I Rode Through The Desert On A Horse With A Name (But I forget what it was)

John Clark making up for last week. Those of you who are regular MCW readers might remember that we took our oldest granddaughter, Piper, on a Road Scholar trip to Chincoteague in Virginia last summer. We all enjoyed that so much, we decided to go on a different trip through the same organization this summer. I want to give my wife, Beth full credit for doing a thorough and careful job of planning everything.

This time, we went to White Stallion Ranch just outside Tucson, AZ. I must say that I had some reservations about spending a week where temperatures would be over 100 degrees. We flew from Portland to Atlanta, then to Tucson where we spent a night in a hotel. The ranch picked us up in a van early the next day and we were off on our week of ranching adventures.

Piper, now eleven, has her own pony, but riding on desert trails is a whole different experience. It was rewarding to watch her blossom, gain confidence, and bond with two girls, one from Virginia, the other from Washington State. They were inseparable all week, whether in the pool, on horseback, or at the indoor activities.

Each day started with an opportunity to help groom horses (Beth and Piper took advantage, I did not), followed by a hearty breakfast. All our meals were plentiful and tasty. I particularly liked having an abundance of fresh fruit for each meal. Activities were varied and took into consideration the heat, with riding and other outdoor stuff early in the day or late in the afternoon.

Oh Ra, Oh Ra, is that your horse?

I had not planned on getting on a horse, having never done so, but changed my mind. I ended up on three slow trail rides, one of them when the temperature hit 110 degrees. All three were a pretty comfortable experience, although I suspect they assigned me horses with molasses instead of blood as they consistently lagged the others.

Piper took advantage of daily lessons on horsemanship, then passed a test so she could go on a couple fast trail rides. It was most satisfying to see her comfort level and confidence level grow daily. She and her new friends enjoyed a couple team events, cattle sorting and team penning (four riders rounding up and moving three steers into an adjacent pen.

The start of a leather keychain

In addition, there were hands on classes in acrylic and watercolor painting, as well as leatherwork. I enjoyed letting my inner creative persona loose for all three.

Can you guess who painted what?

We also had the following activities to enjoy. There was a trip to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a place I went to fifty years ago. It’s larger and has a lot more exhibits now, well worth visiting if you’re in the area.

We had a couple other afternoon sessions of note. Doris Evans, a docent at the desert museum, has been filming wildlife coming to her back yard on the outskirts of Tucson for years. She keeps a water basin filled, as well as varied snacks like cut up oranges for visitors. She showed us some of them from owls and lizards, to javelinas and coyotes.

Great Horned Owl dancing

Diego Dunn, who graduated from Arizona State a year after I did, developed a nice side gig after a career in aerospace engineering. He packages and sells edible items made from, desert plants. They include a great syrup made from prickly Pear, as well as candy and lip balm from the same plant. I chatted extensively with him both during the presentation and at social hour afterward.

Some of Diego’s products

Phil Garcia is the Arizona equivalent of Maine’s Mr. Drew. Both have a dedication to care for injured critters as well as enjoying exhibiting them in a way that decreases peoples’ irrational fears. He brought an array of snakes, lizards, a tarantula, a scorpion, a desert tortoise, and a chinchilla. Everyone got a chance to hold and/or pet them.

I took advantage of target shooting, hitting on 26 of 27 shots between a lever action rifle and a revolver.

Each evening we had a chance to enjoy a different activity. Line dancing, star watching, rope tricks, and an old fashioned cowboy sing-along around a campfire were the ones that happened while we were there.

When our stay was over on Friday, we were dropped off at the airport where we picked up a rental car and headed for Tempe where I went to college. I hadn’t visited since 1975, but have kept up with changes and developments through the alumni magazine. It now has multiple campuses with 100,000 students enrolled. ASU is consistently ranked in the top three in innovation and research, ahead of such schools as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.

I had a bit of a nostalgic sense as we strolled down the main area that was a roadway during my first year there in 1966. It is very nicely landscaped and even has a wild parrot population. Hayden Library now stretches under the pedestrian area and has a sunken garden two floors below where we walked. Three new skyscrapers are in the process of being built north of the main campus area and the number of buildings housing programs that weren’t even thought of in my undergraduate days is impressive.

We had a great meal at a Palestinian deli. The beef was perhaps the best I’ve ever had, and I got a kick out of reading that the Palestine Cola I drank was made in Sweden.

On our last day, we headed east so I could show Beth and Piper Roosevelt Lake and some of the Pueblo ruins nearby. The heat made hiking up to the ruins impossible, but we were able to see them through a viewer at a pullout. The scars of a fire that burned 80% of the area in 2019 are most apparent when driving south from Globe. The east side of the road is lush with greenery, the west, little more than dead trees and stunted cacti. The temp. reached 117 as we headed back to Tucson

Dinner with my best friend from ASU, the illustrious M. Thomas Carollo, was last on our list. We’ve remained friends through a lot of stuff I dare not go into, and I was thrilled when I learned he was moving from Arlington Texas to Green Valley, AZ just before our trip.