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Sabino Canyon [bicycling, ants]
Jul. 30th, 2024 02:24 pmThe car mechanic has not called me back yet today with any kind of status update, which makes me nervous, but on the other hand, it looks like it only costs around $35 to hop a Dirty Dog from Tempe back down here, so maybe that's what I'll be doing soon.
In the meantime, I didn't want to devolve to complete sloth, so I thought, maybe I should actually plan out a bike ride, instead of just winging it like I did on Sunday. Eventually I settled on the idea of riding through the Catalina foothills, over to Sabino Canyon. Basically, a ride through the parts of Tucson and surroundings where there are leafcutter ants.
(link if embed doesn't show)
Well, it was beautiful. I spent some time poking around the spot where I collected leafcutter ant queens 1.5 weeks ago. In the precise location, there were still some queens out wandering around! However, I didn't see much evidence of successful digging.
A bit further up the road, in an area where I searched in 2021, I saw many more signs of ant queen activity.
The semicircular shapes in the soil are all new ant nests. There were exactly zero queens out and about in this area, in keeping with my previous observations that once queens have dug in sufficiently, they only come out to forage at night, between the hours of ~midnight - 4 am.
There isn't much more to say, other than that Sabino Canyon was beautiful and full of butterflies and various wildflowers. The road in the canyon crosses over Sabino Creek multiple times, and I kept imagining trying to ride the road with S and then stopping frequently to enjoy splashing in the creek. We might have to go back just for that, someday.
Breakfast stop for some hearty huevos rancheros. It was fine. The calories went to good use.
Craycroft Road was also quite nice:
There are so many green ocotillo right now.
Up the canyon:
Beautiful canyon cliffs and green cottonwood trees lining the creek:
Creek crossing:
Top of the paved road:
Bikeyface on my way back down the climb:
Just one example of the wildflowers:
If I ever do this again, I'll modify the return route. The shoulder was irregular along River Road, and the traffic was too heavy and speeds were too fast for my liking. There's a path that runs right along the river, so I'll do that in the future instead.
In the meantime, I didn't want to devolve to complete sloth, so I thought, maybe I should actually plan out a bike ride, instead of just winging it like I did on Sunday. Eventually I settled on the idea of riding through the Catalina foothills, over to Sabino Canyon. Basically, a ride through the parts of Tucson and surroundings where there are leafcutter ants.
(link if embed doesn't show)
Well, it was beautiful. I spent some time poking around the spot where I collected leafcutter ant queens 1.5 weeks ago. In the precise location, there were still some queens out wandering around! However, I didn't see much evidence of successful digging.
A bit further up the road, in an area where I searched in 2021, I saw many more signs of ant queen activity.
The semicircular shapes in the soil are all new ant nests. There were exactly zero queens out and about in this area, in keeping with my previous observations that once queens have dug in sufficiently, they only come out to forage at night, between the hours of ~midnight - 4 am.
There isn't much more to say, other than that Sabino Canyon was beautiful and full of butterflies and various wildflowers. The road in the canyon crosses over Sabino Creek multiple times, and I kept imagining trying to ride the road with S and then stopping frequently to enjoy splashing in the creek. We might have to go back just for that, someday.
Breakfast stop for some hearty huevos rancheros. It was fine. The calories went to good use.
Craycroft Road was also quite nice:
There are so many green ocotillo right now.
Up the canyon:
Beautiful canyon cliffs and green cottonwood trees lining the creek:
Creek crossing:
Top of the paved road:
Bikeyface on my way back down the climb:
Just one example of the wildflowers:
If I ever do this again, I'll modify the return route. The shoulder was irregular along River Road, and the traffic was too heavy and speeds were too fast for my liking. There's a path that runs right along the river, so I'll do that in the future instead.
