Decemberings

Almost to the end of 2025 blogging!  It has been quite a fun year to recap a little at a time.

On to December, which started with a hike up to Thimble Peak with Gavin.  This time we brought a length of rope and climbing gear so John could (quite literally) haul me up to the top.  Yay for a summit celebration!

Gavin taking his own selfie:

John admiring the view of Tucson, Blackett's Ridge, and Sabino Canyon:

It was a short, easy rappel down the hard part of the Thimble, just above where Gavin is waving:

John descends via the short rope already in place:

That was fun, thank you for the help and the company, John and Gavin!  One more peak I can look up at and remember being there.

Fun stickers at Midtown Deli - love the duck and "Livin La Vida Quokka"

Don't be a prick:

One last visit to the Musical Instruments Museum and then I'll (probably) stop mentioning it!  This time we gave ourselves the entire day to finish it and we finally made it to the end.  

Accordions (and bagpipes next door), how did someone come up with these ideas as ways to make music?

Speaking of accordions, John and I separately kept returning to the same musical clip to listen to again.  Later I bought the song, so now I have another language (I believe an Austrian German dialect) on my mp3.

In case you're interested in something different, here's the band singing in a YouTube video:

Hubert von Goisern (artist) - Brenna tuats guat (song title)

Moving on to dulcimers, gotta love the "Canjo" of ham!

Thinking of our niece Abby who plays a mandolin:

Louis Cato sighting!

Summary of MIM: Highly recommend.  Give yourself as much time as you can.

An elf that is most definitely not on a shelf:

One more FKT to report!  There's a new 50-mile route on our side of town so of course I had to try it.  It's called the Robles to Wasson Shuffle:

https://fastestknowntime.com/fkt/marcy-beard-robles-wasson-shuffle-2025-12-20

John dropped me off at the start:

The route zigzags around most of the Robles trails, which is my backyard so I just had to get the turns right.  Then over to the Tucson Mountain Park where I'm also pretty familiar with the trails.  Fun little stone path through the saguaros:

The Bowen Stone House, where a group of people were gathered, perhaps on a hiking tour:

John met me for a mid-run resupply at the next trailhead (great to see you, hubby!) then I did some road running to reach Sweetwater Preserve.  I enjoyed revisiting that set of trails, some of them nice and runnable.  This photo is from my water drop at the trailhead the day before:

One of the smooth desert trails that I like to meander along:

As I noted in my writeup on the FKT site, Camino del Cerro isn't the greatest road for running, but it's generally pretty quiet.  And easy to hear cars approaching, and easy to get off the road to wait for them to pass.  A woman who had stopped at her mailbox came over to see if I was OK?  Oh, I'm good, thanks for asking!  I guess she doesn't see runners on that road every day.

City lights during the climb toward Wasson Peak, with a glow from my headlamp (I had just turned it off for the photo):

It was interesting knowing the Sweetwater trail reasonably well but not having a good sense of how far it was to the saddle without being able to see it up ahead.  I was still moving at a good clip, found the saddle, and climbed strong to the top of the peak.

The trail down the backside is wonderful!  At least until the next saddle, then it's rocky and slow, but then you get to the bottom and the route is complete.

Thank you John for the run support and picking me up at the end!  That was a super fun day and excellent distance training.

John happened to be installing solar at the Tucson Village Farm one morning when I was running and shopping at Trader Joe's nearby.  I bopped over with a delivery of Brookies for the crew and grabbed a photo (from a distance) on the way back:

Rainbow!  We had a Christmas Eve rainstorm that cleared up in time for our walk for sushi supper:

There are some elaborate holiday-decorated golf carts at our park (they even did an evening parade so we could sit on the back of Tug-E and admire the creative creations like this one):

Another trip to the top of Wasson, during a Tucson Trail Runners run, so I could get a picture in the daylight:

Also a photo of the logbook that I had signed during the recent FKT run:

Running in a part of town that I don't normally explore, I found this sculpture near Udall Park:

I believe this is a Joe Pagac creation - Javier Javelina (reminds me of at least one of his murals):

In addition to the elf hat, there are several Trek-related items to admire on this car:

Merry Christmas from a local saguaro family!

