Trip to Phoenix

 

 

Dave says: We took a trip up to Phoenix for baby Charles' blessing (Christine's 4th). However, we decided to head up a bit early and see Wayne and Debbie in Superior. We brought the atv and did a trail called Walnut Canyon on the way. When we arrived, Debbie made us a deluxe dinner and we spent the night with them in their new trailer.

On Saturday, we took the atv up a trail called Montana Mountain which is between Superior and Phoenix and is a nice long loop up out of the desert to some higher altitude. We arrived at my parents' house on Saturday afternoon and had dinner with the whole family. On Sunday morning, the blessing was a nice occasion with a lot of people in town for the occasion. Congrats to Christine and Parker.

Early Thanksgiving

Alisha says: The Bezanson's gathered for an early Thanksgiving this past weekend. My dad had to work on actual Thanksgiving and this weekend worked for everyone so we all met up in Cedar for the traditional feast. Well, everyone except Dave because of school. It was a bit crazy when all of the little ones would get wild but I think everyone had a good time. Well, except for those who had the stomach flu. Okay, so it wasn't perfect but how much fun would that be?

Devin brought his smoker and smoked the turkey, which was delicious. There was a snow storm that came through and trapped everyone inside for a while. Finally we just had to get outside so we all bundled up and went for a walk and then let the kids roll around in the snow until they were frozen. I know that Tucson has spoiled me with it always being nice weather and the snow storm only confirmed that fact that I no longer like snow, or being cold.

It was so great to get to see everyone!

Devin smoking the turkey 

 Kid's table - this is probably where I should have ate since I most fit in with this group :)

 

Mt. Wrightson

 Alisha says: Mt. Wrightson is the highest point around Tucson at 9,453 ft. with a great 360 degree view at the top so of course it was on our list of things to do. Dave, Katheryn and I made the 11 mile round trip trek up the Old Baldy Trail to the top on a beautiful day! The trail is a steady climb of over 4,000 ft. all the way to the exposed peak. The views at the top were awesome and the part that made me sore for a few days was the descent back to the parking lot. 

Halfway there!

 Chilling at the top

 Katheryn checking out the green ammo box that contained a registry

Wild Wild West

Alisha says: In an effort to get the most out of any place we live we try to be tourists and explore our surroundings at any chance we get. This last weekend was no exception, we had a marathon of fun while never being more than 2 1/2 hours from our house. Our first stop was Chiricahua National Monument. I was a little nervous driving there because well, there really isn't much to see but once  we arrived I realized that the Chiricahua's are a gem. We set up at the campground and set out on our mtn bikes for a little ride. The next morning we boarded the hikers shuttle that took us up the mountain where we hiked about 10 miles back down the canyon through really cool rock formations. Unfortunately a there are a lot of burned areas from a fire last year but it was still pretty.

The next day we did a long mountain bike ride. We rode up to Onion Saddle which turned out to be quite the uphill grind. We came across a very cross rattlesnake who coiled right up and rattled to let us know that he was not happy. This was actually a good thing because Dave might have ran him over if he hadn't rattled. We waited for him to move so we could get by and then when we went by he coiled up again.

We then went to Bisbee, an old mining town that is only about 5 miles from the Mexican border. The town is very interesting. Everything is built terraced on the hillsides basically on top of each other. We walked around exploring the town with its' many staircase alleys that randomly go places. We spent the night at the School House Inn which was a school house built in 1918 that has been remodeled into a cute bed and breakfast (a deal I scored on groupon). We stayed in the Library room.

On our return to Tucson we stopped in Tombstone, the town to tough to die. This is where stories and legends of the wild west come from. We visited the Courthouse museum to learn about the town's history. Tombstone is the site of the famous gun fight at the O.K. Corral between Wyatt Erp and Doc Holliday with the outlaw brothers gang of Clanton's and McLaury's that left three dead. We stopped at Boothill Graveyard (which refers to the number of men who died with their boots on) where many the towns outlaws and a few others are buried. Several of the markers include a little humor including the one for Lester Moore. A customer was unhappy when a mail package he received was damaged. He argued with Lester and then shot him four times, hence his famous tombstone epitaph that reads, HERE LIES LESTER MOORE, FOUR SLUGS FROM A 44, NO LES NO MORE.

Our last stop was at Kartchner Caverns. The cave is very impressive and has a lot of great cave formations. The cave is warm and has about 99% humidity which is very interesting for it being located in the very dry Arizona desert.

Mixing It Up

Alisha says: Dave and I have been enjoying mixing up our activities now that the race season is over. In addition to still riding a couple of times a week we have been doing some trail running. Dave will do some running with me but he insists that he only runs on trails. Lucky for us we have Sabino Canyon close by and have been having fun running the trails. I asked Dave if he would ever do a fun run with me and once again he said he would only if it was on trails. Lucky for me I found a trail run at Catalina State Park that we participated in last weekend. It was a five mile run on some challenging trails with great desert scenery. We had a great time and I finished 2nd for the women and 8th overall. I was very proud of Dave and he did awesome finishing in the top 20 and 2nd in his age group.

