LAST DAYS AT THE RANCH: DIARY OF A WORK DAY

Since we, Ron, and Rosanna arrived on the ranch Wednesday night, it has been transformed.  The work crew is composed of six – five seniors (Rosanna, me, Odel, and Art and Suzan, the RV’ers who have been property sitting for the past month), and 30-year old Ron.  What a congenial group!  The energy and good humor of everyone in the group has made this tough project rewarding and fun – I sort of imagine this is how pioneers or homesteaders felt out on the range or prairie, everyone bringing their strengths to the effort, then sitting around swapping stories at night. 

On Thursday, after burying Farah the sheep, we all started sorting and hauling,  There was way too much “stuff” to get a clear picture of the scope of the effort, so we just started filling bags and boxes: stuff yet to move to California; books to be donated to the local library (boxes and boxes!); useful stuff to give to Gene, who runs the local flea market; stuff that was being sold or given to friends or neighbors; and broken or otherwise useless stuff to go to the local dump (a BIG category). 

Friday was more of the same: refrigerators and deep freezers were emptied and defrosted; shelves were emptied; cupboards were cleaned out; piles were sorted, pickups were loaded, and goods were hauled off.  A friend of Rosanna’s arrived with a trailer to carry away furniture and the piano, and we began to see real progress.  By the end of the day Friday, sitting at the dinner table in Art and Suzan’s RV, we made a plan for Saturday – beginning with breakfast, to use up the eggs in Rosanna’s refrigerator!  I put some of the pinto beans we found in the barn freezer in the crockpot overnight, and we all agreed on breakfast at 8:30 am Saturday.

Loading up after breakfast.	Odel with a load for the dump.

What an excellent beginning to the day!  We enjoyed scrambled eggs, pinto beans, salsa, avocado and freshly cooked tortillas sitting in the morning sun. It was so much fun that we settled on an early (4 pm) dinner so we could dine outside again. Then we got back to the business of packing, hauling and cleaning. We filled one pickup with trash for the dump, and Odel and Ron took off for Elfrieda.

Art and Suzan ready to head to Gene’s.	Ron almost lost a thumb to this cage!

Suzan and Art’s pickup was loaded for a trip to Gene’s flea market; they took off as Odel and Ron came home with a load of hay for the four remaining farm animals.  Once they unloaded the hay, we filled the pickup with another load for Gene and away went the guys. 

Rosanna and I just kept loading and sorting bags and boxes; every so often, I took a break to work on the dish (Southwest Cornbread Pudding) I was putting into the crockpot for dinner.  Just as I finished up in the kitchen, Rosanna knocked on the door saying I had to “come and look”.   This is what I saw – and I’m posting this photo for Donna, for Sydney and Frank, for Auntie Carol, for Joy and Greg, all the people who know what the barn used to look like (borderline hoarders)! 

By the time all the trucks arrived back at the ranch (early afternoon), Rosanna and I were taking a break in the sunshine, and soon our four co-workers joined us for iced tea and beer.  Then it was back to work, but relaxed… a little work here, a little there.  We cleaned up an old table from the barn and set it with a tablecloth and some of Rosanna’s old dishes and wine glasses, then converged with food, wine, and good appetites. 

A toast to the ranch!  A toast to the workers!  A toast to a great day!

The old barn table cleaned up pretty well!	Another good meal with good folks.

A BUSY WEEK AND A BIG SURPRISE – TUCSON

We had our week so carefully planned.

On Monday, we’d do all the “get ready to go after three weeks in one site” stuff. 

Tuesday morning, we’d pull out early to deliver Scoopy to Revived Auto Detailing for a day and a half beauty treatment.  We’d spend the day at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and check into a motel on the east side of town, near Sabino Canyon, overnight.

Wednesday, we’d hike in Sabino Canyon in the morning, pick Scoopy up at 1 pm and skedaddle on over to Catalina State Park.  Arriving in early afternoon, mid-week, we’d be likely to snag a W/E site by the end of the day, where we’d spend the next week or so hiking and visiting with our friends Alex and Ellen.  Odel made a tee-time for he and Alex for Friday.

Sounds great, eh?

