So my first weekend in Tucson was an exciting one, we went camping up at Mt. Lemmon at a place called Spencer Canyon. It was a fun drive up the Catalina's where you gain about four thousand feet in elevation in about 20 miles. We had an old Dodge van and we were all a bit skeptical if it could make the trip up to the top but the sweet baby made it fine. We left early... kind of early on Saturday morning, and got up to the campsite around noon. The campsite was pretty interesting, it was a different sort of campground set up then I was used to. The sites were scattered haphazardly throughout the uneven terrain and then people either used miny parking lots or just parked along the road and walked down to the site. Different, but it's Arizona, a lot of things are different, ha.
The really awesome thing about the Catalina's is that because it's so much higher than Tucson, the climate and terrain is way different. There is actually a lot of trees and wilderness along with the temperature dropping at least 20 degrees. A lot of people say it reminds them of Colorado...I wasn't quite that convinced as I still felt like I was in Arizona but it was a very welcoming feel coming from Oregon.
Driving up the mountain we realized that we really did not plan ahead much in terms of spending our time since we did not bring any games or plans for activities. After arriving and setting up, we ate some lunch and brainstormed about what to do for the next 8 hours. We came up with driving up a little further along the road where there is a cool town called Summerhaven at the top of Mt. Lemmon and then a hike on our way back. Summerhaven was a small and interesting town, with kleptic gift shops and a couple cool restaurants it seemed more of a summer retreat then a tourist hot spot. Even so, it was still fun to explore and walk around. They have music on the mountain every Sunday in the afternoons during the summer so we plan on going back up there to see that sometime soon.
Heading back we decided on a hike trail head called Sunset Trail. It seemed intriguing enough and was on the Tucson side of the ridge so I hoped to be able to get a good look down into the valley. At first I was bit disheartened because the first half mile of the hike was walking along driveways of lodges, but eventually it turned off and actually felt like a hike in the woods. We decided to do about a four mile round trip hike ending at what was called Murphy's Gulch, which we were all excited about because you don't often get to see running water in Tucson. The hike was great even though I was in my vans which I would not really recommend for hiking, although climbing on rocks they almost seemed to double as mountain climbing shoes haha. Getting to the gulch at the end of the hike was amazing and it was literally like a grown ups play ground to me, water, big rocks everywhere, hills and trees, I obviously went exploring wherever something interesting met my eye. As I mentioned before I was hoping to get a look at the valley so I went up, as a lot of you know, I like going up, always going up to the highest point I can see. So I went on an adventure, going up to tallest peak I could see. Once I got there....disappointment ha, too many trees and more ridges. The only view I got was looking the other way to an opposite ridge with super sweet houses on top. Check my Flickr to see a couple more photos of the trek.
Getting back to the campsite I started a fire in preparations for dinner: tin foil dinners, yummy. We ate dinner, talked about house chores etc. and bonded (the point of the trip) ha. We filled the after dinner hours with talks of MVS, the house and random stories that would always pop up. Once it was dark, we began getting cravings for s'mores so it was time to break em out. We had about 10 to 15 minutes of good roasting time before ominous clouds began rolling in and it started to sprinkle. The sprinkling turned into dripping, dripping turned into raining, raining turned into pouring at which we decided to retreat to the tent, then the pouring turned into drenching, and finally the drenching turned into a full fledged thunder and lightning torrential storm. It was more a two season tent haha. It was definitely some of the loudest thunder I've heard in a while and the lightning felt like a camera flash going off two feet in front of my face. Though it was really fun for me to be in a lightning storm in the woods at dark inside a tent, the downside was that the tent we were in was not a four seasons tent. So it resulted in us contemplating whether to just pack up camp and spring for the van, I wanted to pull it out though and I was confident the rain would stop eventually. Thankfully I was tired enough to fall asleep on a damp floor in too small of a sleeping bag without a sleeping pad and thankfully it didn't rain all night. But though I was able to fall asleep, I definitely was not able to sleep very well. The bottom of my bag got fully soaked and so my bag went from too short to way way too short. I ended up pulling off the fetal position all night to keep my feet from getting cold and wet and somehow was able to make it until light without freaking out or having a nervous break down ha. Once it was light, I got out went to the van, laid back the seat, turned on the heat and breathed in the peace and calm of relaxation. It only took about 15 minutes for the rest of the crew to join me haha. We decided to break down camp and head home for a warm breakfast, showers, and real beds.
This Sunday has thus been spent laying around the house, and the pool, napping, snacking and doing just about anything we want since we've been up since 6 am. We all plan on going to bed early tonight and I definitely am excited about my own bed since I didn't nap at all today. It has truly been a lazy Sunday, but I have fully enjoyed it. Though the weekend camping trip was a bit of disaster, I had really good time. I always enjoy adversity, if nothing goes wrong when you go camping then it's boring, and this camping trip was by no means boring. Overall, my first weekend in Tucson was swell and it was fun to get to know my roomies better and to get out in the wild. I'm looking forward to my first full week of CHRPA and all the new things I'll learn. We also figured out a cooking schedule so I'm excited for my first house dinner come Tuesday night. I can believe I haven't even been here a whole week yet and it seems like so many things have happened already. Hope all is well with everyone reading this, I think of you often.
Daniel
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