Thursday, December 9, 2010

Computer work and a mountain hike

Wednesday I got up around 7am as usual and had my coffee and trolled the internet while Max slumbered away. This is what I call my “quiet time” when I enjoy my coffee and read the news. I think it is a carry over when I was working at GM. We did not need to be there until just before 6 am, but I would get there at about 5 am just to have my coffee and “quiet time” before the madness began. Thankfully we no longer have the madness but I still enjoy the time to ease into our coming day.

We put a pot roast in the crock pot and then headed over to mom’s around 11 am and I worked on her computer for a little while. She was having some problems with forwarding her e-mail. She was using the webmail service from her cable provider which will not allow embedded images to be forwarded, so I I ended up setting up her Outlook Express and showed her how to use it. She had used it a few years ago so she should get familiar with it again pretty quick. She is also having some issues with the cable service so I called the provider and they are sending out a tech on Thursday.

We made it back home early enough in the afternoon that I decided that I was going to go hike up Thunderbird mountain to take some pictures. Thunderbird Mountain is in the Thunderbird Conservatory park which is about 4 miles from us is a 1,185-acre park in the Hedgpeth Hills, it is a conservation park dedicated to preserving the desert environment. The hills were named for Robert Hedgpeth, an early homesteader in the area. The park took its name from the World War II pilot training facility located four miles south of the park.

The trail I took was only a 2 mile loop but it was pretty steep and rocky. They rated it a moderate hike. The trail system in the park gets a lot of use from the local residents and there is about 15 miles of trails if you took all of them.

Here are a few pictures from various locations along the trail.

My starting point

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The parking area below

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I am beginning to hate rocks about now 

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Halfway there!

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Barrel Cactus along the way

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The summit! Whew!

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It was a nice hike up and back down. There were plenty of people along the trail. Some were actually running up and down. Of course these were hardcore runners in their twenty’s. I at least had a good excuse for stopping and resting along the way, I had to get pictures of course.

I made it back home around 5:30, just in time for the pot roast dinner that we had put in the crock pot. We ended up our evening watching some Christmas movie on Hal-mark and then called it a night. We are not sure what we are going to be doing the next couple of days.  

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