Back on the Road!!!

I let my manager at the hospital know that it was time for us to leave and she put me into inactive status. I can return in 6 months and still have a job. What a great job to be able to work 4 shifts a month and have the bonus of plenty of time off. I guess I wasn't ready for total retirement yet.

During the two hour drive to Catalina State Park, Mike noticed one of the trailer hubs was hotter than the others. He made an appointment to have it looked at before we leave Tucson on Monday. It is nice to have someone that pays attention to such things. He treats the trailer similar to a helicopter pilot and his chopper with his walk arounds before and during our trips.

This noisy cardinal caught our attention on our early morning hike to Romero Pools.

He and his friends were warming themselves in the sun.

This hike turned out more difficult than in the past. It has plenty of elevation gain with lots of obstacles. But even with a  7 am start and temps of 47 degrees, it heated up to a record heat wave (92 deg)  20 degrees hotter than usual.

Much of the climb, we were in the shade as the sun was rising. But once we started down to the pools, it was just hot.

We used our hats to pour the water over our heads to cool down but were once again dry in a mile.

We have visited this park several times but were happy to get in on another stay due to cancellations. We didn't have much planned since we weren't sure when we would be leaving Mesa. 

The brittlebush was out in full bloom and bees busy at work.

Each morning, we were up early for a bike ride or hike up the Canyon Trail which runs along the creek. This was a new trail for us. I had my gloves on the first couple of miles due to a morning temp of 47 degrees. Once the sun was over the mountains, we started removing things for the walk back down.

At night it was interesting looking for scorpions with our black light. This makes me rethink the whole sitting outside in my flip flops reading in the evenings as the sun goes down...