After two weeks in the desert grasslands below, I was pleasantly surprised to find beautiful forested terrain in the canyons of the Santa Rita Mountains of far southern Arizona. One of the many ‘sky island’ mountain ranges interspersed throughout the desert terrain of this area of the American southwest, the Santa Ritas stand out as they have some of the highest peaks around, and little did I know also a very unique landscape for this area.
As I drove further and further up the canyon, the terrain slowly changed from the usual high desert scenery of grasslands covered in mesquite trees, cacti and other desert plants, to relatively thick forest and gorgeous wooded canyons.
I had no idea such a scenic gem was hidden below high peaks and surrounded by endless miles of dry, hot deserts in every direction. I was even more surprised to discover running water in the creeks, and found myself an amazing spot high up the canyon near the end of the forest access road to setup camp. A great place to hit my 17th month anniversary of the off-grid nomadic lifestyle.
Nestled in the wooded canyon and set back a bit off the main forest road, right next to creek and below the snow-capped peaks above me I found the perfect place to call home for the next couple weeks or so.
The area is covered with evergreen oaks and junipers, with a few tall pines rising above the forest canopy, more sparsely trees grassy southern slopes, and the fallen dead leaves of the scattered deciduous trees lining the creek beds.
The diversity of the landscape really blew me away, with a few cactus and a variety of other desert plants also scattered amongst the trees.
Very peaceful and quiet during the week, with the whole area practically all to myself during the week, turning into a busy popular weekend getaway when Friday evening rolls around, but apart from all of the surrounding campsites filling up it stayed relatively quiet without too many 4-wheelers roaring by. I don’t think I’ve every been in a place with such a radical difference in traffic between weekdays and weekends! And so far, as of early Friday evening as I am writing, this weekend looks to be shaping up to be much quieter than last week, so who knows, I may not even have any close neighbors this weekend, but we’ll just have to wait and see. There is no shortage of available campsites around with two forest roads running alongside the two main creeks in the area, and even still nearly all two dozen or more campsites were filled up last weekend! Regardless, the busyness of the weekends is well worth enduring for the amazing quiet and solitude during the week, and I can see why it is such a popular weekend getaway destination for the city dwellers in Tucson.
I especially appreciate the soothing sound of running water and waking up to the sound of all the songbirds in the morning, as there are tons of birds around, which is awesome.
Definitely the most birds of any place I’ve camped in all my months of the off-grid camping lifestyle. Apparently southeast Arizona is a popular destination for birders due to the incredible variety of birds that make the area their home, and now I know why! They aren’t shy either, and a few of them fly into my tent every day - looking for food scraps I imagine .
With one really little one once getting stuck trying to escape through a closed screen window one day, so with a little dedication I was able to catch her and release her out the front door!
All of the ones I have seen are such pretty birds, and I’ve often heard woodpeckers hard at work.
The views are stunning, the abundant shade a welcome escape from the warm intense afternoon sunlight, but with plenty of sunny openings for collecting solar energy and sitting in the warmth of the sun on chilly mornings. The temperatures have been mild, some cooler and some warmer days, with most nights dropping into the 20s and most days rising into the 60s or at least high 50s.
A wonderful place to be for another full moon, the sunsets have been amazing, with the stars not quite so epic on the dark nights as they are in the open desert of course, due to the trees blocking much of the sky, but still pretty decent stargazing.
Firewood is also abundant and easily accessible, and I appreciate having access to the combination of the fast/hot burning juniper with it’s wonderful aroma and the much slower burning oak wood, being a hardwood. There’s also great trail access nearby, with easy access to both the Arizona trail that runs the entire length of the state from the Mexican border to the Grand Canyon and beyond, and also the peak trails that take you as far up as Mount Wrightson, the tallest peak in the range at over 9,400 feet plus good mountain biking on the forest roads and 4 wheel trails too.
No cell service in the canyon, but good signal all around on most of the ridges and high points on the trails, so easy to get into service at least once a day.
And I even found cool little pond up one of the 4-wheeler trails...
All in all, definitely one of the most diverse and scenic areas I’ve had the pleasure of discovering during my travels, and by far the most awesome place I’ve found to camp in southern Arizona. And while nothing lasts forever, I sure am enjoying every bit of my time here before I head off to find new adventures wherever my next destination ends up being. And Dakota’s pretty happy too.
Great pics, I love cacti and succulents!
Can I ask a question about payouts? Is this a deep dives thing too, or do you just have whales following you around looking for anything of yours to upvote? :D
$30 on TWO posts, immediately after posting them! Super impressive.
