SEEKING WATER #1: ON THE WAY TO RITTER SPRING....

 

 

 

Housekeeping #1: I've renamed our water adventures Seeking Water.

Some background:  Ron and I have diametrically different hiking styles.  Ron has good orientation and good balance.  Those skills allow him to take off in the woods and ramble and scramble around, Dan'l Boone style.  He chooses trails as a last resort.  I, on the other hand, choose trails as a first resort.  I have poor orientation;  I've been known to get turned around even with a trail. I have good enough balance for most trails, but not good enough to comfortably scramble.  Over the years, each of us has had and continue to have fantastic hiking experiences; just not together.  

Some of the springs and tanks we're exploring are off the beaten trail.  I have to make a choice:  either scramble and live with my discomfort, or don't go.  So far, I'm making a choice to go.  

Ritter Spring & Ritter Tank were our first destinations.  For the reasons described above, it is a place Ron has been to many times and I never have.  It's quite close to home, and accessed from I17.  We took the exit and turned onto the dirt road.  And on the way to Ritter Spring...we were surprised to see tanks right away!  They weren't new tanks; it was a case of seeing what one is looking for. 

Housekeeping #2:  Many but not all tanks have been named by the Forest Service, and appear as such on maps.  It didn't satisfy my descriptive sensibilities to call the nameless tanks "Unnamed" or "Unknown" or "Anon" or "Mud Puddle".  So, inspired by recent hurricane activity and strictly for the purposes of this blog, I've chosen to adopt NOAA's 2022 Pacific Hurricane names for tanks otherwise unrecognized.  You get to figure out which is which.

 

Agatha Tank

 

Blas Tank w/Gypsy

 

Ritter Spring

There's an actual spring with a pipe just above this water feature.  I guess both the spring and this water at the bottom are called Ritter Spring?  Because just up the road is.....

Ritter Tank, once again adorned by Gypsy

Blow Hole Tank

Celia Tank (probably a stretch to name it; I think it's really a Mud Puddle)

Heron Tank (okay, I deviated from NOAA names!)

Darby Tank

Finding so many tanks when we were looking for just one or two really heightened our interest and the fun factor.  Plus we know from past experience that not all tanks have water in them.  A results of a good monsoon season was at work this day.

A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.

                                                                                                                  ---Lucy Larcom