October 21 -- A Meeting With The Forest Service, And A Cloud "Waterfall"

Or a friend described it as a cloud "moving up from the ground"... Before that, though, a brief synopsis of the day's events. The sunrise for once wasn't very memorable, but with the way Faranuf is situated, I can look to the west if nothing is happening in the east, so I looked to Cave Creek Canyon --

And if you look closely enough, at the top of the sliver of rock in the foreground just left of center, the formation looks like the famous profile of George Washington on the dollar bill...Well, others have seen it!  :o) I think I mentioned in a recent post about keeping track of the opening times for, say, the 2 sit-down places to eat here in Portal and Rodeo. The Rodeo Tavern and Grill -- if you ever go there, ask for "Mike's Sandwich"; it's not on the menu -- is open Wednesday thru Sunday, and that's pretty much throughout the year. However, the Portal Lodge, Store and Cafe... I was going to have dinner with a friend who'd just returned here from leading a birding tour in South Carolina; more about her later. We "needed" wine with our meal, but neither of us had any. So I said I'd stop by the Portal store to pick up a bottle. So on the was to a meeting with the Forest Service, I stopped by the store -- and it was closed. I'd made a similar mistake with my friend, having invited her to dinner at the Portal cafe (cafe, lodge and store are all the same place) the day before, only to find out from my friend Helen that, starting in fall, they closed at 2pm and had dinner only from Thursday thru Sunday, when they stayed open until 7pm. There's a very valuable website which you may find of interest; it lists, among events and "amenities" found here and in the Rodeo area -- and also the opening times of many of the "businesses" here such as the post office, library, etc. Click here. It also lists the most recent opening times of the Portal Store and Cafe -- which are their fall hours, in effect after September 1st.. So now the store and cafe are closed for the day on Wednesday...So no wine; there's no other place to buy it in Portal. I continued on for my meeting with the Forest Service. Well, it wasn't just me, and I was a late addition to the group when a friend, also in the group of residents, invited me along, It was a meeting with the chief ranger of this area of the Coronado ranger district and 3 others from the Forest Service; we were going to discuss the campground situation in Cave Creek. Some background info: The Horseshoe 2 fire in 2011, and the 500-year flood from Hurricane Odile in September 2014, completely changed the face of certain areas here -- and one includes Cave Creek Canyon, the jewel of the Chiricahuas and one of the major treasures of the Southwest. It's also known as one of the best areas for birds in all of North America. The Horseshoe 2 fire devastated sections of the upper reaches of the Chiricahuas, changing the face of the range for decades to come. It stripped ground cover, so when Hurricane Odile came through in 2014 and dropped 6 inches of rain, most of it in one night. It roared down the canyon, toppling trees from the creek banks and came into Portal in a huge flood. (See video of it here taken by Debb Johnson, a Portal resident.) The campgrounds are in the canyon, meaning mostly in the flood plain, and were heavily damaged by the flood of South Fork. And since then -- and most likely for the foreseeable future -- it's been the policy of the Forest Service, who runs the campgrounds, to close them if the weather forecast is for at minimum 1.5 inches of rain, and to close them for the duration of the monsoon season, which runs from July to September. There are 3 campgrounds -- Idlewild, Stewart and Sunny Flat, and the community of Portal depends on their being open for much of their tourist trade. So if they're closed for a length of time... not good. The meeting was for Portal residents to have input into what would happen to the campsites, such as plans for upgrades, or a new campground, in the future. 

We met with the members of the Forest Service at the Visitor Information Center, which is now staffed by volunteers and only open on weekends (there is no full-time, or even part-time, Forest Service presence in Cave Creek Canyon).  There were seven of us, including the head of the Southwest Research Station and the owner of Cave Creek Ranch, which is one of the major places to stay here. We went to both existing campsites and possible locations for new ones. The Forest Service has, pretty much decided that there will be one major campground, with a minimum of 20 campsites with a possibility to expand, and the others will be closed, or turn one into a day use area. In the end, the 2 most likely candidates were Sunny Flat, an already existing campground, or a spot above the Visitor Information Center which would be built "from the bottom up" but has electricity, water, and a location near the information center. I won't say which one the Forest Service favors -- but the residents unanimously chose Sunny Flat; it's existing so would just need to expand, and as it could possibly be flooded, and have some sort of barrier system built that would keep South Fork and Cave Creek out during high water. The "sticky wicket" is that the higher ups in the Service already said "no" to Sunny Flat as it is in the flood plain, so it would require an "executive decision" to override that. And the current NF ranger here is leaving his position, thus leaving his successor to implement any kind of plan -- which take years to complete. AND as of now there is no money for anything. Hard to believe it's come to this, considering the literally worldwide fame of Cave Creek Canyon and the Chiricahuas. So I hope to stay involved in resident participation of any decision to be made...

I had a bottle of red wine -- and an orange to put in the back yard for Mr. Northern Cardinal, who's been AWOL for about a day -- waiting for me on Faranuf's front porch. They were from my friend Helen  -- thanks, Helen!  So dinner with my friend Dodie could proceed as planned. Before that, I had to stop by my friends' place that I'm watching over to check on things -- when I saw a HUGE localized rain shower pouring to the ground. And there was lightning in it, too. Another amazing weather phenomenon here...I took photos of it from my front porch -- 

It's been variously described by friends as a waterfall, or clouds going UP into the sky. Whatever it was, I'd never seen it before. After heading back to Faranuf I went down Foothills Road to get a more unobscured view, but it had dissipated by then. But it was just another awesome display here on the east side of the Chiricahuas...Dinner was a success. My friend Dodie had just returned from the previously mentioned birding tour back east, and had very little food and no time yet to take the long drive to get groceries, so thanks to a friend's generosity we had a prepared dinner (from Green Chef) to go along with the wine from Helen -- and another amazing day at Portal, and Faranuf, came to a close.