As you may have noticed if you follow me on Instagram, I’ve been spending as much time as possible in and around the Superstition Wilderness this year! I love that area– the history and mystery, the natural landscape.
When I’m outside, I like to know the names of the plants I’m seeing and what they can be used for. Ben would probably like it if I would stop eating things I find in the wild, but if the apocalypse comes, I’ll be one of the few who knows how to prepare mesquite pods š
Boyce Thompson Arboretum
I’ve been doing a lot of plant research online, but it’s just not the same as getting out and learning about plants in person. So, for my birthday excursion, we headed to Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a huge garden of desert landscapes complete with hiking trail!
The arboretum is located at the foot of Picketpost Mountain (or, Piglet Wiglet Mountain, as my three-year-old has dubbed it), a formidable peak that is not possible to summit with a child and a dog. And yes, I know that from experience.
A natural stream runs through the gardens, bringing life to the desert landscape. However, you won’t just find Arizona’s flora here–there are also exhibits from desert environments all over the world!
Boojum trees are named after a word Lewis Carroll invented for The Hunting of the Snark
Why visit Boyce Thompson Arboretum?
If you’re in the East Valley region of the Phoenix Metro Area, the arboretum isn’t too far of a drive out of town. And it’s definitely worth it! Those who enjoy the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix will love a getting a different angle on local vegetation.
Boyce Thompson Arboretum is a great activity for people of all ages and mobility levels. While not all the trails, including the loop trail, are accessible, you can see most of the gardens from paved paths.
Little ones will love the kid appeal in the children’s garden. It provides an opportunity to talk about shapes and colors.
Where’s your favorite place to explore the natural world? Do you like arboretums or just getting out in nature? Leave a comment and let me know!
There’s so much you can eat and make from things that grow in the desert! It’s a common misconception that the desert is just a barren place full of thorns and poisonous things. But as a tour guide at the Casa Grand ruins once pointed out, it’s like living in a grocery store. I’ve done my fair share of eating desert plants, but did you know you can make a lot of things from them, too? Even if you have no experience with bushcrafting or textile arts, you can create this yucca coil basket.
I have a yucca in the front yard that I’ve hardly thought about since we moved in. Why did I decide to cut off a couple of leaves today and make a basket? It’s all a part of my writing research for the novel I’m working on. My book is a survival story set in the Arizona desert, and my main character is an ancestral crafts instructor. So I figured I’d better learn some ancestral crafts. After all, it’s a lot easier to write about something when you’ve experienced it, not just watched some YouTube videos!
Yucca stalk
This isn’t the first time I’ve done hands-on research for the writing. Obviously, my travel writing for the web is experience-based. As far as fiction goes, I’ve also had the chance to fly a plane and learned to make mud bricks!
Drop a comment if you’d like to see an instructional post on how to make mudbricks in your backyard.
Pressing mud into a mold
Bricks drying
Mixing up mud!
So, on to why you clicked on this link: how to make a yucca fiber coil basket.
Harvest Yucca Leaves
There are a lot of ways to make a basket out of yucca leaves. I picked this one because I already knew how to make coil baskets. To date, my attempts at other types of basket weaving have not gone so well.
The first thing to do is cut a couple of yucca leaves! I took two to make this basket. It was really tiny. Like an Easter basket for a Barbie doll. If you want it to be bigger than that, you’ll need a lot more leaves. I didn’t want my yucca to be bald, so I stuck with a small project.
Be careful cutting yucca. There are sharp and some varieties have teeth on the edge of the leaves.
Scrape
You’ll need a couple of rocks for this. One should be large and flat, the other should be smaller and have a sharp edge, ideally. Scrape all the wet green stuff off the yucca leaf.
You are not pounding. I found this out the hard way. Scraping is a lot more effective. I tried rinsing out some of the green mush, and it worked OK, but it will dry just fine if you scrape it best you can.
Separate the fibers. There should be a few fibers to a strand.
Cord
Now you’ll need to create a cord out of the fibers. I was daunted by this part, thinking of Pa Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie cording straw until his hands bled by the fire all winter.
It’s not like that.
Cording was surprisingly easy, although a slow process. Basically, you have two strands of fibers. You give the bottom one a clockwise twist and then bring it counter-clockwise to the top and repeat, twisting in new strands as you get to the bottom of each.
If that makes no sense to you, try watching this video on yucca cording.
Coil
To make a coil basket, you need your cord and you also need a thicker strand to act as a base. Put your cord through a tapestry needle (or get really epic, and make a needle out of the point of the yucca leaf) and begin to wrap the thick strand with the cord.