And that's a wrap for last year - thank you for following along!

November rememberings

On to November, an excellent time to be in southern Arizona.  Here are a few things I took pictures of.

This made me laugh when pulling up to drop off compost at the community garden:

Another day in the Catalinas, when I did a loop up to Little Kimball and down Pima Canyon.  This bunch of flowers was the highlight:

John dropped me off at the first trailhead and then spent the day climbing Table Mountain, with a nice view of Pusch Peak and town:

During a long run I swung by the site of the next Trader Joe's to see how progress was coming along (I'm looking forward to this one opening soon!)

Just for kicks we went to the Lego convention.  It was a long wait to get in for some reason (not sure about the organizer skills for this one) but once we did it was fun walking around.  Artist AC Pin was there with a display of his floral creations and I got to chat with him for a bit (super nice guy, didn't mind that I don't know anything about Legos):

He uses only pieces that available already, nothing custom built specifically for him.  His flower designs are beautiful:

Adorable Baby Yoda:

An elaborate cityscape:

A very elaborate Star Wars bunker with a ton of tiny details:

We have considered going to the All Souls Procession ever since we arrived in Tucson several years ago.  I usually lose momentum for going out by the end of the day, then there's the question of parking anywhere close.  We had a plan for all that last year but then it dumped rain and it was too easy to bail.

Finally!  This year we took the bus to town, had a lovely dinner, and then waited for a tram to the Annex.  Here's a fitting downtown mural for the occasion:

We wandered up the parade route before the procession started and got to see many amazing costumes!

In loving memory of all souls:

These ladies were happy to pose for pictures, thank you!

Back to more normal (for us) adventures... we traveled to Phoenix for a 10.5-hour adventure race (John) and rogaine (me).  More desert time, searching for checkpoints (yay!)

The following photos are courtesy of the Greater Phoenix Orienteering Club.  Race director Ron doing the morning briefing:

Gorgeous view of the lake from high on a hill:

Andy was manning one of the remote aid stations and took some pictures of people punching the checkpoint - including John (as part of his bike section):

And me (on foot) - I love the little control flag hanging off the other side of the barbeque:

Heading off to collect a few more points before the finish deadline:

This is probably Ron's photo during course setting - a perfect example of some of the fun terrain we navigated through:

Peek-a-boo from Catalina State Park - again!

I updated the "Catalina All Trails" FKT route to add two new official trails and figured I should go run it and set a baseline time to beat.

The page on the FKT site:

https://fastestknowntime.com/fkt/marcy-beard-catalina-state-park-all-trails-az-2025-11-25

A view of the Tortolita range on the far horizon:

Saguaros guarding the stairs:

Looking at the Catalina Mountains to the east:

The CDO Ridge Trail is new on the park maps (although it has probably been here for a while), necessitating an extra climb to add it to the FKT:

This bathroom is even newer - and very nice:

I really like the Alamo Canyon trail.  I had not been on it before but I would love to go back and see it again.  There's an even better view of the Catalina range:

To close out the month, a new (to me) Thanksgiving activity.  Our orienteering club fielded several teams in a cross-country 5K race at Reid Park.  Fun group of women to run and hang out with!

Charging up the first little hill, with Cristina passing me and going on to finish in a solid time:

There were hay bales in several spots that I think we were supposed to jump over, but I missed the first couple (too many people, not enough hay bales).  Then I wasn't highly excited about veering to take on the obstacles.  Finally I went over a couple near the end, probably the ones behind me in this picture:

5K's are hard!  But at least they are over quickly.  Thank you Cristina for organizing us and giving me a reason to run faster for once!

John was in Texas for Thanksgiving and did his own Turkey Trot race - with cookie medals!  Most excellent.

That was a fun, variety-filled month!