Spring Weekend

With warmer weather here, we're getting active again. Friday night, we got invited to meet up with friends to see a free movie outdoors at the Biltmore Fashion Park. The movie was Hoosiers, a 1986 movie about basketball. The plaza isn't very big, but there was more than enough room for everyone.

The movie is on. Can you see it?

Yeah, us either. We listened more than we watched, but we got the gist. The temps were in the mid-60s, which wouldn't have been terrible (since I had a coat), but there was a chilly breeze. Every time it blew through, I wanted to yell at someone to turn off the air conditioner! We will be waiting for the temps to move into the 70s at night before we attempt that again, but it was a nice way to spend a Friday out. Next time, we bring popcorn.

Then Saturday, we had wanted to rent a small boat on Canyon Lake (about an hour from here), but a call ahead confirmed they were all taken. So then we thought we'd try to get a hike in, but slowly my companions starting backing out, and the next thing I knew I was the last one standing. I ended up hiking a trail we did a while ago, the Sonoran Trail in the McDowell's. I run the short trail by the Fountain a couple of times a week, but hiking for 3 hours by yourself is kind of spooky. Plus after our last run-in with 3 snakes on one trail, I had the heebie jeebies a little. I'm happy to say I didn't see any snakes this time. But I did see a huge rabbit. Huge (for a rabbit)! It turns out that it was a Black Tailed jackrabbit. Cool!

Because it had just rained, I expected to see a lot more wild flowers. Here's what I did see, for those of you needing a dose of spring, desert style.


It was pretty warm, so that same wind I had been cursing the night before felt great at noon. Here's a selfie at the turnaround point. I saw absolutely no one on my way back (it was about 2pm), so was jamming out to my mp3 - "Hey, sexy lady....whoop, whoop."

I hope no one saw me trying to get that photo.

It's kind of nice being by yourself every once in awhile, but Michael's now sulking because he's never seen a jackrabbit. Guess he shouldn't have ditched me...

Sunday, Michael & I ended up going to the Tempe Aloha Festival. The organizers of the Chinese Lantern Festival should take note. The Hawaiian event was free, it had several stages with all kinds of cultural activities (with mostly Hawaiian performers), and had lots of things to buy or eat - all Hawaiian. Look at the crowds!



Spam and flavored ice? Check.



Hula dancers? Check.



Warrior dancers? Check.

Girls in coconut bras and grass skirts? Check.



Ukelele lessons? Check.

Hawaiian reggae music? Check. Wait, what? Yep. These guys were great. It turns out this band, Kush County, was from the mainland (Casa Grande, AZ, to be exact), but they did bring up a bunch of guest Hawaiian singers to jam with them. It made us miss the islands (Caribbean). We had the same feeling we had when we got to hear Gramps Morgan in Nevis. One of the singers sang Let's Drink Beer, and we just had to laugh. For some reason it reminded us of a song we once heard in the Bahamas. A lot of island songs are pretty simple and are about the simplest things. This one had been about an onion and how it made the guy cry. Unsurprisingly I can't find the lyrics online, but trust me, it was funny.

Before we left, we checked out what was happening on Tempe Lake.



I love the name/logo of this rowing club. They are in Furnace Phoenix, after-all.

Not a bad weekend at all. I love warmth. I really do. If we could keep these 80-degree days forever, I'd be sooo happy.

Star Gazing

Thursday night, we decided to head to the Fountain Hills Library. Fountain Hills Friends of the Library was sponsoring a star party with professional astronomers and powerful telescopes. We were a little worried when some cloud cover moved in, but the telescopes were strong enough to peer right through them.

It was a cute set up. There were free glow necklaces/bracelets, animal crackers (Michael apologizes for eating about half of them; and yes, that's him at the table), and even hot drinks like hot chocolate. We had hit a high of 80 that day, and I was still dressed for that. It got cold out (in Renee-speak), so a hot beverage was a nice offering. Oh, and Star Wars music. I can not forget the music. Nice touch.



Inside the library, which was open until 9pm, they had a cute little display.



There was a good crowd, probably about 30 people in the first hour.

I think they've had these gatherings before, but with one telescope, so everyone would have had to stand in line to see whatever the telescope was programmed to see. This time, someone donated 4 or 5 more to the cause, hoping to keep wait times down. The telescopes are hooked to GPS units that can be set up to look at whatever you want to see in the sky. You just select the GPS point, and the telescope moves to the desired star/planet/cluster/galaxy. It would have been really cool had they worked like that, but all but one of the telescopes had been shipped that day, and they were not calibrating properly. The poor guy worked and worked and worked on it, but the equipment was not cooperating.

Photo from Wikipedia

The astronomer stood by the one that did work, and we got to see the moon (in its crescent stage), the green gasses around Orion's Belt,

masseffect.wikia.com

and Jupiter. There was even an app on the astronomer's iPad that showed us how Jupiter's moons looked and moved around the planet, in real time.

