Riverside Festival of Lights

November 24, 2018

Hi Blog!

After spending the better part of the day hiking, Dave and I were eager to meet our friend Darla for dinner. Afterwards, we drove into Riverside to take in the annual Festival of Lights. The Festival is celebrating its 26th year. USA Today calls it one of the "Best Public Lights Displays in the Nation." Since it's free, it draws big crowds every year. Having a local with us, we avoided the long lines and high parking fees at the downtown garages. Here we are getting ready to take it all in.

Created by the Mission Inn & Hotel, the Festival of Lights became an annual gift to the community from property owners Duane and Kelly Roberts, who saved the historic hotel from destruction in 1992. The streets surrounding the Inn are closed to motor vehicle traffic. There is a stage for live concert performances and vendors have booths surrounding the Inn selling all sorts of holiday goodies.

The castle-like hotel is illuminated with 5 million holiday lights.

The line to tour the inside of the hotel was pretty long, so we opted to just walk around the outside.

Since the Mission Inn spans an entire city block, some festival goers opted for lighted carriage rides while taking in all the light displays.

If you have enough money to stay at the Inn during the holidays, an Elf will tuck you in at night after your carriage ride!

Highlights of Festival of Lights include 200 animated figures including angels, elves and Dickens carolers. Note the shadows of the characters standing on the balconies.

The Mission Inn has played host to U.S. Presidents and celebrities, and served as the setting in many Hollywood productions, such as 1915’s “The Vampire,” 1938’s “Idiot’s Delight,” and 1997’s “Man in the Iron Mask.”

Toy Soldiers stand guard at the back of the Inn.

As we finished our circle around the Inn, we were just amazed by the volume - not just the volume of lights, but the volume of people making the pilgrimage to see the lights. New York City may have Rockefeller Center, but  SoCal has the Mission Inn.

Tomorrow, yet another adventure awaits us. Stay tuned.

Ramblin' Up Rubidoux

Whew!  This Thanksgiving weekend has just been a social whirl.  We've hardly done much other than eat, drink, make merry, and fall into bed to get some sleep before we start all over again.

Darla suggested we get together today in the late afternoon, which left us the better part of the day to fit in a climb of Mt. Rubidoux.  We've wanted to explore that craggy peak since our original visit to Riverside in February 2017.

Mount Rubidoux was named for Louis Rubidoux, who established Rancho Rubidoux in 1847 after purchasing a portion of Rancho Jurupa from Benjamin Davis Wilson, the second elected mayor of Los Angeles.  Our campground and the surrounding Rancho Jurupa Park makes up much of the balance of the original Rancho Jurupa.

The mountain, which lies just west of downtown Riverside, has been designated a city park and landmark. It is the site of the oldest outdoor non-denominational Easter Sunrise service in the United States. Many historic markers and memorials have been placed on the mountain, the most prominent being a cross at the summit dedicated to Father Junípero Serra. While a majority of Mt. Rubidoux is owned by the City of Riverside, almost half an acre at the peak is owned by a private, nonprofit conservancy.  After the cross attracted a potential lawsuit for being on public property, the city decided to sell the land at the peak in an auction, where it was purchased by the conservancy.

Our total hike was almost 8 miles, with four miles of the total our walk over to the base of the mountain and back.  After a mile or so, our quarry was squarely in our sights:

The Santa Ana River runs along the base of Mt. Rubidoux, and boasts a paved 30-mile multi-use trail that stretches inland from where the Santa Ana River empties into the Pacific Ocean.   Crossing the bridge over the river, we could see swaths of cottonwood, willow and other local vegetation stretching south:

Monuments mark the base of the mountain on our side where the trail starts up its flank:

Our climb started steeply up a dirt trail:

Soon, we had views west over Jurupa Valley:

The hillside is speckled with vegetation growing in a sandy soil that has eroded from gigantic granite formations.  In places, big rounded soft granite boulders congregate.  Here, Kathy enjoyed the company -- not to mention the shade -- of some of the boulders:

Climbing further, we found ourselves so high above the floor of Jurupa Valley that we could look across or down on small planes banking to make their final turn to land at a small airstrip near our campground:

Kathy spotted a bench with a great view toward our campground (in the center background) and Darla's community (in the left background):

Eventually, we reached one of the summits, which was graced with a large American flag.  To the right, the Peace Tower peers over the granite rock formations:

Another summit of the mountain boasts the cross dedicated to Father Junipero Serra.  Between us and the cross, huge amphitheater-like seats or stairs climbed steeply:

Starting to descend, we walked toward the Peace Tower, which gave us sweeping views to the east, including downtown Riverside:

Reaching the base of the Peace Tower, we admired the stonework, and Kathy drafted David to pose with all of it for scale:

We picked a route down that differed from our path to the summits, so we had a chance to see other faces of the mountain.  The downward path we chose put us in a neighborhood adjoining Mission Inn Avenue, and we followed park paths along Mission Inn Avenue back to our original trailhead.

After another 2 miles walking home on concrete sidewalks, we probably don't need to report that our feet were very tired and sore.  We hurried into crocs, had a quick bite for lunch, and took a warm shower to soak our tired muscles.

Now we just need an hour or two to rest up for the adventure Darla has planned for us tonight:  dinner and the Christmas lights of Riverside!

Stay tuned for another big birthday adventure tomorrow.

Herons of Jurupa

The water birds are everywhere on the lake behind our RV at Rancho Jurupa Park in Riverside, California.  Here are three we caught who, uncharacteristically, ignored the humans around them.

Chiricahua National Monument Rocks!

November 16, 2018

Hi Blog!

We hadn't heard much about Chiricahua National Monument before arriving in Willcox, Arizona. We knew there were some hiking trails in the area, but were not sure what we would find. 

