Phoenix to Nogales March 9th-11th

Sunday March 9th:

-picked Mary up from the airport at 1:30 am, and slept in a bike shop parking lot

-Drove to Tucson, thinking we would go climbing and then get the car fixed on Monday

- Arrived in Tucson, stopped at a stoplight and couldn't get the car into 1st- homeless couple pushed the car and we got it in gear

- Decided to find car shop immediatley

-Only place open on Sunday is a Firestone so drove in 2nd gear 3 miles there

-Firestone tells us it's going to be 5 hours of work to take the clutch apart and they won't be able to get to it until Monday

-we walked over to the mall to use internet to figure out what the heck to do with the car now

-Decide to drive the car to the closest vw place, and get a rental car so we don't sit in a parking lot all night

-Climbed at the Ridgeline on Mount Lemmon, which is absolutely beautiful. We were the only people there, and even though you could see the city waaay below, it felt like you were no where near civilization, a nice feeling.

The new vanagon- it was probably a good thing we got a rental- Mt Lemmon is 26 miles up, I'm not so sure we would have made it

Mary showing off her fancy moves

Me doing the same

The belayers view

Michael concentrating

Getting there

That's pretty high

View from the top

Looking down- thats Michael and Mary way down there

Rappelling down from the top

I think someone enjoyed having a little sister around to pick on

Another rental car shot

View driving down from Mt Lemmon

-After climbing we played some frisbee, and then headed South to Madera Canyon to camp for the night

Mary passed out after too much spring breaking

Tuesday March 11th:

-Did a 6.3 mile hike in Madera Canyon- home to all bird loving folk in Arizona, apparently there are a lot of them because the place was packed. Saw some birds, and tons of lizards. Also ran into a family who had lost there 2 11 year old kids. We had seen them at the bottom of the hike, and the mom thought they had gone up. To make matters worse at the top of the climb theres a memorial to 3 young teenagers who apparently died up there. Needless to say the mom was a wreck. We assured her that we had seen the girls at the bottom and they took off down the hill.

View we woke up to the next morning

Bird

Lizard

- We played some more frisbee

-Got a call from the car shop- the van was fixed, there was just air in the system, from when the shop in albuetc. had fixed it, and it was all ready to go.

-Decided to go back to the original plan and headed toward Mexico

-Slept at a rest area about 50 kms from the border