed southwest, but pretty rapidly realized the day was going to be a difficult one. It was a lot cooler on the bike than I thought it would be and there was a strong headwind. It was nasty enough that i stopped 5 miles into the ride to change into warmer clothes, eat something and re-bundle-up Lotte. We used a small shelter south of the Tyrone open pit mine (complete with info plaques extolling the mining company’s reclamation efforts o_O) and I could see precip coming at us from the west. We continued on NM90 and got maybe another 5 miles down the road before it started to spit rain. Low 50’s (10’s C), rain and a 20+ knot headind? Ugh. Then the wet snow pellets (not really graupel afaic) started. It got to the point where I was shifting with the palms of my hands because my fingers wouldn’t work to do it. But there were a couple good moments: crossing the continental divide for the 3rd time, seeing some patches of sunlight on the plains to the west, and realizing that I’d finally done all the climbing I had to and that all I needed to do was descend into Lordsburg. Looking back on it, I think I was a little under the weather with a touch of digestive distress. I was laboring up hills suddenly doubting whether I’d ridden myself into shape at all. All in all, one of the tougher days of the trip so far.
Saturday the 13th dawned cloudless and cool and we rode southwest again – this time with Portal, AZ as our destination. Goog initially steered us to a road that, as far as I could tell, did not exist. No matter – there was an alternate route that peeled off left instead of right a quarter mile farther on, just past the CDT trail marker. The alt route turned out to be a pretty rough jeep trail, complete with gates – fun!
The jeep trail eventually debouched on to Animas St., a lane and a half dirt road. Lots of dust and lots of grinning – the kind of terrain where Molly Fin the bike can really strut her stuff. Another nonexistent Goog road (it may have been converted into a wash a monsoon season or two ago), then it was a long slow descent to NM338. A bit northward to pick up NM145 and thence to NM80. We’d started south on 80 and I was checking he map on my phone when a truck pulled over. The driver got out and we exchanged greetings – turns out he was (is) a Warmshowers host in Portal, just coming back from pilot trucking an oversized load up into the PNW.And just like that, my tenative plan to bike up into the Coronado NF and camp for the night changed for the better. It took me a while to get to R’s place (Google bike routing again), but once there: paradise. R is a fascinating person and we had a lot of interests in common: birds, trains and Copper Canyon – turns out he used to lead tours there! The contrast between Friday and Saturday couldn’t have been more stark: tough, doubtful day/glorious, long, fun day.
* with apologies to Chuck D (no not him – rather, this dude 🙂 )
Next, into Cave Creek Canyon, Tombstone and Tucson…
