The Gila Box Canyon

Although relatively close to a major highway and accessible by passenger car at most times of the year at the mouth of the canyon, the Gila Box Canyon is still an interesting place to see and be seen. The canyon is only about twenty feet wide at its most narrow point, and is hundreds of feet deep. The canyon floor is alternatively sandy and rocky. This small canyon, just south of the Superstition Mountains, is not to be confused with the Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area in eastern Arizona.

My first outing to the canyon was on a Scout trip when I was about 14 years old. We camped by a windmill above the canyon on a dirt road that started on the Highway south of Florence Junction. The canyon seemed like a spooky place with rocky cliffs crowned with hoodos. Our Troop had an old yellow school bus for transportation and my Scoutmaster drove the bus down through the canyon, when the canyon walls were only a few inches from the bus in many places.

In later years, I discovered that the most accessible road turned off of Highway 79 just north of the bridge over the Gila River to the east. The road, which follows an old rail line, is scenic but can be too rough or muddy for anything but a high clearance vehicle during part of the year and can be impassible if the Gila River is running. The road ends at a place marked as Price on the map with a parking area at the mouth of the canyon.

Do not hike this canyon if you are looking for solitude. It is a busy place, on most days in the cool months, dozens of four-wheel drive vehicle traverse the canyon. Since my trip down the canyon in a school bus, the canyon had eroded considerably and is now a challenge for the local off road vehicles. It is very interesting to sit on the side lines and watch the various vehicles try to negotiate the rocky canyon floor. By most standards, the rocks are not considered much of a challenge but the variety of vehicles makes for an interesting afternoon to watch the show.

Arizona is hot, I mean really hot

On June 26, 1990 during the hottest part of the day, we all went outside to stand in the sun to see what 122 degrees F. (50 degrees C.) felt like. This was the record hot temperature for Phoenix, Arizona, although most of us believe that the temperature actually gets hotter because they changed the method of measuring the temperature. Some of us believe that the change in method was done to avoid discouraging tourists. To quote Wikipedia:

Phoenix has an arid climate, with very hot summers and temperate winters. The average summer high temperature is among the hottest of any populated area in the United States and approaches those of cities such as Riyadh and Baghdad. The temperature reaches or exceeds 100°F (38°C) on an average of 110 days during the year, including most days from early June through early September, and highs top 110 °F (43 °C) an average of 18 days during the year.

Phoenix is the largest of many cities in and around the Salt River Valley also known, appropriately, as the Valley of the Sun. Having lived here most of my life, I was a senior in high school before we ever had air conditioning other than an evaporative cooler or swamp cooler as it was and is known. We used to go barefoot all over town. We would stand on the grass at the edge of the streets, get up our courage, and then run across the hot asphalt. We would then stand on another patch of grass until our feet stopped hurting from the heat. I guess it never occurred to us to wear shoes, that would have been too easy.

Phoenix is getting larger every year. It is now the fifth largest city in the United States and would probably shrink back to oblivion if the air conditioning ever stopped running. One of the running jokes in Phoenix is that it is a dry heat. Most of the country has a lot of humidity and 110 degrees would kill off the population. Anyone who thinks Phoenix is dry hasn't been here. One of the most common methods of watering plants is flood irrigation. What that means is that the underground pipes spill thousands of gallons of water into huge basins constructed around grassy areas. Your whole neighborhood can resemble a swamp. The desert around Phoenix may be dry, but with the canals and flood irrigation, it is not comfortable at any time the temperature goes above 115 degrees.

People come here for the jobs and the climate. Nine months of the year it is great and the whole summer is great, especially if you have access to a swimming pool and a lot of cold water. It is still almost impossible for me to pass a drinking fountain without getting a drink. That was a survival tactic when I was young and it is a hard habit to break.

The sign of the diving lady

When I was a lot younger, I was often fascinated by animated neon signs. These old signs have lately become an icon of the fifties and earlier. Mesa, Arizona still has one of these old signs, prominently displayed on East Main Street. It is the famous diving lady sign. There are actually three of the ladies, each of which light up in succession giving the appearance that she is diving into a swimming pool.


