The views from my new aerie

I'm moved & must say that the dotter did a great job on making my new digs as cheerful and colorful as possible. More on that later. Right now, I'm just being impressed with a totally new set of views, as I face the north, in contrast with my house with its east exposure. Admittedly there's nothing new about a view of the hotel/casino on the mesa. But I also look directly at what used to be called Prescott Heights, the low hills directly to the north (below) that prove our little city is, indeed, located in a small valley!

Most impressive: a splendid view of Granite Mountain overlooking the city. Not to mention the nearby Two Rock Mountain and Little Granite, below.

The zoom lens does a good job of bringing Bill Williams Mountain into view and I even get the tiptop of the San Francisco Peaks as a reward for looking carefully! Both are about 70-90 miles distant.

As for what's down below? The remnants of our recent big snow. I am on a neat hillside now!

And many, many thanks to everyone out there in the wide world who's visited Walking Prescott recently to see how I was doing. I think that I'm a lot better now and promise to blog on a more or less regular basis -- after all, looking forward to the photography, the posting -- and the friendship -- was one of my personal rehab goals, if not necessarily that of the physical therapists who worked me over...

Important mountains

So why do I call them important mountains? What distinguishes these big heaps of rocks from others in our vicinity? For starters, today's pictures are of important mountains to the north of town; I captured the images on Sunday as we headed to (and from) Chino Valley, which is reasonably flat and serves to highlight, for example, Bill Williams which is due north of SR 89 for much of its length. As you can see, this particular volcanic peak stands by itself. In fact, all my important mountains are notable for standing quite apart from their surround.

As do the Sullivan Buttes, to the NW of Chino Valley. As I recall my geologic map of the area, the buttes are neither granitic nor volcanic, but instead limestone. There's some fascinating real estate up in the middle of this formation, BTW.

Although Granite Mountain is not really free-standing, it is nonetheless outstanding because it is a couple of thousand feet higher than the nearest peak to the left, Little Granite. The view from SR89 is revealing as it shows the long tail of Granite that extends far to the north.

The glorious sight to the north, however, in all seasons is San Francisco Mountain -- known locally as The Peaks. By last Sunday, enough snow had fallen in the high country to outline the top. As an exercise, let your eyes follow the lines on the extreme east and west upward to sketch in what once was a much taller mountain, similar to Fuji. According to the US Geological Service, San Francisco Mountain is the only stratovolcano in the San Francisco volcanic field and was built by eruptions between about 1 and 0.4 million years ago. Since then, much of the mountain has been removed to create the “Inner Basin.” The missing material may have been removed quickly and explosively by an eruption similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, or it may have been removed slowly and incrementally by a combination of large landslides, water erosion, and glacial scouring. If you want to track the weather at The Peaks, here's a webcam.

My favorite view of The Peaks is at the top of Willow Creek Road heading north; as you round a bend, suddenly the huge mountain looms. Zap. In your face. An exhilarating moment! And, yes, I'll get around to identifying the important mountains to the south one of these days. Real Soon Now.

Linkage: Choice links to flowers and green, growing plants are featured at this month's Berry-Go-Round, a botanical blog carnival. And just to show that there's a blog for about any subject you might imagine, you should go visit Cake Wrecks. That's right, a place to memorialize baking disasters.

A landscape of mountains

As promised, some Alaska scenery. Bear in mind that all these mountain pictures are within a 100 mile radius of Anchorage. Which means that I haven't yet seen The Big One!

When you're practically at sea level at the foot of a 6000-ft. mountain, it looms. And when you're in Alaska at 6000-ft. elevation (about half way between Prescott & Flagstaff, by the way) you're not only above timberline, but also high enough that mosses and lichens find it hard to stay alive.

A little bit of snow is showing and, if you look carefully through that pass (above), you might see a glacier. Often there's cloud cover (below).

Many of the mountains I have seen the past week are topped by Serious Teeth.

East of Anchorage on the Turnagain Arm, the mountains rise directly out of the sea.

Many of the lower mountains are so green that it almost hurts! Very wet country it is.

Others, such as these up in gold mining country in the Talkeetnas, display the skeletal rock.

Here is a view of alpine meadows reaching above tree line. The wealth of plants in these meadows is amazing.

But the greenery here is tundra -- thick, low growing mats of mosses, lichens with a few flowering plants. Between 3500 and 4000 ft. elevation, BTW.

Views from another trip in another direction, starting with the Matanuska Glacier, looking uphill.

Another valley glacier coming down from ice-covered hills (above).

More ice, visible above thanks to a good zoom lens. I wasn't anywhere near it.


This U-shaped valley above was made by a glacier long, long ago. Note the long ledge visible on the side of the mountain below -- it marks the height of the Ice Age glacier which passed through, carving the valley.

Political BarBQ with views

The weather gods smiled on Georgene's political Bar-B-Q Sunday, unlike an earlier picnic which was a contest with gale force winds. We had our monsoon rain in the morning well before time to leave and thus enjoyed a beautiful, cool, though overcast day at the hilltop pavilion at Willow Lake Park.

Good people... a good crowd... many of 'em in western or historic costume.

Good food... but then, what else would you expect at a proper Western Bar-B-Q?

A report on the progress of the campaign from the candidate plus a thorough political report from State Sen. Tom O'Halloran (below).

The setting, on the western edge of the Granite Dells, overlooking Willow Lake was gorgeous. (Sorry, my photos aren't nearly as dramatic as those by Rich, but I'm trying!)

Of course, there had to be a view of a scraped hillside, this particular specimen a road leading into the Prescott Lakes development. A very strange scene when you look at it closely, BTW. Lots of boxy landscape thingies to the left of the pavement.

But urban clutter aside, the pavillion site afforded splendid views of all the mountains that surround Prescott, from the Bradshaws to the south...

the Prietas to the southwest...

Thumb Butte, of course...

Granite Mountain, with Embry Riddle buildings in the foreground.

And in the far distance to the northwest, these two peaks barely peeking over the horizon. I'd like a chance to retake all these pictures on a sunny day. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more about the District 1 race for county supervisor, take a look at Georgene's campaign web site.

An Airing of Antennas

Andrew Johnson-Schmit aka Coyote Radio finally went live this evening at 1610 on the AM radio dial. My way of congratulating Andrew -- a Celebration of Antennas. Can't think of a better time or reason to post the antenna pictures I've been collecting. Just wish I'd been there when he added one more on the top of The Raven building.

The radio station is just the beginning of the realization of an 8-year long dream of Andrew's. But I'll let Angie, his wife, tell you all about it here and here.

As you can see, I've been collecting antenna pictures from all over: Mt. Elden north of Flagstaff ... Tower Mountain down by Crown King ... Yarnell Hill, plus a lot of local broadcast electronics below. Unfortunately, I haven't been near the arrays up on Mt. Francis for many years.

These heavy-duty antennas overlook Willow Creek Road.

The fellow above and those drum-like thingies below are downtown resident. If I had an idea of their function (beyond propagating electronic waves), I'd include it here. I just like their other worldly appearance, especially the mountaintop arrays.

And I haven't been down in the desert where, I read, the ubiquitous cell phone tower comes disguised as a sahuaro cactus or palm tree. My mother has lived to nearly 104, in good mental/physical shape after years with my father's 10-meter radio ham arrays -- so I really don't worry about RF radiation like the guy I'm linking to here simply because he has several great pictures of cellphone tower camouflage. Further: Wayne's World has an excellent article on the natural history of cell phone trees.