Picture Rock

January 20, 2022

For a change, Rachael’s body finally tells her she’s due for her own rest day, at least from the saddle. She informs me over morning coffee that I’m on my own. She’ll take a walk over to Sentinel Peak (“A” Hill), but otherwise plans on taking it easy. When I leave for my own ride she promises to not walk twelve miles on her rest day, and she agrees. So it’s a comfort and I’m proud of her when I get back later and hear she’s done only eleven, if she’s to be believed. At least she brought back some photos even if it was a poor excuse for a rest day.

West toward the Tucson Mountains, with Tumamoc Hill on the right.

The lookout at the top of Sentinel Peak is all that remains from the lookout outpost to watch for Apaches in the early settlement days..

The giant A in the eastern slope of Sentinel Peak faces the U of A campus. 150 feet tall, it was created by university students in the 1910’s using basalt that was quarried from the base of the volcanic peak.

There’s some surprisingly close chatter in the alley when I leave the house. It’s the Gila woodpecker. I almost always hear her now, but usually she’s back on the far side of the large mesquite she hangs out in. Today though she’s up close on the near side of the tree and very talkative. What’s changed? My theory is that I have a new BBF, and that she’s appreciative of my scaring off that big mean Cooper’s hawk yesterday morning.

I’ve got a new girlfriend! It’s OK, Rocky - no need to feel threatened. We leave in a few days anyway.

The plan for today is a loop I’ve wondered about for awhile. Heading west out Saint Mary’s Road I’ll cross through the Tucson Mountains to Gates Pass - a ride Rachael and I took together several weeks ago. Instead of looping back to town by dropping south to the Ajo Highway though I’ll bike north to Marana and pick up the Loop.

It’s a perfect morning for the modest climb to Gates Pass from the east. There’s very little traffic, weather is fair, visibility is great, and I even have a mild tailwind pushing me up. Couldn’t be better.

The road to Gates Pass - it’s not for everyone.

Looking back at the Catalinas through a gap in the foothills. As I’m taking this shot a pair of bikers whiz past behind my back, dropping toward town. Spectacular, the woman calls out. She means the view presumably, but it could be my bright tangerine Coal City jersey from Nanaimo.

At the pass I pull off to the viewpoint just below the summit, a spot I’ve never stopped at before. I’m intrigued by the shadow pattern of the lookout structure, and I loiter around until a few spectators move on. While I’m positioning Rodriguez for the shot a man of about my age wanders up, stops and looks on. We chat a bit about the shadows and life in general. He also likes photography, and shadows in particular. He’s been making the rounds of spots in the region where he really appreciates the shadows.

He asks about the shadows back home, and it becomes apparent he’s well familiar with the northwest. He’s from Yakima originally but has been around and has a daughter in Bellingham he’s heading north to check in on soon. I tell him I went to school there, getting my environmental science degree from Huxley College, and the subject matter shifts to Washington’s experimental/progressive colleges. He reminds me that Governor Dan Evans started Evergreen College back in the seventies. Evans was a republican, one of a long-vanished breed. We sigh over the state of the world and then part ways.

I’ve brought Rachael’s GoPro along with me and flip it on when I drop off the west side of the pass. It’s an exhilarating, steep descent and one I particularly enjoy this morning because the road is empty - something it’s much easier to be aware of with my radar rear light checking our the rear for me. I just keep descending for several miles, but unexpectedly the camera gives out a complaining squak and shuts down sooner than expected - presumably because the battery died. A shame, because I wanted to video the descent to Picture Rock later in the ride to show Rachael since she hasn’t seen it before.

When I get home later in the day Rachael unloads the video and observes that there’s nothing new that wasn’t already recorded in our earlier ride. Different day, same old saguaros, as the saying goes. A good point, but the weather is somewhat different as is the soundtrack - so it might be worth it to you to stop, look and listen.

Video soundtrack: Carioca, by the Bud Shank Quartet

Looking southeast from McCain Loop toward what I think is Kitt Peak but I’m really not sure. Range after range - one of my favorite viewpoints out here.

I stop in at the National Park visitor center for a service break and to polish off the last of the trail mix I’ve been packing along for the next several days, and then strike out into new territory on the road next to Marana.