Wrap it tightly until you have enough length to overlap in a small circle, then wrap over the overlap to secure the loop. From there, continue to wrap along the length of the thicker cord a dozen or so times, then insert the needle below the row under your current row to secure it.
Continue until you run out of cord. Now secure the end, tie off, and weave in ends.
For visual instructions, try watching this video on coil baskets.
You did it!
And that’s a wrap!
Get it? A wrap?
Anyway, I hope you have as much fun as I did making your own basket! If you’re the expert on this and have any advice on how to do this better, please leave a comment! I’m looking forward to learning more bushcraft skills as I do research for my novel. Stay tuned for more desert survival ideas!
When you get an invitation to go up in a prop plane, you take it.
I recently finished writing a novel manuscript that involves a character making an emergency landing in a small plane. And thatās all Iām going to tell you about it for nowāsign up for my newsletter in the sidebar if you want to hear more in the future!
Thanks to the flight elements in my novel, I watched a lot of Youtube and read a lot of content on how to fly a plane.
Turns out, all those buttons and the names of various parts of airplanes are kind of hard to get a handle on when youāre just piddling around online.
So, I wrote the scenes as well as I could and then reached out to John Correia, one of my professors from college who also happens to have his pilotās license, to see if heād look it over and make sure I had it right.
Sure, he said. I could do that. Or, I could take you flying.
Um, yes please.
To say I was excited would be a major understatement. Iāve been on a lot of commercial jets, but never in a small aircraft.
The weather was perfect on the day of the flight. I pulled into the parking lot of Flying Cacti at the Glendale Airport and looked around. Not only had I never been on a smaller plane, Iāve never been in a hangar. Actually, I think I might have been in one at Lukeās Airforce Base when I was a kid on a field trip. Obviously I donāt remember enough of that for it to count, though.
Before Takeoff
John opened the hangar door to reveal a blue and white Vanās RV12. Wow! I couldnāt help but run my fingers over the glossy exterior. I could already tell that the glass dome covering the cabin was going to give incredible views, and propeller on the nose just begged to take us for a spin.
John whipped out a checklist to show me all the things he had to check before taking the plane up. It was a long list. As he pointed out, if something goes wrong with your car, you pull over. If something goes wrong with the plane, you fall out of the sky. I had been a little bit nervous at the idea of being way up in the air in a small aircraft, but after seeing how thoroughly everything had to be checked, the trace of nerves I had vanished.
During this process, it was cool to get to ask questions about how the plane worked and what every little thing did. For example, the static ports, two tiny pinholes in what looked to me like screws, use air pressure to give the pilot information about speed and altitude. I never cease to be amazed by engineers and their ability to create and pay attention to all the details. Or to create a flying machine that can carry two people and only weighs about 800 pounds.
Once all the checks were done, John pulled the plane out of the hangar and we climbed in. For my book, I needed to know the steps to start the plane and taxi down the runway, so he talked through everything as he went. When the propeller started whirring into a blur, I could feel it pushing air right into the cabin through the vents that serve as air conditioning.
My heart started beating a little faster. I was in real prop plane, about to go up in the air!
Flying!
John taxied down the runway. We waited for a couple of other planes to take off, and then he powered the plane forward, lifted the nose, and suddenly we were up in the air. Just like that. I felt a huge smile stretching across my face. Wow, the views were way better than they are in a jet with the giant wing slicing through my view out the tiny window. I could see the whole dome of sky above and the earth rapidly falling away below.
We flew above Phoenix Raceway, over the top of the Estrella Mountains, and into farm country I didnāt even know existed behind the mountain range. Below us, brown pinpricks wandered aroundācows grazing in the sunshine. The Gila River snaked through the region, feeding the various canals that turn the landscape green despite the desert beige that stretches in all directions beyond the Phoenix area.
In the Air
Since the episode in my story involves a non-towered airport, John took me to Buckeye Airport for a touch-and-go landing, meaning the plane landed on the runway and took off again without stopping. I got to hear all the pilots talking to each other through my headset, communicating in the absence of a tower to coordinate landings and takeoffs.
Itās kind of hard to understand all the different voices through the headsets, which is why pilots use the NATO phonetic alphabet to reduce avoid confusion when they communicate. It sounds like some sort of secret code. Charlie Oscar Oscar Lima!
I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask about the way prop planes work, what would happen if the pilot stopped flying for a couple minutes, how to read the dials on the control panel (although this plane had a screen instead). And I did eventually manage to find the answers to all these things. For a while, though, the scenery and experience was so overwhelming that all I could do was look out the window and take it all in.
