Six hikers met early, at 7:15 am, at the South Fork berm. We headed up the South Fork Trail with trail maintenance tools and hard hats that were provided by the Forest Service. Moving slowly, we lopped branches and other vegetation that hung over the trail, reorganized creek crossings and uprooted large stands of poison ivy/oak (all one species). 

 

One hiker left before lunch and the others ate lunch just a little past Log Canyon at a creek crossing.  After lunch the group proceeded to the next creek crossing where the water had undermined the trail. A lot of rock was moved to build up a foundation for the trail. With a little luck, it will last the monsoon season! It is very satisfying to walk on the South Fork Trail and to do trail work there. There are numerous sections of "newish" trail that various members of our group helped to build. Those trail sections feel like they were there forever, and make walking in the canyon a whole lot easier.

   

Two hikers continued on to stay overnight about four miles from the trailhead. (It was a very wet evening and we hope they have dried out by now.) The other three returned to the vehicles as clouds built and rain threatened.

Photos by Rolf, Carol and Elaine

July 13 - My 9th day of observing Comet NEOWISE.

The most vexing thing about Comet NEOWISE is that morning twilight begins just after the comet rises. So just when the comet gets above the haze and thin cloud hanging around the horizon, the sky starts getting bright and the comet fades into the background glow of dawn. There's only a narrow 10 minute window when the comet is at its best.

So in order to make the most of those precious 10 minutes, I set up four separate cameras at four different locations this morning!  To get all the cameras' built-in interval timers programmed correctly for the right times was a bit complicated. Not to mention they were all pointed at blank parts of the sky where I estimated the comet would be during the optimum viewing window.   I was only operating one of the four cameras manually.

EXCERPTS FROM THE CHIRICAHUA BULLSHEET 

The Chiricahua Bullsheet, an entertaining and highly opinionated newsletter and journal of local history written by Carson Morrow.

Courtesy of Dick Zweifel, former long time resident of Paradise and Portal.  Dick was very active in the community and a supporter of many local organizations, in addition to being a herpetologist and butterfly expert.  He passed away last year.  Thank you Dick for all you did.   

On December 23, 1957, we published a story in the Bullsheet in which we told all we knew or could find out at the moment about Galeyville, Arizona. We have recently received some additional data which might be of interest. Mr. Thomas M. Galey of Owensboro, Kentucky, read an article in the Saturday Evening Post under date of March 14, 1958, about Mrs. Lillian Riggs of Faraway Ranch, which is located here in the Chiricahuas. So he, in turn, wrote her a letter and submitted photographs of John H. Galey, the founder of Galeyville. She kindly sent it to us. If you are interested in knowing what that illustrious old gent looked like, drop in at the Bull Ranch and we will show your the pictures. 

The caption on the photographs read as follows: "John H. Galey, San Francisco, Cal., in the gold mining days soon after the Civil War. John H. Galey was born in Armstrong county, Pennsylvania, February 4, 1840, and died in Joplin, Missouri, April 12, 1918. He entered the oil business at its inception. The Oil and Gas Journal referred to him as one  of the boldest of the early prospectors. His name is known and honored in every field where oil is produced throughout America. He was a persistent worker, fearless, original, the initiator of many ventures. After 1880, his operations were in association with Col. James M. Guffey, under the firm name of Guffey and Galey." 

One paragraph of Mr. Thomas Galey's letter to Lillian reads as follows: "It was in 1889 (evidently an error in typing, as JNG founded Galeyville in 1879) that Uncle John went to Arizona to pioneer in the mining of silver. I have traveled with him in a number of oil ventures in later years; I was born in Bradford oil field in 1884. In 1911, I was with him in an oil venture in Tampico area of old Mexico. And in 1912 I helped him to drill three wells at Seven Lakes, New Mexico, near Grants". In another paragraph: "He was pretty handy with the ladies and admired beautiful women.  A very prominent lawyer in New York owes his mysterious origin to that admiration".