Heading south to warm country… NOT!

Next I headed south to what I thought would be warm country. Boy, was I wrong! Safford was cold and windy. I intended to call in coyotes, bobcat, and foxes in Safford, but the weather was too windy. Windy weather makes calling in predators nearly impossible because predators don’t seem to be out hunting that much in windy weather. For those you do not know, calling is a method of attracting predators to you to hunt them or in my case to take pictures of them. When calling coyotes and bobcats I make the sounds of scared/wounded rabbits to attract predators that would like to eat the unfortunate rabbit. While calling, I sit very still and am completely camouflaged, so that the predator cannot see me. It is a lot of fun. Coyotes, foxes, and a bobcat have come so close to me that I could almost reach out and touch them.

Though I did not get to go calling, I did get to do other things like see a lot of family, especially the Kempton’s and the Curtis’s. We stayed at the Kempton’s, which was fun. I have now stayed at the Kempton’s since before all the Kempton cousins left home. I would go over there then go hunting all day in the hills. Those were good times. Sadly I have only gone hunting once, since I left Arizona.

Jason Brimhall has his horses at the Kempton’s. He has a nice little broodmare band of 9-10 and a total of 15. He raises quarter horses and of course has to supply the market with what it wants, which is color. He mostly has grulla, buckskin, and palomino mares, and his buckskin stallion throws good color. Jason, Traci, and I went a short ride through the hills. I did not realize how long it has been since I last rode horses. I was a small buckskin mare and was using a small saddle, which made it worse. After 10 minutes I was already saddle sore. The stirrups were so high that when I took her at a good lope I bounced all over in the saddle. On the way back I switched horses with Traci because Traci was riding a taller bay mare with a larger saddle. Finally I was comfortable! After returning to the house, I took the kids on short rides. My mare decided that she was tired of riding and started playing games with me. She tried to back up into the ditch to get me scared. She sideswiped a fence post and a telephone pole in an effort to hurt my leg. Finally I got mad and started kicking her hard in the flank and did not let her get away with it. She desisted in her mission of sabotage and noncompliance and started to obey me again. Dad did not go with us because he had to cook carne asada for the New Year’s party that night. (I think that the real reason he did not go is because he does not know how to ride horses. Cooking carne asada was just a convenient excuse. I think all those stories of roundup when he was 8 years old are fabricated stories that he has perpetuated over the years to a gullible audience. I need to see him ride to believe.)

On New Year’s Eve we went to Jay and Dustin’s nursery where we lit their branch pile on fire. It made a nice bonfire for an hour. Then we went to Kevin and Kristi’s for a New Year’s party. I am not sure what everyone did because as usual I fell asleep before midnight. I assume everybody had fun. I must say that I enjoyed my late night nap. I awoke and found a group of people putting together a puzzle, so I joined to finish it. Sadly I did not get to do the tradition Safford New Year’s activity. Every time I have been in Safford during New Year’s I have hunted on New Year’s Day. Instead this year I went out to the ranch with Dad, Aunt Barbara, and Jay to talk to Pete (and take pictures).

Hackberry Ranch and the 111

Seeing the ranch was a lot of fun because it looked almost decent. Last time I visited the ranch, the drought was so bad that there was hardly a blade of grass on the range. The range received some rain, and the effects of it were noticeable. The cows and calves were fat. We visited several stock tanks and deeded lands within the ranch. The purpose of the trip was to discuss the details of the ranch with Pete, the manager. However, I was more preoccupied with taking pictures. I encountered several sparrow species at the stock tanks. Sparrows are without peer my favorite birds, so I was excited to find so many of them and get some excellent photos (to be posted later on my website).

I paid attention to some of the discussion with Pete and just shook my head at all the regulations and people-pleasing with the BLM that goes on in order to be left alone. The BLM is a bureaucratic mess as is every government institution. However, bureaucracy has its advantages at times. The San Simon River (ephemeral wash) runs through the Hackberry Ranch. The feed in the flood plain is excellent, especially during the winter. The BLM wants fewer cows on the river, but cannot do anything without public approval. An environmentalist group opposed the measure to limit cattle on the river because they want to remove all cows not limit the number of cows there. The BLM now has to rewrite the whole regional plan because of this dispute, which will take months if not more than a year. As a result the range along the river is left alone and our cattle graze there as they always have because there are no fences to keep them out. For the cows’ sake, disagreement should continue indefinitely.

On another note, the ranch is not what it used to be. I have heard stories that the ranch held at least a couple thousand cattle. When Grandpa William Ellsworth bought the 111 (called 111 because it is 111 sections, and a section is one square mile or 640 acres or 256 hectares), he was guaranteed 800 head on the ranch. He went out there to look and stopped counting at 1,500 head. The 111 could barely support a tithe of that many cows now. That was the fate of most of the desert grasslands. Climate change and overgrazing changed the range from semi-arid grassland to arid shrubland. Probably nothing can be done to reverse the current trend.

After our trip to Safford, Dad and I headed to Yuma to spend a few days before I flew back to Miami. Tony Whalen (my old boss and Dad’s friend) took us fishing on January 3 at Senator’s Wash. It was so nice to get on the water and do some fishing. Tony loves fishing and goes out every week in either Yuma or Lake Havasu where he lives. We have a rivalry going on because he knows that I have only once in my life caught less fish than someone else with whom I was fishing. In the case that I cought the same number of fish as someone else, I always caught the larger fish. That holds true for every time Tony and I have fished together. Sadly for Tony, the precedent still holds. He caught one striper and I caught two. Haha! For the trip between all of us we caught 5 striped bass while trolling (another friend caught 2 fish.) The weather was cold, and I guess the fish were not in feeding mode. At this same location we have caught many more fish.

Dad got more bites than anyone but could not land a single one! He needs to work on his fishing technique. Fittingly Tony Whalen repeatedly invites him to go fishing in Lake Havasu. Dad needs to take advantage of this invite and learn how to fish. Could you ask for a better offer? Use of Tony’s guest bedroom, all the fishing gear you need, a boat, and beautiful Lake Havasu. It sounds perfect.

Thank goodness for Skype

I left a trail of Skype through Colorado and Arizona. First thing that I would do when visiting a place was install Skype on their computer. Skype is a program that allows one to talk with a webcam for free over the internet. I used it to talk to Patrícia in Brazil. It was so nice because we could see each other while we were talking. It would have been a cold and dreary vacation if we could not have spoken to each other for one month. I already linked Julie and Jason linked to my account. Let me know if anyone else wants to set up their account, I can help them with it.

One funny thing that happened with Skype occurred after I returned to Miami. I was talking to Patrícia in Miami on Saturday, and I must have left Skype on at Aunt Debbie’s. It popped up on Aunt Debbie’s computer, and she did not know what it was. Patrícia could not figure out who was talking to her on my account because it wasn’t me. That left us scratching our heads for a while.

Traveling home

Finally after a nice vacation, I returned to Miami on 5 January. I left San Diego on a red eye and arrived in Ft Lauderdale the next morning. I decided to take the train to my house because it is an easy trip of only 1+ hours. The tran to take me to the train station from the airport was late, and I arrived just in time to see the train leave. I had to wait for another 2 hours for another train! I took the train to the elevated train station where I caught the train to my house (a station is only 2 blocks from my apartment). I fell asleep and missed my stop. I got off at the next stop and had to wait nearly an hour for the next train to take me back to my stop. It took 4.5 hours to arrive at my house. I was so tired that I did not go to the track to watch the first big stakes races at Gulfstream. I was sooo disappointed.

Now I am home and back in the grind. I have so much work to do. However, I enjoy my work, so it is good.