Eventually, it was time to head back to Glendale Airport. I searched the landscape for the freeway and the Cardinals stadium to get a sense of location. Wow, we had gone a long way, even though it didnāt feel like it! Back over the Estrellas we went, and soon the landing strip came closer and closer.
Landing the Prop Plane
āEvery landing is a crash,ā John told me. āThe question is, how well are you going to control it? A good landing is one where you can walk away from the plane. A great landing is one where you can fly the plane again.ā
Every time I fly, I dread the sensation of touching down. Turbulence doesnāt bother me in the least. Landing? Ugh. Usually, I grip the seat, hold my breath, and tense up in preparation for the jolt of hitting the ground. But I didnāt want to look like a moron while sitting next to a pilot, so I did my best to brace myself invisibly.
The familiar sensation of dropping in a 1000-foot elevator twisted my insides, and then the wheels touched the landing strip . . . and it was fine. I guess thereās a big difference between the feeling of landing in a 400,000-pound jetliner and the feeling of landing in a two-person plane that weighs less than half a ton!
Back at Flying Cacti
John taxied the plane back to the hangar. We rolled past a party in one of the other hangars (the party being nine seniors in lawn chairs) and got a glance at someoneās fancy two-seater, and then we were pulling off the headsets and climbing out of the plane. The owner of Flying Cacti came by for a chat, and one of the employees stopped his truck for a minute to say hi, giving me a sense of the community there.
What an experience! I had always thought of flying a plane as some kind of scary and mysterious process. I figured I had a better shot at getting sprinkled with Neverland fairy dust than grasping the concept of how airplanes move in the air. Although I never took physics (marine biology is way more fun, guys), the basic concept sounds pretty crazy. Youāre fighting one of natureās most basic forces, gravity, by harnessing different forces: thrust and lift.
What I realized from my time in the air is that, yeah, being a pilot takes a lot of skill, from understanding the NATO phonetic alphabet to keeping tabs on all the processes happening inside and outside the plane. But thereās also a sense of wonder to being in the air, controlling a flying machine, seeing the world from a whole new angle. Thereās a lot of science involved, but really, science is just another word for magic.
When we lived in Michigan, I was a little traumatized by winter. I thought I knew what winter was like, but I was wrong. The worst part to me was that during the bad weather season, you had to drive for literally DAYS to get out of the cold! That’s one reason why I’m happy to be in Phoenix now– we do get a “bad weather” season in the summer when it gets up to 122 degrees F outside, but at least we only have to drive an hour and a half or so to get out of it!
We have two people in in our family with August birthdays – my sister and my husband – and my parents like to take us to the cool weather in Flagstaff to celebrate and escape the heat.
One of the things we always do, and have done in the summers since I can remember, is go to Lake Mary. We used to live right off Lake Mary Road when I was a kid, and I have many memories of heading out of town and into the pines toward the lake.
Where is Lake Mary?
Lake Mary is about 20 minutes south of downtown Flagstaff. Take Lake Mary Road south and east, and you’ll find it! There are some free parking areas along the road, but they fill quickly. You’ll have a better bet parking in the fee area, which is about $10 per car for the day.
Ben making cowboy coffee during a camping trip
What do to at Lake Mary
Bicyclists love this area. You’ll see huge flocks (packs? herds?) of bicyclists riding down the highway on weekends. It’s easy to see why they love this ride. When we go in July or August, there are always sunflowers blooming all around the lake.
We often camp above Lake Mary. Since it’s National Forest land, it’s free. There are also plenty of places to just pull off and set up tents.
Obviously, boating and all its cousin activities are perfect at Lake Mary. We don’t have a boat, but we do have an inflatable kayak that had lasted us many lake days. My parents and my sister also have some inflatable paddleboards, which is my favorite thing to do.
Fishing is OK in Lake Mary, too. You can get some bait at the shop up the road and shore fish or trawl. Fishing in Arizona is generally terrible, so if you’re from out of state, don’t expect to much. Arizonans will probably be pretty happy with a catch from Lake Mary.
Activities near Lake Mary
When you’re done with your lake day, there are plenty of things to do in the area. Downtown Flagstaff isn’t too far. You can go to catch one of the public weekend concerts, watch the train pass at the Flagstaff Visitor Center, or take a hike up Mount Humphreys. Buffalo Park is another great nature area to visit. Flagstaff Extreme Adventure is a fun activity, as well.
