January 2016: The Search For Snow

It was great to have Grandma & Grandpa Nash (or, as I call them, "Mom & Dad") come visit us in Arizona for the week following Celeste's baptism. This is the second year in a row my parents have visited us in early January; both times it has been very enjoyable! Last year, they helped us paint the upstairs bathroom, which was a great help to us but made me feel a little guilty at the same time. It felt like I was using my tuckered-out parents as cheap labor! I promised myself that there would be no "homemaking projects" this year, thus giving the grandparents a chance to rest up and have fun.

For the most part, that's exactly what happened. We did go on a few small outings, and ate out at a few good restaurants (like Street Tacos and Beer and Poco and Mom's), but we spent much of our time indoors, coloring, chatting, or playing lots of board games and card games. Grandma & Grandpa Nash especially love their card games (ironic, considering we don't often use face cards ourselves). But they managed to pass on their love of the game "Golf" to our girls, and many, many rounds were played while we all sat around our dinner table. My parents even bought us an automatic card shuffler when the week was over! But since they are one of the only people we play board games with, who knows how often we will use it?

The reason for our stay-at-home mood was the unusually cold weather that hit Tucson in early January. Overall, it has been a fairly chilly winter for southern AZ. In November, there were multiple overnight freezes; very unusual for so early in the winter. Christmas, although not "white," was nicely chilly, as were the days that followed. Not that we were expecting snow in Sahuarita, mind you...but we are always hopeful. True, we'd already seen some "home-cooked" snow at the Nielsen's house...

...and we got to play in the snow at the Arizona Science Center...

 

...but we wanted to find the "real thing," that only Mother Nature had a hand in making!

The girls (and me, if we're being honest) love to see snow, especially when everyone is out of school for Christmas break. For the girls, snow is a delightful, beautiful novelty, and one they look forward to every year. As it turned out, however, our family wasn't too lucky at finding snow this month, despite the cold.

"It's cold out here!"

Things started out okay. We convinced Grandma and Grandpa to take a short hike with us down to Tanque Verde Falls. We'd taken this hike with some friends last spring, and I hoped it wouldn't be too strenuous for my parents. The weather forecast promised precipitation later in the day, so we got an early start in hopes of getting the hike done before getting rained (snowed?) on.

The descent to the falls is a little steep, but fairly short, so we arrived without too much fuss. There was a lot more running water at the bottom of the falls than last time (probably due to the winter runoff), and the girls immediately proceeded to take off their socks and shoes and go nuts in the water.

 

 

Grandma and Grandpa watched for a bit, but started their ascent several minutes before the rest of us packed up. They were worried they would take a long time to go back up the hill, and needed to get a head start. As it turned out, they beat us by a long ways. Lorelai and Celeste headed up the hill quickly, going up the switchbacks so fast that Aurora and I lost sight of them. However, when Aurora and I finally reached the top of the hill and rejoined the grandparents in the parking lot, Lorelai and Celeste were nowhere to be found. They had taken a wrong turn (or two) and gotten off the trail. I left Aurora at the car with my parents and immediately headed back down the trail looking for them (and shouting pretty loud, too).

The time I spent between realizing the girls were missing and spotting them on the trail was only a couple of minutes. However, by this point, my poor girls were in a state of near panic. They'd realized they were lost for close to twenty minutes, and kept trying to find their way back up the hill, to no avail. In fact they had been loudly shouting for help for a while before my own shouts reached their ears. I was worried, of course, but they were in much worse shape than me! Celeste's face was wet with tears and Lorelai was chattering nervously. The rain started to come down just as they were discovered; thankfully, we were all able to get back to the car before getting too cold and wet.

Fortunately for Lorelai & Celeste, their chances of being found were always high. The trail never goes too far away from a paved road. Both girls were wearing brightly colored clothing, a plus with all  the brown wintry vegetation surrounding them. The hills leading down to the stream aren't very high and they have great visibility; there were no tall trees for them to disappear into. There was literally no one else on the trail that day, so there was no chance of them being kidnapped or spirited away (it was also a great blessing the girls had stayed together, so they didn't get further lost). And (most importantly, I thought) both girls had kneeled together and said a prayer that we would find them. Not long after finishing their prayer, they heard my voice, and we were able to find each other. I am so grateful for the power of prayer to both calm (which it did for my girls) and to inspire (which it did for me, to find them on the trail). It was a scary few minutes, but it all turned out well and was a good learning experience for all of us.

So even though we were trapped on an exposed hillside in the winter, we saw no snow, because Arizona. But we definitely got a lot of blustery, cloudy, rainy weather that whole week...enough that our fireplace was frequently turned on and a lot of hot cocoa was consumed. In fact, some of our friends in the Madera Highlands neighborhood (an area south of us, closer to Madera Canyon) had some snow fall in their neighborhood. But Rancho Sahuarita (our community) remained, sadly, snow-free.