I did my first #deepdives post yesterday, here. If you get the chance to check it out, I'd appreciate your feedback! Also, it appears they didn't notice my article. Did I forget to do something, or did I say something I shouldn't have? Thanks for your input. (EDIT: I see you have already voted on that post, so I'll assume you don't have anything to add. Maybe I just didn't include enough information about the topic, or missed some detail!?)
I will watch your new loooong video when I get the chance. Have a great weekend.
Thanks, and I have no idea why some of my posts get such high payouts and others not so much. All I can say is I know it is at least in large part not from auto voting, as I will get different weighted votes from the same accounts and often have a variety of highest-paying votes.
As far as deepdives community goes, it looks like you posted with the tag but not from the community, so members won’t see it without tag-hunting, and that could be part of the reason for lesser visibility, although it looks like it got lots of positive feedback in the comments, so that’s always a good sign. Just get into the deepdives community, and then post from that community page rather than simply using the tag and anyone browsing the community will see it, so that will probably get you more visibility.
Also it was such a good post as to attract the army of pro-establishment downvoters on here that particularly like to target well researched, fact-based vaccine posts that challenge the clown world narrative. I’m not sure why, but I always get hit the hardest with downvotes on posts about vaccines, particularly the ones jam packed with verifiable facts that exposes the media narrative for the psychotic deception and sometimes laughable nonsense that it is. Keep up the good work, I for one though it was one of the better posts on the vaccine issue I’ve read in a while, especially as a source for further research with all the great links - it’ll take me awhile to get through them all, but it’s great to have reference points like this with so many resources of data all linked in the same place.
Hey Jason, thanks for posting your feedback, I appreciate that. And thanks for the share!
I didn't realize there's a way to post "from a community" on Hive. Placing the post in that category (via first tag) isn't the same thing? Is it akin to how I post in WeedCash for my cannabis content? Although that's different because I usually use their separate frontend (weedcash.network, now weedcash.org). I hope people who have migrated from tags to communities still tag-hunt! This blockchain seems to fragmented, ironically, because of things like communities. I wish people would just use the blockchain itself as it was designed, but it seems we've moved past the basic functionality to using only advanced and third-party apps.
As for the downvoters, I had assumed some were related to the "warning" I got for linking to 3Speak. Apparently 3Speak has been hacked, and 50 or so of my posts that link to 3Speak videos are now flagged as phishing scams, downvoted, etc. I guess I have to go change all those 3Speak URLs to something else? Not sure. What a mess. I have so much I'd rather be doing. I need my alternative platforms to work. I gave up FaceBook and mainstream social media for Hive and Flote, so when they're down or not working, I no longer have access to a lot of things, including basic communication with some friends and family. I hate it that I find myself longing for their reliability and consistency. After years supporting all these alternate platforms, none have manage to come through for me. They're all still in beta, or gone, or having major issues. Supposedly, FaceBook was created in a few weeks, by a single programmer. Yeah they had to add to it over the years to make it what it is now, but the basics were working from the start. I wish "we" could do that. Part of the problem is that "we" are constantly having to fight off big tech. For example, who hacked 3Speak? Common thieves, or maybe somebody sent by YouTube/the state?
"It’s happened to me a time or two, sometimes wiping me earnings almost completely, but I take it as a compliment"
Ahh. That used to happen to me more often when I was pointing out Israel's crimes against humanity, specifically Gaza. Really, really upset some people. No criticism, no debate of the message, just trying to censor and discredit me (the messenger). When FB banned such discussion, I knew I was on the right track. I believe that's right around the time they banned discussion of vaccines.
I used to use "freezepeach". I could link them to the inappropriately-downvoted content, and they would usually upvote it an equal amount, to return it to visibility. It worked fairly well, a number of times. I think they went away (or changed) when we got the hardfork that encouraged downvoting (instead of considering it "flagging" of abusive/illegal content).
"it is at least in large part not from auto voting"
Well that's great, you have people watching your stuff, ready to upvote it (even before watching it). You've built up street cred around here! Congrats :) And manual curation is definitely where it's at, I'd consider that a compliment.
And I think I now know why you have such a high rep, but few followers. You post high quality stuff, and have found several supporters with money, rather than thousands of supporters without. Not exactly sure how that happened, but it results in BIG payouts (yay) and the associated BIG reputation boosts, despite you not having amassed a large following. It says nothing about your level of quality, which is high! And also nothing about the topics you post about, which are (at least around here) fairly popular and in-demand. Keep up the great work. I need to check out your camp video, and the really long recent one, soon. I'm trying to stay off MSM this weekend (for stress reasons) so that will help! :P