We have to drive by this sign almost every day of our lives. She is supposed to be diving into a pool of blue water. Right now, the water is not working, so we wonder if she is diving into the sidewalk or the grass or whatever. The irony of the sign is that this particular motel, no longer has a swimming pool, so the diving lady is obviously a fraud as well as not particularly smart to be diving into the sidewalk. It is always something we notice when sometimes the diving lady is missing or there are only two of her.

Mesa has recently gone to these huge full color monitor displays. But the problem is that when you are driving down the street it is like trying to watch TV and not nearly as cool as the diving lady. (Thanks to who ever put the picture on Flickr)

Arizona is cold, I mean really cold

The iconic view of Arizona is a desert with saguaro cactus. In reality only a small portion of the state conforms with the obligatory cactus. Much of the state is high deserts or mountains. North and west of the low deserts, the land rises abruptly along the Mogollon Rim and you enter the world of the Colorado Plateau. The average height of the Plateau is over 5000 feet above sea level and there are mountains going much higher.

You may not associate Arizona with cold weather, but in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, Hawley Lake had a reading of -40 degrees F. (-40 degrees C.) on January 7, 1971. While this low temperature does not compare with other really cold locations, it would certainly come as a shock to someone expecting to wear shorts and a T-shirt. Even with this extreme temperature, it is not unusual for young people raised in Phoenix, just a few hours away, to have never seen snow.

One of the highlights of the Mesa Days Celebration used to be a huge pile of snow trucked in from the mountains. Families with smaller children would stand in lines just for the chance to stand on some snow and try and make a snowball. This contrast with the cold weather of the mountains and Plateau is really commentary on how little local people travel around the state, particularly in the winter.

One time while staying on the Plateau, the temperature was a balmy -17 degrees F. below zero and I attempted to open my Suburban which had become covered with ice. I finally got the rear door open to load our gear, but when I closed the door, due to the cold temperature, the rear window shattered. We fixed the problem, temporarily, by taping some clear plastic over the window with duct tape. It can get cold in Arizona.

The mysterious disappearance of the ancient inhabitants of Arizona

Well, first of all, Arizona, as a state has only been around since February 14, 1912 and so the ancient inhabitants didn't actually live in Arizona, as such. But, it seems like every exhibit, TV show or magazine article about the original indigenous inhabitants refers to their disappearance and has to say that it was a mysterious disappearance. For example, if you do a Google search on "mysterious disappearance ancient inhabitants Arizona" you will get thousands of resultant Websites. Whether you visit Casa Grande Ruins National Monument or any of the other ruins, you will always see a reference to the mystery. Speaking of Casa Grande, one mystery is why the National Monument is right across the street from a Walmart.

Regarding the issue of a mystery, first of all, there were a lot of inhabitants in Arizona when the Europeans first came in about 1528. What isn't a mystery, is that shortly after the first European contact, smallpox and other diseases decimated the native population. Estimates run as high as 75% to 90% of the population killed throughout the North American Continent. This is a historical fact that seems to mostly escape the speculation as to what happened to the native population. It is really no mystery that by the time European settlers started to colonize what is now the Southwestern part of the U.S., there were comparatively few natives left. When was the last time you read about the epidemics decimating the native population in one of your history books?

The other speculative reasons for the apparent abandonment of the indigenous ruins are drought, warfare among the tribes and migrations for social or other reasons. The only real mystery is why everyone thinks it is a mystery. It might also have been a good idea to ask the Indians at the time as to what happened to the early inhabitants, but that didn't seem to occur to any of the early explorers. By the way, there has been a recent dramatic increase in the number of Indians counted by the U.S. Census.

There are dozens of Indian ruins and petroglyph sites in Arizona. It is extremely interesting to visit them. I will come back to this topic again and again.

Storms and Rain in the Desert

One of my early memories of rain in the desert goes back to when I lived in Tucson. At that time, Tucson was a relatively small town and the desert was easily accessible. Tucson is slightly higher above sea level than Phoenix and has a little more rain. One day we drove out into the desert on a dirt road that went up and down over the hills like a roller coaster. At the top of one of the hills there were a couple of cars stopped and people out looking down into the wash. We stopped and looking up the wash, saw a flash flood coming. There was an actual wall of water about two feet high pushing along small debris. It washed out over the road and turned to mud. I have always heard about flash floods but that is the only one I have ever seen actually start and come down a dry wash.