On my parents' last day in Tucson, there was a particularly heavy rainstorm. Down in the valley we got a decent amount, but the mountains surrounding us all got fairly heavy snowfall. We decided that the next day, after Grandma and Grandpa had left town, we'd head up to Mount Lemmon and go sledding, as we have done a few times in the past.

Although we were excited to go sledding, it was still hard to say goodbye to Grandma & Grandpa. When they made their farewells, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. The girls love their grandparents so much and always miss them so much when they go. The only reason this year wasn't as heart-breaking as the last year was because my parents had stayed in a hotel for this trip. They'd decided on a hotel because they enjoy their "space" now as visitors; this is also due to my dad's unusual sleeping habits due to some of his medications. Either way, we didn't trick Aurora into believing that Grandma and Grandpa had "moved in" and would be our new permanent house guests, as happened one year!

After the grandparents were safely on their way that Saturday morning, we excitedly piled into our car and began the long drive up to Mount Lemmon. At the foot of the mountain, though, we were met with a very unpleasant sight...a mile-long train of cars stretching out far from the base of the mountain! As it turns out, the snowfall had attracted half of Tucson, and since we didn't get an early enough start, we didn't make it up the mountain in time. They'd closed the road to all newcomers! It was a bitter disappointment for all of us. We turned south and headed back for home; there would be no sledding for us. We were near tears.

Then I had a "brilliant" idea...what if we tried to go up Madera Canyon instead? Surely there would be snow up there as well! Plus, it was much closer to our home. Our girls were not all thrilled with this notion (having been in the car for almost two hours already), but they reluctantly agreed to have me drive them up there. Once again, we found ourselves at the base of a canyon road. We drove up the road...and were once again denied, as the road to Madera Canyon had also  been closed.

Apparently, the roads were impassible. What was worse, we couldn't even park nearby and walk the rest of the way up...there were already cars parked in every available spot. Ugh, we were all so frustrated!

After a few minutes of desperate circling, I finally managed to find us a parking spot in the lowest part of the canyon...still well away from any significant snowfall. It would take us over an hour to hike to any snow at all (much less sledding snow), and the girls were not up for it at this point. Conceding defeat, I reached out the lunches we'd packed for Mount Lemmon and we ate in the nearby picnic area. Then, as a small consolation prize, we hiked down to the stream that flows out of Madera Canyon.

 

With full bellies and exercised bodies, some of the girls' good spirits returned. They tried taking a "dip" in the creek, but were quickly reminded how cold winter run off can be!

 

And look! We even found some snow!!

Yes, this was all we saw on this day...it was hiding in a well-shaded patch of earth, between two large boulders.

 

Sigh; it wasn't even enough for a snowball! But at least, I told the girls, we saw snow on that day, and thus my promise to them had been fulfilled. This assertion did not please them in the least.

In just another week, we tried Madera Canyon again. It was the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, and everyone in the family had school and work off. This time, we had no grand sledding aspirations; we just wanted to go hiking as a family. Nathan and I were emboldened by our family's success at Picacho Peak last holiday break, and we wanted to try another hike (albeit a shorter, simpler one). We chose to drive up to the topmost parking lot in the canyon (thankfully, it was all open on this day), and hike to a lower point in the canyon via the Amphitheater Trail, which we've hiked before. It would be an easy, simple, yet beautiful hike.

 

 

After Picacho, this hike was a piece of cake! No one complained, everyone had fun, and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. And (wonder of wonders!) there was even a little snow left over from the huge snowfall a couple of weeks before!

See? That dirty white pile in the lower-left-hand corner? THERE'S THE SNOW.

Most of the snow was tucked away in the shadows of the mountain, but there were small piles of it spread regularly throughout the early stages of our hike. Much of it was close enough to touch and feel; there may have even been a snowball or two thrown during the hike.

 

Not only did we get to see some snow, but we had a wildlife encounter as well. There is a large herd of wild turkeys in Madera Canyon, and during our hike we wandered right through their midst as they were out foraging. They are surprisingly large birds up close, and we didn't want them to feel threatened, so we tried to move slowly and quietly past them. While they were definitely surprised by our arrival, they didn't seem to be in the aggressive mood, so they let us pass unscathed.

At the foot of the hike, the girls and I waited outside a local gift shop while Nathan walked back to the upper parking lot to pick up our car. While waiting, we admired the beautifully landscaped yard outside the gift shop, and had another turkey encounter.

This turkey was all alone, strutting down the center of the road as if he owned the whole canyon, gobbling loudly to himself. When he saw us, he broke into a (comical) run and was soon lost to our sight. Who knew our family outing would be full of so many turkeys?

All in all, it was a fun morning. We may not have seen much snow this winter so far, but we are still enjoying the (unusually) cold weather. The Colorado girl in me fervently hopes this cool weather persists for many more weeks to come! Who needs summer, anyway?