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Did a search for Arizona snakes to identify the 2nd snake
from yesterday. Kim said it wasn’t a
diamondback like the first. He picked it
out as a Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake which is also poisonous. Oh, good, let’s just find the nasty variety
of snake. Oh, no, we can’t find the
harmless kind, can we?
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Decided to take a ride in the truck over to Sentinel Peak or “A”
Mountain as it’s commonly called. That’s
because there’s a huge white “A” on the eastern side facing Tucson. Sentinel Peak is a great spot from which to
see the spread of Tucson. The “A” was
constructed by University of Arizona engineering students in 1916 using basalt
rock from a quarry at the base of the mountain.
Trivia about the color of the letter:
The "A" has traditionally been
painted white. On March 23, 2003, four days after the start of the Iraq War,
it was painted black in protest. Two weeks later, following much public debate,
the Tucson City Council resolved to have the "A" painted red, white,
and blue in honor of American troops. A decade later the council decided to
restore it to its traditional white. The "A" has on
occasion been painted green for St. Patrick's Day.
Arizona State University has a more
recently created "A" Mountain (Tempe Butte)
near the school's football stadium. During the week of the Arizona-ASU Territorial Cup game,
rival fans and students have tried and at times succeeded in painting the "A"
of the opposing school with their own school colors.
Sort
of like making Sparty wear a blue and maize outfit. 😎
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We walked as far as up Sentinel Peak as Mom wanted to and then we turned
around to seek shade. There was a good breeze which tempered the sun’s heat but
as there were no clouds in the sky there was no escaping from the relentlessness
of it. *Side note: there is a crested
saguaro alongside the one-way road to the top.*
Then we figured as long as we were out and about at noon time we might
as well order lunch from Arizona Pizza Company again. One
calzone, one slice of pizza and a salad to go, please. Asked Rapunzel to find a ‘park near my
location’ so we could have a picnic. She
was directionally challenged today but eventually led us to a park inside a housing
development. At that point we didn’t
care...we parked and ate our lunch at a picnic table in the park. Nobody seemed to care that strangers were
eating in the midst of their little development.
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Jason came over with a bucket acting all antsy. Kim, Jason’s out there with a bucket...I betcha he has a snake in
there. Sure enough there’s a snake in the bucket but it's dead. Story goes that they saw it on the road and
Angie wanted to stop to check it out.
She could see that it wasn’t a rattlesnake; but as she looked at it, it raised
up and crawled onto the footboard of the truck.
Jason freaks out that it’s going to crawl into the truck so he backs up
then pulls forward and in the process he runs over the head. He admitted that getting it into the bucket
involved a stick and a lot of squeamishness on his part. So he shows us the dead snake in the bucket...Kim
picked it up to look at it while Jason looked totally grossed out. He went back over to his trailer where Ian,
his 7 year old son, is curious about what’s in the bucket. Jason
was okay to carry the bucket but was having a hard time looking into it; Ian just
reached in and pulled it out, holding it in both hands. The kid is a rock star! I wouldn't have done that and neither would his dad. 😏 It was a gopher snake which is
harmless...in life and in death.
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When we got back to camp Marilyn was going to sit outside and read and Kim
was thinking a nap sounded good so I went for a ride by myself. Ended up doing the Tom Mix/Park Link
Loop. It’s between 85 and 100 miles
depending on the route around Coolidge and it’s all good road. I made a few stops so it took me longer than
usual but I had the time and with the temperature in the mid-80’s the day was
made for riding.
I stopped at Tom Mix and watched the ‘big-eyed
prairie dogs’ (Ground Squirrels) for a few minutes then wandered over to the
table where the laminated story of Tom Mix is taped on the table. Earlier in March the log book was removed
with a note of explanation from Dick, the log master. When the COVID-19 threat dies down the log
book will be back. Well, some people
wrote on the note that Dick left and then someone started a log on a piece of
notebook paper and weighted it down with rocks.
Seems that people are not going to let their visit to the Tom Mix Monument
go unrecorded.
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I saw a cactus in bloom so I did a U-turn to get a picture. I saw a lady quail sitting on top of a pole
so I did a U-turn to get a picture, hoping she’d still be there. Couldn’t find her so I did another U-turn to
get heading in the right direction and bingo! I saw her again. I find that sometimes it’s difficult to spot something
when I’m heading in the opposite direction from when I first saw it. Ten minutes had to have passed and she was
still there. Stopped to snap a few
pictures and she started acting nervous but never flew off the post. It must have been her turn on sentry duty and
she was going to show the covey that she was worthy by not flying away in
panic. I imagined that later she bragged
to the others about how she stood her ground against a human but left out the part about me being 15 yards away on the other side of the road. 😉
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A few miles of Park Link is open range...sometimes the cows are present
and sometimes they’re nowhere to be seen.
Today they were spaced out for about 2 miles alongside the road so I had
to cautiously run the cow gauntlet. Zeus is faster than a cow but I have
no doubt a cow could knock us over if it got a bit too excited. I always give them plenty of time to decide
how they want to manage their anxiety about a motorcycle being on the road
among the herd. When they give me that big-eyed
sideways stare it makes me nervous.
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Bike miles today: 95
Total miles: 2559
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