On Monday, I emailed Ellen to find out how things looked at Catalina State Park; had they had any delay getting a site?  An overnight in dry camping?  Her reply, which arrive quickly, mentioned the word “reservations”.  Reservations??  At Catalina???

In a quickly flurry of emails, we were surprised to learn that Arizona State Parks, first-come, first-served for all the time we have been traveling, are now on a reservation system!  Our carefully-crafted plan was useless; all the empty sites Ellen could see from her window were reserved.  A quick phone call to a reservations agent confirmed what we found on the online website: all sites, with the exception of one night here or there, were reserved for the next 10 days.

Wow, did that change our plans!   The rest of Monday afternoon was spent in hasty research and preparation to leave, and by the end of the day we had recovered from our big surprise. 

Tuesday morning, we had Scoopy in the hands of Revived Auto Detailing at 9 am, and we were at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum just in time to powerwalk down to the 10 am Raptor Free-Flight show (with a short stop to photograph and admire the barn owl, as well as the docent who patiently exhibited the bird on her outstretched arm).  The morning free-flight show features several different kinds of raptors; the afternoon ( 2 pm) show features a family of Harris’s hawks.  We stayed around long enough to see both shows, enjoying the wonderful trails, exhibits, and lunch in the few hours between the raptor shows.  No visitor to Tucson should miss this incredible attraction, and one visit definitely is not enough.  I could write reams about our visit, but the real message is: GO!

We were pretty well wiped out by the end of the afternoon, and just managed to beat Tucson’s commute traffic as we drove all the way from the west side to the east to check into to our motel, Comfort Inn at Sabino Canyon.  This very unassuming motel is tucked into the end of an uninspiring strip mall, but we had done our research and the place lived up to reviews we read: very friendly staff, very clean rooms, and an appealing interior design that erased the image of our strip mall location.  The sparkling hot tub and pool felt SO GOOD after our day on the trails of the museum.  A very good Mexican dinner followed, and we were sound asleep by 9 pm in a very comfortable king-sized bed.

Wednesday morning began just as we’d planned, with a hike at Sabino Canyon (preceded by a quite good, full breakfast at the Comfort Inn, included in our overnight stay).  A phone call to Revived confirmed that Scoopy would be ready to pick up at 1 pm, and we proceeded with Plan B: fill the rig with groceries, then head down for one last visit to Paws and Hooves Ranch, where Rosanna and her nephew Ron would arrive that night for several days of post-move cleanup work.

When I say fill the rig with groceries, I mean some major shopping.  The nearest good-sized grocery stores to the ranch are at least 45 minutes away.  The nearest restaurant is a café that isn’t open for dinner; dining out is not the easy option – particularly for vegetarians Rosanna and Ron.  Since Rosanna no longer had a working kitchen (everything had been moved to California), we turned Scoopy into a food truck.

In two hours of shopping (Costco and Sunflower Market), we packed Jules to the ceiling with fresh produce, wine, frozen seafood, bread, cheese – everything that we needed for breakfast, lunch and dinner for four ranch hands for 4-5 days.  It took us a good half hour to transfer everything to Scoopy, and we left with bags of groceries still unpacked to beat the traffic out of town.

A hike, marathon shopping, and a 2+ hour drive… we were so happy to pull into Paws and Hooves Ranch.  Rosanna’s property sitters, Suzan and Art (part of our Escapee Boomers RV club), welcomed us with hugs, then left us to set up near the barn where we could plug into a 15 amp outlet to keep our batteries topped off (Suzan and Art being in the RV site).  I put together some vegetable soup for dinner, and we carted food and wine over to the house to greet Rosanna and Ron when they arrived at 9 pm.

So, we’re back at the ranch for one last visit.  The weather is very good, we’re a congenial group, and there is PLENTY of work to be done.  Yesterday, as we were burying Farah – an elderly sheep who died the day before we arrived – in heavy, rocky soil, dust covered and sweaty, Rosanna made a wry comment about how we owed all the fun to Catalina shutting us out with their new reservations policy.  You know what?  We’re glad we’ve been diverted back to Cochise County and one last visit!

