Spring Break 2008 Part 2: Sierra Vista Days 1 & 2

After exhausting the desert museum in Tuscon, we rolled south and east for Sierra Vista. We weren't sure how far out of Sierra Vista town our B&B was supposed to be, so we made arrangements to stay in Sierra Vista proper on Saturday night. We drove around town a little bit and settled on a Best Western.

The lady behind the desk recommended Daisy Mae's Stronghold for dinner, which is a 100-year-old steakhouse in town. We unloaded our stuff, cleaned up a little, and headed out. The taverns was in the armpit of town, and looked like it had been there for 100 years, and not too well taken care of. I thought for a moment that we were entering a biker bar and facing our own deaths, but it turned out to be a sleepy little establishment full of locals who didn't stare too much when a couple of tourists stumbled in. All the reviews online are about the same--shabby restaurant, great service, incredible food. Honestly, I don't think I've ever had a better steak. It was fantastic.

Next morning we were up early and out to the EOP, the Environmental Operations Park (a fancy name for the wastewater treatment plant). The city of Sierra Vista has piloted this program to restore native wetlands. It's got a birding observation deck, and on Sunday mornings, the local conservancy leads a special walk throughout the grounds. The people who turned up were a fifty-fifty split of local birding buddies and tourists who found out about the walk and showed up for some local expertise. We saw lots of great stuff, and the hike leaders were world-class birders. One was especially good at birding by ear, while another was a specialist in marsh critters. I got myself some street cred when I spotted a bird sitting out on a piece of grass rather close to us, and it turned out to be a relatively good find and difficult to ID, besides.

By the end of the walk, several of the local folks had given us tips of other places to go birding, and other guided walks. We decided to join one of the leaders on a walk on Monday morning, too.

On our way out and back from the EOP, we saw this sign, which caused me much amusement.






From the EOP, we went back to the hotel and cleaned up and checked out. Meanwhile the guy from our B&B called us. There had been a pretty good mix-up with him taking over the ranch we were supposed to stay at. We ran over to the ranch we were supposed to stay at to meet him. He offered us a few alternatives, none of which really gave us what we'd been looking for: privacy, unconnected apartment with kitchenette, barbeque, internet access. He told us that the larger apartment at his other B&B had the kitchenette, barbeque and internet. Turns out there was no internet, television or radio on purpose--a philosophical choice that I understood but that eventually made our lives difficult when I had a due date for my class.

We finally agreed on where we'd stay, shook hands on it, and headed back out of town for a few hours while they turned the room around for us. We decided to head out to Tombstone, which was only about 15 miles away.



On our way out of town, we saw another sign which amused us to no end. A utility shed in someone's back yard had this on one side, and a basketball hoop on the other.






Tombstone has been totally corrupted into a tourist trap of epic proportions. It looks a lot like a hollywood set, mostly because something like 50 westerns have been filmed there. A chunk of the old main street has been preserved as a pedestrian area with horse-drawn tours in covered wagons and stagecoaches. Every few minutes a troupe of actors in wild west costumes play out a short skit of a story from the old Tombstone. These escapades culminate every evening with a re-enactment of the famous gunfight. During the afternoon, though, it's a little more lighthearted. The troupe has also errected a pretend gallows and has a pub lady taking $5 for the chance to put a pretend noose around your neck and stand next to the hangman. While we were there, we watched a mother pony up her cash to put a noose over her own neck AND the neck of her 9-month old infant.

People do some crazy things.















When we got back into town, we checked in to the Ramsey Canyon Inn B&B. We got the Trogon Suite, though the manager worked a deal with us to stand by the terms of our original agreement with the Rail Oaks Ranch, where we were supposed to stay in the first place. As the website says, the Ramsey Canyon Inn's pies are out of this world. There was a weird smell in the main lodge, though, that haunted us throughout our visit.

The view from the Rail Oaks Ranch was fairly open since it was farther down the canyon. Our view from the Trogon Suite was still pretty amazing.













The next morning we were up early for a Riparian Walk along the San Pedro River. We were frequently stuck in the back of a line on a narrow trail along the river, so there were a bunch of things that we didn't get to see. However, we saw lots of things that were new to us, and we touched base with some of the folks that we'd walked the EOP with the previous day.

One of the guys, Rick, had chatted us up quite a bit at the EOP and we saw him again on Monday morning. By mid-walk, he had talked himself into going birding with us on Tuesday morning. He decided to be our local guide-on-the-ground for no other reason than that he felt like going birding to the same place we did.

After our morning walk and catching some lunch in town, we went back to our room where we spent some time watching the feeders in the yard. We spent an hour or better stalking some hummingbirds and taking a few shots of other birds. We saw a black-headed grosbeak, several acorn woodpeckers, and a mess of hummingbirds.


































We were most excited because we thought we saw a rufous hummingbird at the feeder, something we thought was fairly unusual. Turns out that nearly every sort of hummingbird in the entire universe makes its way through the Huachuca mountains in spring migration!







Later we made our way up to the Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast, fondly referred to as Mary Jo's place by local birders. Mary Jo has just one guest house, but opens her garden to birders for a small donation that she uses to buy food and sugar for the birds.

Out front, she's got almost a dozen humming bird feeders, and out back she's got all sorts of other feeders for birds. You can literally sit in a comfy chair for hours watching the birds that come in there.

The hummingbird feeders were crowded, so we made our way to the back yard, where we took some decent shots of all sorts of birds.

A gila woodpecker helping himself to an orange:







A bridled titmouse came by to have some suet cake and look at me:





The Mexican jays liked to pose for me:








An Arizona woodpecker came by for some suet, too.




The hooded oriole was having an identity crisis and snacking at the hummingbird feeder:




The canyon towhee posed for me, too:





A yellow rumped warbler was flitting around quite a bit:








A Gambel's Quail was strutting around in back and posing with his punk-rock mohawk. These guys are hilarious and I can't get enough of them:









Finally, we had some folks who REALLY knew the difference between a house finch and a Cassin's finch. We know that this is definitely a Cassin's, though I'm still not a crack shot at telling them apart.






After baking in the sun at Mary Jo's for most of the afternoon, we went in search of dinner and called it a night. We were having a really hard time staying awake much after dark!