If you love to spend your getaways in nature, then Lake Mary is a great place to visit during your Flagstaff trip! Not only can you camp for free nearby, but you can enjoy the peace and beauty of the lake and make a quick trip into town for anything you might need.
Today marks the first day of the Tokyo Olympics! And that means the first year of Olympic surfing has begun. Woot woot! Surfing is probably my favorite sport, both to watch and to do. So I’m pretty stoked at the idea of seeing this become an Olympic sport.
Lest you think I’m some super cool surfing fiend, let me add a quick disclaimer: I am not great at surfing. Yes, I got up on my first try. Yes, I walked from my apartment to the beach with my board under my arm like a boss on the regular. Yes, I managed to figure it out on my own without a surf lesson. But as you can see in the photos, my board was the size of a tiny whale. And, as you will never, ever see in the embarrassing Go Pro videos Ben took, my form was less the stellar.
Yeah, maybe I should have taken those surf lessons…
Although Sint Maarten isn’t famous for its surfing, it does have some good surf spots, and we managed to find all the good ones (and a few very dangerous places, which I will not share. We are probably lucky to be alive). Here are some of our favorites!
Mullet Bay
Mullet Bay Beach was a five-minute walk from home. Yes, I know– we were living the dream. For real. Especially since I still haven’t found a beach I like better than Mullet, with its surfing, snorkeling, cliff-jumping, sunbathing, swimming, sailing, kayaking, skim boarding, and fishing opportunities. I definitely miss it, now that we live in the desert!
Surfing Mullet Bay is only good in the winter months, when the surf is choppy. Other times of the year, it’s smooth as glass– perfect for scoping out the parrotfish, cuttlefish, and blue tangs that live in the reef.
Surfing here makes me a little bit nervous because it’s close to the beach and tons of people way better than me pack together and compete for the same waves. If it was busy, I’d usually just look on and take photos. It’s a great place to watch, since you can see surfers close-up from the beach or the rocks.
Plum Bay Beach
Our favorite beach to surf is Plum Bay Beach in the lowlands on the French side. It’s popular but not too busy, meaning I had a chance at catching some waves most of the time, even if there were a couple of other people there. You do have to swim out a bit, and getting past the smaller breaks to the surfing-sized waves was tough with my bigger board. But the rides were pretty long, and the waves are just the right size for me!
Our friend Jake lived in the neighborhood next Plum Bay. Jake’s from Hawaii, and he’s incredible to watch. He helped us improve a lot. And may have kept me from crashing into rocks and dying a few times.
Le Galion
Le Galion in French Saint-Martin is by far the most popular surf spot in Saint Martin. Even though Hurricane Irma demolished the beach in 2017, the surf shop, SXM Surf Club, is still there. Actually, when we went back in 2019, it was the only business still there. Gone were the colorful umbrellas, burger shop, and paddleboard rentals. I don’t know if anything else has been rebuilt (comment if you know!), but just the surfing is worth a visit.
SXM Surf Club rents boards, offers affordable rides out to the break, and gives lessons. We never took a lesson, but the instructors were so nice and sometimes volunteered tips for free when we were out at the same time as them. I think if we go back, I might take a lesson for the fun of it! We did pay to ride the ferry out a few times, but usually we just gritted our teeth and made the 20-minute swim out on our own.
This spot is usually pretty busy, but it’s also huge, and people tend to be nicer about taking turns and letting slow newbies have a shot at the waves. Which is a really good for me. I only ever slammed into one person on a packed afternoon (oops). If you bring your own board when SXM surf club is not taking people out and opt to take the long swim, you’ll have more waves to yourself.
Guana Bay
Ben only surfed Guana Bay once with Matt and Jake, and I just watched. The waves break right on the beach, and it didn’t seem like a good day to break my neck. If you’re really good and have a smaller board, it looks like a fun place to go. I prefer the Guana Bay Hike on the other side of the hill– takes you right to gorgeous tide pools!
Petit Cayes
I’m not sure I’d necessarily recommend Petit Cayes for surfing, but Ben and Matt did go a couple of times. The concept is cool. You have to drive all the way up to the northern part of French Saint Martin, past Pinel Island, and park at Grandes Cayes. Then you hike around the mountain, with its stunning views of Tintamarre Island and beautiful geological features; crunch over thousands of washed-up coral skeletons; and find yourself on the most stunning, pristine white-sand beach you have ever laid eyes on.
Since few people make the long trek to Petit Cayes, it’s free of trash and crowds and feels like you just discovered a desert island. On the horizon, the thin line of Anguilla peers up from the waves. It’s a wonderful place just to sit and think.