The first two miles are beautiful, descending gradually on smooth, quiet Kinney Road. After it ends at Sandario Road and heads straight north though the ride loses most of its appeal when the shoulder disappears and the traffic load picks up. There’s little of interest to hold my attention until I come to the community of Picture Rock, which I look forward to seeing because it just sounds colorful.

But it’s not. They should swap their town name with somewhere else in the county that really is more inspiring. Almost anyplace would do - the odds are that it would hold more appeal than this dusty collection of trailers and mobile homes.

So the good thing here is that we aren’t missing much from having the GoPro battery die prematurely.

Kinney Road, on the north side of the visitor center.

I’m not sure, but we might be onto Sandario Road here. The first mile or so is interesting enough.

Most of the way to Picture Rock looks more like this though.

What counts for excitement along Sandario Road.

The view east from Sandario. The town isn’t much to write home about, but the setting is OK.

One half of Twin Peaks and the remnants of its partner. Nice that they leveled it so you can get a view of Mount Lemmon from this direction!

On Twin Peaks Road. A nice sentiment, which many of the drivers comply with.

It’s a relief when I finally come to the suburbs of Marana and leave Twin Peaks Road to cut over the to them Loop. From there it’s a breezy twenty miles back I home, making good time as I enjoy a tailwind the whole way. Not much new to report though. The cinnamon teals are still out at Ina Bridge but they give me no better look than they did yesterday. Passing Sweetwater I see a good number of coots and ring necked ducks on the pond, and a kingfisher swoops down and snares something in the water far on the opposite side.

Just a few miles from home though, I’m excited when a roadrunner crosses the road just in front of me and pauses at the lip of the wash before taking the plunge and soaring down to the bottom. I’m really happy about this, because after a run of them early in the stay I haven’t gotten another good look for nearly a month.

And then, surprisingly, here’s a second one down in the wash not a quarter mile away. close enough together that they could be a pair?

And then, wheeling into the neighborhood down a different street than the usual I find one last discovery worth stopping for: another chimney for the Cycle365 challenge. It’s a frustrating one though because iI s hidden behind so muc( vegetation that I can’t get the shot I really want - one that shows the saguaro in front of it and the shadow it’s casting on the chimney. Folks will just have to use their imaginations on that one.

In the Barrio Anita neighborhood. Or is that a redundancy? Should it just be in the Barrio Anita?

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Ride stats today: 52 miles, 1,400’

Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 1,857 miles (2,989 km)

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Ben ParkeRegarding your chirping GoPro, hopefully it was just the battery. I’ve had problems with gopros getting inexplicably grumpy with SD cards. My 256gb card got corrupted and is holding about a weeks worth of South Tyrol footage hostage including my ride on the Seiser Alm. The other 256gb card threw up an error message much more quickly. And this is with supposedly approved models of SD cards.
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2 years ago

Rachael AndersonTo Ben ParkeIt wasn’t the battery but the last video on the scoand card was corrupt. I think I need a new sd card.
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2 years ago

Ben ParkeTo Rachael AndersonMy guess is it’s not necessarily the card that’s the problem. I’ve had a few instances where gopros decided to eat files. It’s happened on both of my GoPros with different cards. The one I have now, a fairly new model, does not like big SD cards. I think they’re just finicky devices. I’ve seen plenty of other people complaining online about it. I’ve also seen a lot of complaints about other brands of action cameras though. You’d think by now they could produce a stable one.
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2 years ago

Rachael AndersonTo Ben ParkeI have the gopro hero 9. It has amazing image stabilization and works really well! This my 3rd gopro and it is definitely better than the prior models. My SD card is old so it could be the problem. It’s only happened a couple of times a day I use it alot.
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2 years ago

Ben ParkeTo Rachael AndersonI have the same model. It seems to handle my smaller cards like 64gb okay, but it will not use the pricey 256gb cards. Of course I didn’t find that out until I’d recorded a week of touring videos on it. I still need to see if the local computer guru center can rescue the majority of the files. If you buy a mew card, I’d avoid real big ones.
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2 years ago

Rachael AndersonTo Ben ParkeI only use 64 gb since I download my videos nightly.
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2 years ago