It was pretty neat. While we were waiting around, I copied off another person and downloaded an app to my smartphone so I could hold my phone up to the sky and know what I was looking at. It sort of worked...


Here are three photos from Lori Burns Derwent's Facebook page (she said I could):


Yep, that's what people looking through a telescope look like. 

It was also interesting to learn that the light we see from the moon left the moon less than 2 seconds prior. But the light from, say, Sirius (the brightest star in the sky), was at least 1,200 years old. It had left the star during the time of the Roman Empire! Some of the other lights we could see started their journeys millions of years ago and were probably of long-dead stars/planets.

We would have liked to have stayed longer, but we started getting cold and had a moped ride, albeit a short one, ahead of us. The telescopes were available for 3 hours (until 10pm), so hopefully they managed to get them all up and running. Thanks to the volunteers; that was fun.



Note per the Fountain Hills Friends of the Library: The Library Resale Book Shop needs book donations! On March 22nd we will have a book sale from 9am until 4pm and currently we have a shortage of books available for sale! This sale is a major fundraiser for the Fountain Hills Friends of the Library, and we need your book donation. Fiction and non-fiction books of all types that are in good condition. PLEASE DONATE TODAY! If you would like to donate large collections of well preserved books, ask at the Book Shop in the library lobby for assistance, or you can call (480) 734-7117 to make arrangements for pickup.

Well...

So for those of you wondering why the long silence, well...   We're still doing stuff - we went to The Great Fair two weekends ago, I hiked Saguaro Lake again, etc. but all in all there wasn't much to blab about. Blogging isn't always easy. Our life isn't as exciting as it was when Jacumba At Sea came into being. Moving onto an island in the Caribbean resulted in a very popular Island Babble, and the surprise publishing of A Sail of Two Idiots led to a fun stint too. But our return to the U.S. and an unwanted year in Florida brought a reluctant Babbling Conch, and now I'm struggling to keep Scoop Fountain Hills going. What can I say?

Hail

The most exciting thing I can say about this week, and the week before it, is that it rained - hard (high winds, thunderstorms, and hail included). We hadn't seen a drop of the wet stuff in over 2 months (70 days, to be exact), so as much as I dread dreary days, we really needed this. I doubt Mesa (20 minutes south of us) needed the little tornado that touched down though.












Sunday was a little chilly and the parks asked people to stay off the wet trails to prevent erosion, so what to do? We thought about going to the Musical Instrument Museum, but at $18 per person. we balked. That didn't include their current exhibition (Women Who Rock) which would have been another $7 per person. That's $50 - sheesh. Then we debated hitting Butterfly Wonderland until we priced that at $18.50 per person. How the heck do people with families ever go out? We ended up going to the movies, which at matinee prices was much cheaper (and fed us too). We saw American Hustle for lack of anything better to go to. It was pretty good, but about a 1/2 hour too long.

And that's it. The sun is back and the storm is headed east to wreak havoc on all you folks already sick of winter. Sorry.

Snake Season

We're slowly working my sister up to harder hikes and decided to take her to Dixie Mine and the petroglyphs on Sunday (still in the easy category). The weather is absolutely perfect (records being set in the 80s). Within 10 minutes of walking, some hikers warned us of a snake on the trail. Yep.



We walked waaaay around it and it didn't budge, but when we got to the other side and tried to look into a tarantula hole nearby, the snake started getting ticked off (notice rattle up, coil starting). Moving on!

About a half hour later, some hikers warned us of a snake on the side of the trail, but we never saw it. Not far from the mine, we saw this guy do the universal move for "Snake!" - a leap in the air accompanied by the obligatory curse word, customized by each terrorized individual. Once he saw where the snake was, he decided to take a picture of it, but the snake was really pissed.

When we walked up there, the snake was still quite annoyed and rattling away.

We walked waaaaaaay around this one too (after pictures and video shots), but it was really not happy with us. Apparently snakes can strike at a distance of 2/3rds their body weight (a 3' snake could leap 2') - I'm not sure we had that clearance, but as I've mentioned before, the snakes here aren't really that aggressive. You get plenty of time to leave them alone, assuming you don't accidentally step on them or do something stupid like try to pick them up.

Never-the-less, we started getting a little jumpy. We stayed in the middle of the trail the whole rest of the way, looking for any other serpents but made it to the mine and petroglyphs without any more encounters. I already took pics of this hike the last time we did it, but this time we saw a cave that must have been hidden before, just on the other side of the mine. It seemed to go pretty far back, but without a flashlight, we decided to leave it a mystery.



Michael, Protector from Snakes.

When we passed the area of our coiled friend on our return trip, he wasn't there. That was kind of unnerving - where was it - but not only did we not run into that snake again, but we didn't see any others either. Fine by us! Like us, snakes really like it between 80 and 90 degrees, over 110 and they die, so we'll have to start thinking about timing.

Upon our return home, we heard and then saw this chirpy cardinal.



Seems we all want to enjoy the great weather.