rscottjones This Mother’s Day, Kim and I decided to take my Mom out for a nice streamside hike. Parsons Trail, in the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area within Coconino National Forest, has been on my “to-hike” list for about 12 years, and is flagged in several guides books I own. It was time. While we didn’t get … Read more
Well, it took only 58 weeks for us to hit the 40,000 mile mark on our Subaru Forester. While I’ve certainly been using it quite a bit for work, nearly 12,000 of those miles came from three road trips we took. Last April, we headed up to Utah to visit Bryce Canyon and Zion National … Read more
According to the email notices, I’ve been Flickr “pro” subscriber for an entire year now. I was a bit skeptical when I first joined, especially since I already ran my own hiking pictures website, but I’m quite glad I went ahead and paid the $25. First, it’s very easy to use, and I am usually … Read more
Despite our plans to backpack to Lousy Canyon in Agua Fria National Monument (scrapped late Friday night), then hike to Pueblo Pato via Badger Springs (scrapped Saturday morning, and again Sunday morning after we got up too late both days), we managed only a short hike in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve (pictures here). We wandered … Read more
It’s been a tough week, and I decided that I should skip out on two service projects and take the weekend off. Unfortunately, Kim’s pretty sick, so we weren’t able to go camping as I had originally intended. Instead, I left Kim at home on Saturday and met my mom for a short hike in … Read more
Kim and I took a few hours out this weekend and headed down to Florence to check out McFarland State Historic Park. We’ve driven past it once before, and though it didn’t look like much, we decided to come back. Well, it’s not much, but neither is the admisison charge. The best part of the state … Read more
Virtually everyone who knows me knows about my ongoing quest to visit every National Park Service site. Well, I’ve decided to add a similar quest: visiting every designated wilderness area in Arizona. all 90(!) of them. Whew—that’s a lot. Check out an interactive map of each designated Wilderness Area in Arizona. Despite hiking for more than a … Read more
I am now an official site steward for the state of Arizona. My primary assignment is up at Agua Fria National Monument, but I’ll also be working on Ironwood Forest National Monument and Sonoran Desert National Monument. The Arizona Site Steward Program is an organization of volunteers, sponsored by the public land managers of Arizona, … Read more