four weeks in... already!

Wow, I'm about to start my fifth week!  It's been hectic, apparently only a little more than is normal for this facility.  I feel like I'm barely hanging on keeping up from patient to patient, day to day.  I've been working with three patients who've suffered severe strokes, and it's been pretty exciting to see them improve noticeably on a daily basis.  One patient has gone from being able to barely whisper the word "yes" with effort and only tiny bits of movement in his right side to speaking 4-5 word phrases, standing up straight, and reaching for things with his right arm.  Another patient progressed from being completely slumped to her left requiring a lot of help to sit at the edge of her bed to the point where she has walked a short distance with only minimal steadying on each side of her.

Two Saturdays ago I took one of Jamie's recommended hikes, the Pontatoc Trail starting at Finger Rock Trailhead.  This is another hike up a canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains.  It's more of the same, but not boring in the slightest.  Beautiful saguaro forest, blooming prickly pear, cholla, ocotillo, and hedgehog cacti, some wildflowers, and more great views.  I started started off on the Pontatoc Trail, but when given the option, I turned right onto the Pontatoc Ridge Trail.  I followed one obvious side trail and found a geocache - signed the log but didn't exchange an item.

view near the start - i reached the pointy peak furthest right in the photo

towering saguaros

found a geocache by accident

About a mile after the Pontatoc Ridge Trail began, there was another split with no sign.  I chose to go right and up, suspecting it was not the "real" trail.  It was pretty grueling, scrambling at times using hands as well as feet, but not all that much harder than the previous trail.  I ended up hiking along the spine of the ridge up to the highest point (over 5000 ft.), a pretty hefty climb from a 3000 ft starting point.  I enjoyed my lunch along the ridge, and was awed by bird fly-bys that reminded me of Maverick and Goose buzzing the tower in the movie Top Gun.  I still haven't figured out what kind of bird they are, but they're super fast and you hear them whizzing by - it almost seems like you can feel them as they zoom past.  When I hiked back down to the trail split, I took the other fork and found that I was correct, the "real" trail was the lower one that stayed in the shadow of the ridge.  There was a sign at the end of it explaining that dogs were prohibited past the sign, which is odd because as far as I understood signs at the beginning, dogs were prohibited on all the trails there.  A couple hundred yards past the sign and steeply up the hill were some caves in the hillside that were at least partly manmade, leftovers of 100+ year old mining operations for silver, gold, and copper.

lunch with a view

old mining cave

looking back up at a few of the caves

Sunday morning I visited Tucson Chinese Baptist Church (TCBC) - it's just across the street from the Presbyterian church I attended the previous two weeks, so it's still less than a quarter mile walk.  I felt very welcomed by friendly people, and found out there are a lot of connections to my old place of worship - Chinese Independent Baptist Church in Oakland.  This past Monday I ran (jogged) for Meet Me at Maynard's - I ran into Jamie (my landlady) when I parked my car and joined her and her friend to jog the route.  I have now attended 4 times - halfway to a free t-shirt!  Friday evening I went to the Bible study group at TCBC and met more friendly people.

Yesterday I took another hike at Saguaro National Park - West.  I started out parked along Picture Rocks Road, hiked north into a small box canyon just a bit because I was told it was pretty (it was) before turning back, crossing the road, and hiking south into a small maze of trails.  More beautiful saguaro forest, this time with a couple blooms - on previous hikes I had only seen some buds.  I made a clockwise loop as shown in the map below.

the solid black line is picture rocks road

box canyon

Cactus Canyon was particularly beautiful and very densely populated with saguaros - I did not regret my on-the-spot decision to take the shorter loop option.  Some interesting things I encountered on this hike include abandoned mines, a bee cave, the first snake I've seen since I got here, and some petroglyphs (appropriately in Picture Rocks Wash, more on that in a bit) that I had not seen on any map or encountered in any online descriptions or guides.

saguaro bloom

"DANGER Extremely Hazardous Abandoned Mine"

dense saguaro forest in cactus canyon

imagine the volume of the buzzing as hundreds of bees zoom in and out of this tiny cave!

After I got back to my car, I headed back toward town.  I stopped at a dirt pullout and walked about a quarter mile to a wall of petroglyphs in another part of Picture Rocks Wash - I guess it earned its name.  It was pretty impressive, but kind of depressing to see where people had chipped off chunks of the wall, trying to take some of the petroglyphs with them.  I actually forgot to take a photo of the whole wall.  It's located on private property - the Redemptorist Renewal Retreat Center or something like that, but the public is allowed to walk in.

the spiral is a common theme in the hohokam petroglyphs

there's a lot going on in this set of glyphs

This morning (Sunday) I again went to TCBC.  It's refreshing to have people remember your name...  I think I'll stay there!