Joe and Mary Ann's personal web site

UPDATE: I changed my mind about not posting about the trip, and have written a post for each day of the trip. I also updated the maps to reflect our actual itinerary (which is different from what the original plan was). See here for the updated maps, and for a list of posts for our Holy Land trip.

Mary Ann and I will be making a trip to the Holy Land this summer. We will leave on Wednesday, May 31, and return on Saturday, June 10. In order for us to get a better idea of exactly where we’re going, in preparation for the trip, I mapped it out in google maps, and copied the information from the travel brochure at each spot. I decided to put the maps on the website so we could easily access them, and in case anybody else is interested in more details. This won’t be a photography trip, so I don’t plan on bringing my camera (except a cell phone), and I don’t plan on doing any posts about the trip, except for this one.

This post is for the last stop on our trip to SE Arizona: the town of Portal. Portal is a small town in the Chiricahua Mountains that is popular for its birding, among other things. It was about a 1.5 hour drive from our motel in Safford. We got there at 9:30am, and stopped in the visitors center. They told us that the Elegant Trogon hadn’t arrived yet, and that it typically arrives in mid April. We saw it last year when we were there in May.

This post is for the second day of our trip to SE Arizona: Aravaipa Canyon. We go to the canyon almost every year. They allow 30 permits for entry on the west side, and 20 on the east side. We went to the east side. You can get permits up to 90 days in advance, and when we checked there was only one day and three permits available in the 90 day window. So you can see it is in demand. The west side is even more in demand because it’s closer to the city (Phoenix or Tucson). When we were there we didn’t see anybody else, except for one campsite, but no campers. Where were the 18 other hikers and their cars?

Mary Ann and I made our annual trip to Aravaipa Canyon. As we have been doing in recent years, we bookend the Aravaipa hike with visits to some other spots in the area. This year’s trip we hit the same spots as last year. On April 10th (Monday morning) we drove to Roper Lake State Park and Dankworth Pond State Park. On Tuesday we hiked Aravaipa. On Wednesday we went to the town of Portal. This post is for the first day. We stayed at the Motel 6 this year. The price of motels has gone up a lot since last year, and the Motel 6 was cheaper. It was a good room, and met all of our requirements.

Mary Ann and I went to the Salt River last week, and I’m just getting around to doing a post. We had three things in mind: see what wildlife we would run into, check out the wildflowers (specifically fields of California Poppy), and see if there was still snow in the mountains.

Our first grandchild, Jude Hezekiah Lester, was born on January 16, 2023, and baptized on Feb 11, 2023, which is also the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. This post has some pictures from his baptism. It was a beautiful ceremony. Baby Jude slept through the whole thing!

Mary Ann and I went to the Desert Botanical Garden (DBG) on December 13, 2022. We hadn’t been there for quite a while. We got there at about 9:00 AM, and left at about 11:30. It was a cold morning, and it had rained the day before.

Dave and I went to the Pinal Mountains on October 31. Dave wanted to get some drone footage of the fall colors. I was happy to go along. I hadn’t been to the Pinals since the Telegraph fire last year. It was a pretty bad fire, destroying 51 structures, and closing all the roads. It’s one of my favorite spots, and I was anxious to see how it fared.