We used to have a summer monsoon, but then the weather people all got together and decided that the annual increase in moist air really wasn't a monsoon and anyway, we now have a summer thunderstorm season. The monsoon was defined by two consecutive days with the dew point above 55 degrees. They used to have lotteries about guessing the start date. I guess the weather service doesn't like gambling so they changed the start date to a date certain. Beginning last year, the Summer Thunderstorm Season starts officially on June 15, which is easy for me to remember because it is both my birthday and my wedding anniversary.

Last summer the thunderstorms decided to celebrate the new opening of the season. We had one storm that was so incredible. It started to lightning and suddenly, the whole sky lit up with lightning continuously for about 45 minutes without stopping. The thunder was so loud and continuous we thought the sky would fall in. Of course it didn't or I wouldn't be writing this blog. We stood outside until the lightning was so close, we got afraid and moved inside.

We also have these huge dust storms. Mostly the people who promote Arizona for tourism try to ignore the dust storms, thunderstorms, hail, rain and snow in the state. They would like you to believe that the weather is always perfect. It isn't. Sometimes it is unbearable. The dust comes in huge storms called haboobs. You can see the edge of the dust coming across the city and suddenly the whole world is blown away with huge clouds of dust. It is pretty spectacular but really messy.

I will probably write about the weather and such again some time.

Katabatic wind in the desert

The desert breathes. The most common views of Arizona show one of three things; the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley or the Arizona-Sonora Desert with saguaro cactus. Actually, a substantial portion of the state is forested and well above 5000 feet. For example, both rims of the Grand Canyon are forested in their most popular parts. A most dramatic feature of the state is the Mogollon Rim, actually the southern-western edge of the Colorado Plateau. This 1000 to 2000 foot escarpment is highly visible in central Arizona and around the Sedona area.

The huge elevation changes create a significant atmospheric phenomena called katabatic winds. These winds arise in any area of the world where there are differences in altitude but are particularly regular and significant along the Rim. During the daytime, especially in the warmer months, the temperature gradient between the top of the Mogollon Rim and the deserts below can be 40 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit or more. This vast temperature difference means that during the daytime, the hot desert air rises up through the canyons and finally blows out at the top of the Rim. In the night, the cooler air on the Rim sinks down through the canyons and blows out onto the desert.

You would think that the cooler air from the mountains would be a welcome relief, but as the air descends it is heated adiabatically, so that in the lower deserts, the wind feels warm and sometimes hot.

Camping on the Rim during the summer, the wind picks up in the early evening and blows up the canyons, in the morning the air is calm. Camping in the desert, you get the reverse, in the evening the air will be calm, but by morning there is a breeze which last until the sun comes fully up and starts to heat the ground again.

In our rush, rush modern world, perhaps it would be nice just to experience the daily breathing of the deserts.

Bisbee, county seat and tourist attraction

Arizona has a number of old mining towns, but none as scenic as Bisbee, the Cochise County seat in the southeast corner of Arizona. Although I usually prefer wilderness locations, Bisbee is easily one of my favorite commercial-type destinations in Arizona. As their Website states:

Welcome to Bisbee. Stroll its sidewalks and find delight in the many art galleries, gourmet restaurants, coffee houses, book stores and specialty shops. Visit the charmingly restored neighborhoods of Victorian and European-style homes perched miraculously on the hillsides. Unwind...relax...and find soothing respite from your everyday world.

One of the major attractions is the Queen Mine Tour. We have taken the tour a few times and each time it is still a novelty. You ride an actual mine train deep into a hard rock mine for an hour long tour. The tour is $12 plus tax for adults and $5 for children 4 to 15, under 4 are free. Although I doubt that children under four will enjoy the tour. It is wet and chilly and really interesting.

Don't miss the Lavender Pit Jeep Tours. The Lavender Pit is a huge open pit mine right in the middle of the town. The pit covers an area of 300 acres (1.2 km²), and is 900 feet (274 m) deep.

Old Bisbee is in a narrow canyon and the houses are built up on the sides of the steep canyon walls and hills. The roads are narrow and really fun to drive, if you like cliffs and sharp turns. If not, take the town tour and let someone else navigate the roads.

Bisbee is in the center of a lot of other attractions, including Sierra Vista and Tombstone. I can unqualifiedly recommend Bisbee as a place to visit.