Gypsy and I started the month with what turned out to be an attempt to hike the 12-mile Sycamore Rim Trail.
The trail is a loop, and I've been enjoying it for years. The scenery is great, and the distance is a decent enough challenge.
I'd chosen an entry point that put KA Hill, the only climb, early. I huffed up and took a snack break at the top. Still fooling around with the selfie stick. They're really made for smart phone cameras where you can see the picture you're taking. With my point & shoot camera, there's a lot of guesswork!
We started down KA Hill, and as we went down in elevation, the trail became less and less defined. Perhaps last winter's snows had caused all the downed trees. Heavy rains obliterated the trail itself. I knew pretty closely where I was, but after a short distance of not picking up the trail again, I decided to err of the side of safety. I had a plan, so I turned around and huffed back up KA Hill, then picked up a forest road that I knew went around the Hill. I followed the road, looking for the trail. Yeah, not so much. Besides a generalized uncertainty, there was active logging in the area.
What with not locating the trail in a reasonable amount of time and the logging truck traffic, I decided to turn back for good. Our hike was about half the distance I planned, but I was comfortable with my decision. It's always a pleasure to be out hiking, even if things don't go exactly as planned. Another time, knowing what I know now, I might plan an alternate route to account for both the logging and the lack of trail on KA Hill.
The next day, Ron told me he and the dogs had heard a pitiful meowing sound on their walk that morning, and had finally spotted a grey cat up in a pine tree-about 30' up in the tree. He called it, but it made no effort to come down. He decided to wait and see if the cat was still there on the evening walk. It was. He had mentioned the cat was wearing a tag, and we could clearly see the pink color of the tag. Ron went back out with his camera to try to get some pix of the tag and hopefully be able to contact the owner. He did and he did. Here's Cuddles, looking unhappy.
By the time the owners could get out here from town, it was dark. They and Ron walked out to the tree again, during which time they told him Cuddles had been missing for NINE DAYS! Oh, my. Cuddles would not come down for them either, so they went home to contact an arborist friend who could climb the tree and rescue the cat the next day.
Here's Mick on his way up.
Ready to capture Cuddles in a special bag.
Lowering Cuddles to the ground.
Cuddles, weak, hungry and thirsty, but safe with her family.
A week or so later, this article appeared in the Arizona Daily Sun, accompanied by the above picture of Cuddles in the tree:
Flagstaff's Melita Shoup and her fiance Jim Crane's cat Cuddles had been missing for a week when they went out to dinner on Friday, Oct. 2. Shoup's phone rang at the end of the meal. In her own words, this is what followed:
A man called to say that he had located our cat about a quarter of a mile from his home in Kachina. Ron Bauman had been walking his dogs and had heard a strange sound. As he got closer it was obviously a cat in distress. He located the cat about 30 feet up a Ponderosa pine tree. He returned with his camera and took a high resolution picture with a zoom lens. He was able to capture the cat's tag in the picture. He returned home and loaded the picture to his computer and enlarged the image until he could read the tag. He immediately called my number. We paid the check and drove back to Kachina.
We reached Ron's home, about a block from our own, just as the sun was setting. We all rushed over to the tree but no amount of coaxing could bring the cat down. We returned home and I called my former neighbor Mick Henry of Mick's Tree Service. He agreed to come the next morning (Saturday) and bring the cat down.
We are so grateful to the two men who were instrumental in rescuing our cat. The cat is doing very well now and seems to be recovering without serious injury.
If this all seems familiar....it's because in July 2014 we rescued this (different) cat from a tree in the forest:
A man called to say that he had located our cat about a quarter of a mile from his home in Kachina. Ron Bauman had been walking his dogs and had heard a strange sound. As he got closer it was obviously a cat in distress. He located the cat about 30 feet up a Ponderosa pine tree. He returned with his camera and took a high resolution picture with a zoom lens. He was able to capture the cat's tag in the picture. He returned home and loaded the picture to his computer and enlarged the image until he could read the tag. He immediately called my number. We paid the check and drove back to Kachina.
We reached Ron's home, about a block from our own, just as the sun was setting. We all rushed over to the tree but no amount of coaxing could bring the cat down. We returned home and I called my former neighbor Mick Henry of Mick's Tree Service. He agreed to come the next morning (Saturday) and bring the cat down.
We are so grateful to the two men who were instrumental in rescuing our cat. The cat is doing very well now and seems to be recovering without serious injury.
If this all seems familiar....it's because in July 2014 we rescued this (different) cat from a tree in the forest:
We kept her for a couple weeks before she disappeared, presumably for home.
Sunday, Theater Movie Season opened with a bang:
It was a Hollywood version of the disastrous 1996 climbing season, in which a storm caught climbers too high and too late on the mountain and death ensued. We watched it in 3D, and there were a couple of times my fear of edges almost had me out of the theater! It was well done and chilling in every sense of the word. Though I had read Jon Krakauer's first-hand account "Into Thin Air" years ago, I happened on a copy of it on tape at the library, read by Krakauer. His account was equally chilling and disastrous. I found it whetted my appetite, though, and when I happened upon an on-line article titled "The 7 Most Riveting Reads About Mount Everest", well, let me just say that there are six books sitting on my shelf and I'm about to dive in for the long haul!
Thursday, hiking companion Sue and I re-hiked a portion of the Arizona Trail on the Peaks, going for fall color. It was a little early, but we found enough for some good pix. We'd had some rain, which was early snow on the Peaks.
Friday, Theater Movie Season continued with:
NASA niece Melissa had recommended this movie (and the book it was based on) as having some
decent space science. We loved it! Also in 3D. Unlike Everest, which was a disaster movie with a sad ending, The Martian is a disaster movie with a good ending. Lots of humor from Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney left for dead when a Mars mission had to be abandoned. Must-see.
As if all that wasn't enough, our Theatrikos tickets were for Sunday, so we went to Live Theater for:
It was an interesting story, if a little difficult to figure out who the "good people" might be.
Tuesday we drove to Phoenix, spent the night in a motel, and caught an early plane the next morning for Ithaca, NY via Philadelphia to visit Ron's oldest brother Dale and wife Marie. There's a separate post pending for that.
A week later, back home from a most enjoyable New York trip. Whew! I've plenty of projects that I managed to put off during the busy summer, and am now planning to stay home for the rest of the year and do them!
"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on
the feelings, as now in October."
the feelings, as now in October."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