BACK IN TUCSON, TAKING IT EASY

When I flew back to Tucson on Thursday from Sacramento, Odel and I had plans to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the highlights of Tucson, on Friday.  Instead, I awoke late and moved around like a slug until almost noon.  I don’t know if it was the grey skies or the high activity level of the prior week, but doing nothing held great appeal.  With the exception of a trip to the grocery store and a short walk in the desert, that was exactly what we did.

I awoke reinvigorated on Saturday, but didn’t want to head to the museum on a weekend.  Instead, I planned a day in town: a farmer’s market, a visit to one of Tucson’s great independent bookstores, a stop at Trader Joe’s, and lunch at Chopped, a favorite Tucson restaurant.  Odel was happy to sign on as driver/accomplice.

Farmers markets in winter?  Yep, here in sunny Arizona.  We decided to visit Tucson’s newest farmers market (Farmers Market at Maynard’s Kitchen), in the middle of downtown Tucson at the old train depot.  We had a plan: walk the entire circuit once before making any purchases.  This worked as well as it always does – in other words, not at all!  :)

The selection at the farmers market was very, very good.  Though there weren’t many booths, there was great variety – and we immediately got hung up at a booth selling savory pies of all descriptions.  Most of the pies featured chicken, but the one that caught my eye was made with Copper River Salmon from Alaska.  Since we had paused for a moment, the vendor quickly engaged us in conversation and offered samples.  Oh, boy, that salmon pie was fantastic.  Since I doubted we would run into the same thing for less money just around the corner, we made our purchase of the frozen pie, which the vendor obligingly kept in his freezer until we were ready to leave the market.

After that, it was all caution to the winds.  I bought a delicious roasted vegetable puff pastry for breakfast; Odel bought some sort of custard-y sweet.  Cranberry walnut bread went into the bag.  Then we came to the vegetables, all locally grown, and we added kale and kohlrabi to the mix.  Two guys had a business selling beautiful, unusual beans packaged with herbs as soup mixes and we snapped up a couple packets when they gave us a taste from their crockpot.  We passed on tea, salsas, homemade tortillas, ceviche, grass fed beef and books about raising chickens at home; no fresh roasted coffee beans for us, or homemade biscotti (unusual restraint).  It was a great little market!

When I was in Sacramento, the bill for our lunch in the café at the Crocker Art Museum was presented in a book, The Pat Conroy Cookbook.  If you have read Pat Conroy’s books, you know that food plays a prominent role, usually seafood from the Carolinas.  The cookbook featured Conroy’s reminiscences (real or fictional, I don’t know) introducing his favorite recipes, and I wanted it!

Tucson has a wonderful independent bookstore, Bookman’s, with two or three locations.  They sell both new and used books (their used book selection is huge), so I set out to see whether I could find the cookbook there.  The answer was “no”… but I had a good time browsing through the cookbook section anyway.  Maybe I’ll end up buying it retail eventually, but I’ll give myself a chance to forget about it first.  I really DON’T need another cookbook…

Then we were off to Trader Joe’s and Chopped, which has now changed their name to Choice Greens.  They still specialize in (huge) custom mixed salads, just as good as I remembered (I ordered spring greens with asparagus, peas, candied walnuts, dried cranberries, feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette, a yummy mix of crunch, sweet, and salty).

Back home, we spent an hour or two chatting with Day and David, a couple we first met in Oregon a few years ago when they hopped up from a picnic table and introduced themselves (they knew us from this blog).  They left a note on our door the other day; they are here at Justin’s.  David is a self-described “foodie”, a fan of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives so, as the sun dropped and the cool breeze sent us each to our own rigs, we made a plan to share breakfast at Coyote Pause, a local favorite, on Monday. 

Today we took a long, looping hike through the desert, out to the Ironwood Picnic Area in Tucson Mountain Park.  This tree (an Ironwood) is said to be 250+ years old, and is by far the largest tree in the area.  With it’s gnarled trunk, scaly bark, and the welcome shade it casts on the sturdy concrete picnic table, it is one of our favorite goals when hiking from Justin’s or Desert Trails.

Back home, Odel tossed a load of wash in our new washer – both new appliances are working perfectly.  Tonight: the last two hours of series 2 of Downton Abbey.  Boo-hoo!  Sundays won’t be the same without Maggie Smith.