The waves here were too big for swimming every time we went, so Ben and Matt decided to try to surf there. The reason I say I don’t recommend it is that the current is pretty strong and Ben felt like it might not be a great idea to make it a regular surf spot.
Cupecoy
Cupecoy is another beach that we could walk to. A few times, we walked there and I stayed up on the cliffs while Ben went down to surf. We also paddled there from Mullet once when the beach was busy– for fun, and to avoid having to walk through the nude beachgoers.
I think Cupecoy is really scary because the wave break right into a rocky outcropping. I didn’t feel confident in my ability to steer my orca-sized surfboard well enough to stay alive, so even when I went out, I preferred to sit behind the break and watch the sunset. After all, what’s better than watching the sun dip below the Caribbean Sea?
It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since I’ve been surfing! Ben went with SXM Surf Club when we visited the island in 2019, but not me. Next time we’re in Sint Maarten, I’ll definitely go! For now, I’ll be happy getting to watch the best of the best compete for gold in Tokyo. Go USA!
And now, for your entertainment, a sneaky photo of Ben walking into American University of the Caribbean with a surfboard so he could run straight to the beach after class:
With the heat of an Arizona summer in full force, our hiking trips have ended until September. However, Phoenix has a lot of budget experiences to offer besides its many outdoor offerings! Did you know that Phoenix-area residents can visit many of the Valley’s museums for free? The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) is one of these.
How to Visit for Free
When we lived in Detroit, I could walk in to many museums without paying just because of the address on my drivers license. Although this isn’t the case in Phoenix, you can still find ways to get tickets without swiping your credit card.
There are two ways I know of to get in to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art for free. One is to go on a Thursday or the second Saturday of the month. I believe that at the time of writing, you are supposed to make a reservation. I can see why– it was pretty busy the last time I visited, even though the museum is still practicing more social distancing than most of the other places around town.
The other way to get in free is to snag a Culture Pass at one of the libraries in Maricopa County. If you’ve never used a Culture Pass, these are red laminated strips displayed near the door of any library in the county system. You have to take the Culture Pass strip to the front desk and have a librarian activate it for you, and then you take your receipt to the museum within seven days for entry. Each Culture Pass is worth admission for two. Depending on the time of year and the attraction, Culture Passes go quickly– so plan on arriving when the library opens if you want to be sure to grab one!
You do need a library card to get a Culture Pass. This means you need to have residency in Maricopa County. If you’re just visiting, the free days are your best bet!
Visiting SMoCA
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is located in Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona. You can park for free in the garage behind the museum. Thank goodness for that– parking in the sun at this time of year makes getting back in the car feel like climbing into an oven!
It had been about five years since I’d been to SMoCA, and I was excited to see what had changed. I was also excited to show it to my friend Jenny, a New Zealander who recently moved here after nine years mining gold in Mongolia.
(Yes, her life as is cool as it sounds– you can check out her travel blog here!)
SMoCA is a small museum with just a few galleries, but it does change exhibits frequently. The first time I went, several years ago, I was unimpressed by a display of American cheese squares laid out in a grid. Come on, people. American cheese is barely food, much less art.
This time, however, the museum displayed beautiful and thought-provoking modern art as well as contemporary twists on traditional art forms.
SMoCA Exhibits
During our visit, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art showcased several cool exhibits. Our favorite was a fantastic weaving display featuring human-sized baskets and a modern take on traditional tapestry weaving. The artist, Diedrick Brackens, was inspired by the Biblical story of Moses to create baskets that people can float in. It included videos of the artist trying out his beautiful basket boats!
I’ve never seen tapestries like this done on a traditional loom. It must take a lot of skill to take photos, edit them into monochromatic computer images, create a weaving pattern, and execute the design flawlessly. So cool!
Things to Do Near SMoCA
After our trip to the museum, Jenny treated me to a lunch at Los Olivos, a delicious Mexican restaurant next to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The building of the restaurant is also a work of art, with interesting stained glass windows bathing a room all in blue, fish tanks bubbling in the corner, and unique architecture.
Since SMoCA is located in Old Town Scottsdale, there are also many other places to dine, drink, and dessert. One of my favorites is Sugar Bowl, an old-timey ice cream shop once frequented by Bil Keane, creator of Family Circus.
If you’re looking for something to do on a hot Arizona day…
…then the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is a great place to go! You’ll be sure to enjoy modern art infused with emotion and meaning from creators in the Southwest and all around the world.
