Sunday hike: Bridal Wreath Falls

An 8-mile hike today: first (minor) sunburn of the year under a perfect January sky.

By coincidence, the hike that a friend and I did today included the same trail that was featured in today's Tucson paper.
As we hiked back down to the car in the early afternoon, there was quite a bit of foot traffic; fortunately our morning ascent was less crowded.

The "waterfall" was more of a trickle today, but still--any flowing water in the desert is a welcome diversion...

Yeah, yeah, so maybe a bit 'underwhelming.' Perhaps, with some more snowmelt later in the winter, the trickle will increase to a more photogenic "falls."

As to be expected within a section of Saguaro National Park, there are the occasional whimsical cactus deformities:

After stopping at the falls, we decided to continue for another mile or so, up past the cactus zone, (saguaros stop growing at about 4000 feet above sea level), into the grassland/juniper zone of the Rincon Mountains. From there, you can get an excellent view over the entire city of Tucson, with its straight avenues converging on the Tucson mountains to the west:

Back at the trailhead parking lot, this bumper sticker caught our eye:

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This afternoon, my wife was running an errand at Costco--braving the weekend crowds. While in one of the checkout lines, she was slightly disturbed by the remark the guy behind her made. They were waiting to pay, and the lady in front of my wife was paying with a check. A bit anachronistic, yes, but not ridiculously time-consuming...but just enough to annoy the guy behind Sara, to inspire him to say "People who still write checks at the checkout should be shot."

Really? Are we that in a hurry that an extra thirty to forty seconds spent waiting to pay is worth pulling out a gun--even if it's just 'kidding'? The guy's son then asked, "what'd you say, Dad?" "Oh, nothing..."
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Incidentally--

we just watched the 1953 Hitchcock film "I Confess," filmed in Quebec city...

Anyone seen it? It's one of his 'minor classics'...but one of the most interesting films we'd seen in a while...

And just wondering--

who out there has read the novel "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel?

I just finished re-reading it. (I'm using it with an 'independent study' student of mine--I'm having him read the novel in French...)

Lifeboat. Boy. Tiger. Allegory. Won the Booker prize a few years ago...