Located approximately 36 miles southeast of Willcox, Arizona, the monument preserves the remains of an immense volcanic eruption that shook the region about 27 million years ago. The thick, white-hot ash spewed forth from the nearby Turkey Creek Caldera, cooled and hardened into rhyolitic tuff, laying down almost 2,000 ft of highly siliceous, dark volcanic ash and pumice. The volcanic material eventually eroded into the natural rock formations of the present monument.

Sugarloaf Mountain

By far the most noticeable natural features in the park are the rhyolite rock pinnacles for which the monument was created to protect. Rising sometimes hundreds of feet into the air, many of these pinnacles are balancing on a small base, seemingly ready to topple over at any time. The Civilian Conservation Corps, during their occupation here in the 1930s, named many of the rock formations that can be seen today. This rock didn't have a name, so we named him.

Guardian of the Trail

Rising 9,763 feet, the Chiricahua sky island is an isolated mountain range rising above the surrounding grassland sea. The Chiricahua called these pinnacles "standing up rocks."

Sea of Standing Up Rocks

We started our adventure with a drive up Bonita Canyon Drive. This scenic drive winds eight miles to Massai Point, climbing through oak, cypress and pine forests. The drive ends at Massai Point overlooking Rhyolite Canyon. The expansive views along the mountain drive reminded us of Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park, but without all the traffic!

By following a series of trails, we set our sights on Heart of Rocks Loop. Along the way, we passed a few pinnacles.

We stopped to have lunch in the shadow of this balanced rock. We thought it was THE big balanced rock, but we later passed the actual Big Balanced Rock.

Not the Big Balanced Rock

As we approached the Big Balanced Rock, we took a video to let you see some of what we saw. Click the link to see a 360 Degree View from the heights near Big Balanced Rock.

Congress

Below are just some of the cool hoodoos we encountered.

Happy Family

Camel

Sock Puppet

Punch and Judy

Duck on Rock

Kissing Rock

Balanced Rock

Mushroom Rock

As we worked our way back to the trailhead, we stopped to admire the amazing stonework done by the CCC back in the 1930s.

CCC Trail Construction

After we finished our hike, we drove back down the Bonita Canyon Drive. We just happened to catch this little coatimundi crossing the road. To our surprise, it stopped to take a look at us as we drove by.

Coatimundi

The coatimundi wasn't the only curious creature in the park. This little doe gave us the once over.

white tail deer

And that, my "dears," is the story of our adventure. Tomorrow we head for Quartzsite, Arizona. Stay tuned.

Hiking the Cochise Stronghold

Outcrops of eroded, rounded boulders feature in many places across the Southwest, in such diverse locations as Joshua Tree National Park and Pinnacles National Park in California, Granite Mountain in north Arizona, and Hueco Tanks in Texas. Another, not so well known location is Cochise Stronghold, part of the Coronado National Forest in southeast Arizona, part of the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona, which are a relatively small range, extending north-south for 20 miles, south of Interstate 10, between Tucson to the west and Willcox to the east.

Most of the hills are traditional in appearance, with wooded, rounded peaks and ridges but at the Stronghold, over an area approximately 2 by 3 miles, the underlying brownish granite is largely exposed, and weathered to form a varied array of domes, fines, pinnacles and boulder piles.

The many narrow ravines, sheer cliffs and other hard-to-reach places made this an ideal refuge for the Chiricahua Apache Indians and their famed chief Cochise, who dwelt here for several years in the 1860s following the battle of Apache Pass. Cochise is buried here in an unmarked location that was known only to his immediate family and friends, and is now thought to be lost.

The Cochise Stronghold Trail winds through this area, giving the hiker an appreciation of the local geology and history.  We decided to learn about all of that and drove over to the trailhead.  Here we are at the entrance to Cochise Stronghold:

Everywhere we looked, the granite, tuff and sandstone rocks formed a dramatic environment:

Fall has arrived in Arizona, as this sycamore tree whispered to Kathy:

Juniper and manzanita dotted the hillsides:

Here, David paused to relax with one of his stony friends:

While we anticipated rattlesnakes, and other hikers warned us about javelinas, the only wildlife we spotted other than birds were these cute lizards, which ranged from 3 to 6 inches long:

The rock formations were varied and compelling:

A mile into our hike, we discovered the Cochise Spring, which was full of clear, cold water:

Kathy discovered this huge Century Plant, which dwarfed most of the trees and bushes in the area:

Ridges of sculpted rock surrounded us as our track swung north:

Here is another view of the ridges that surrounded us:

And yet another view:

Two miles up the trail, we encountered Half Moon Tank, a reservoir filled with still, dark water.  The watering hole was built by the Green brothers on June 15, 1952 and still holds water.

Not to be outdone by the giant Century Plant Kathy discovered earlier, this huge Sotol lords it over the trail:

Ultimately, we reached an overlook boasting a commanding view to the northeast, toward the valley we drove through from Willcox and, far across, the Chiracahua National Monument.  Kathy paused while eating her lunch to admire the view:

It's impossible to convey the scale of this landscape with mere photographs.  To help you get a better idea what we enjoyed, here is a 360 degree view near the Stronghold Divide.

After finishing our lunch, we returned back down the trail, encountering once again the Halfmoon Tank, giving us a gorgeous view of a peak beyond:

Along the trail are other beautiful sights, including this young, healthy yucca --

-- and this blooming cholla:

As we neared our original trailhead, the sun was sinking into the sky, pushing shadows up the cliffs.  As we admired the lengthening shade, we noticed the moon perched above this peak --

-- and thought it was time to get off the trail and head back to our campground before dark and the cold night settled around us.  Time to do some chores and rest up for tomorrow's adventure.