We have also been having lots of fun going on ATV adventures. We borrowed Dave's parents ATV and so far have explored Box Canyon, Reddington Pass to Chiva Falls, and Charleau Gap. The trails that we have done so far have had some technical terrain and have been very rocky so Dave has got to do most of the driving as I'm not very good when it gets tricky.

Other than that I gave a lesson at church last week and Christine and Parker had their baby on Sept 7th. We made a trip to Phoenix to see the new little guy, they named him Charles Thomas Leavitt.

 

The End of Summer

Dave says: I have neglected the blog for awhile but it is time to return and provide an update for the last couple of months. This summer I spent most of my time working on research and was able to make some progress on a few different papers. At the beginning of August, I traveled to the Academy of Management for the yearly conference. It was fun to see all my favorite people including former Arizona students and Utah students and faculty. I'm not a big city person but Boston is a pretty nice big city with clean streets and buildings with interesting architecture. When not at the conference, Sam and I walked the Freedom Trail and went kayaking in the river.

I started school near the end of August. However, this semester I only have two classes and am spending most of my time doing research. Over the summer, I moved out of the large student office into a smaller shared office with Sam. The new PhD students have arrived (Daphna and Eugene) and we did a big back to school dinner at Blanco.

Alisha finished up her last race of the season in Aspen and somehow was able to spend 7 days in Colorado for only a single day of racing. Now that her season has finished, we have been doing some new adventures. Alisha and I hiked Lower Tanque Verde Falls one evening right after a monsoon. Later, Sam and Alex and I hiked the Upper Falls and did some good scrambling along the way. It is pretty cool to see giant waterfalls in the middle of the desert and scramble-hikes with lots of big boulders are my favorite type.

Emily and Alisha at the top of Independence Pass. They rode up and watched the pro men come by.

Tanque Verde Falls  

Alisha and I have also been doing some trail running. I have found that trail running is much more fun than running on asphalt and we live close to lots of trails. Some of the best are over at Sabino Canyon and I recently saw a huge rattlesnake down by the dam (but fortunately a bit off the trail).

Over Labor Day, we did a big adventure up north. The first day, we traveled to Sedona and did a hike up the west fork of Oak Creek Canyon which is a very pretty hike in a canyon along a stream. The second day, we did a huge all-day mountain bike ride in Sedona on the HT 29ers. We started south of Sedona and made our way up to the north and west on trails, dirt roads, and pavement. We also managed both to get lost a couple of times and to get on some crazy technical trails but it was fun nevertheless. That evening, we drove up to Flagstaff and camped out in the wilderness by Walnut Canyon. The next morning, we embarked on another huge mountain bike ride first on Campbell Mesa, then on the Flagstaff Urban Trail System, then around on the Arizona Trail, and finally back on a bunch of dirt roads. Our rides both days ended with quick rides back to the car just as thunderstorms were starting to hit. We packed up the car about 5 minutes before the rain started dumping and made it to 1 pm church in Flagstaff with 1 minute to spare. After all this adventure, we headed south to Phoenix and had a nice time hanging out with my family.

 Hiking Oak Creek in Sedona on Labor Day weekend

 Mountain biking in Sedona

Cool scenery along Long Canyon to Deadman's Pass 

Camping

We had such a fun weekend!!



Nationals and Beyond

Alisha says: The latest adventures include traveling to Augusta, Georgia for Nationals and then meeting up with Dave in Colorado where I did some training while he attended and presented a paper at a conference in Boulder, after that we had a fun road trip through some of our favorite places on the way home to roasty toasty Tucson.

It was fun to meet up again with the team for some racing. I raced the criterium and the road race. After coming off of a rough month of May I was not particularly looking forward to the crit because I really didn't want to get dropped. It was a flat 6 corner crit that started at 8:00 pm, so for the first 20 min. we had the sun directly in our eyes on the start/finish straight and then it proceeded to quickly get dark. The good news is that my leg was cooperating and I made it through the at times sketchy race. Our youngest teammate Jackie finished 9th.

We were very lucky to have some cloud cover for the road race, it was still hot and sticky but at least we didn't have the sun beating down on us. Unfortunately we missed a break and so we had to do some work with the NOW team in order to bring it back, but I finally felt good again in a race and didn't mind doing some work. The last lap was really fun and fast. I goofed with positioning coming into the final kilometer and was to far back. I finished 17th.

I flew into Denver where Dave picked me up. We did some camping in the mountains above Boulder before Dave's conference. While Dave was attending his conference I was lucky and got to do some riding with teammate Kasey. The bad thing is that there were several large wildfires in Colorado and as a result a couple of the days the mountains were hidden behind a haze and the air was smoky, not the best for exercising in.

We road tripped home and spent a little time in some of our favorite places, Ouray, Silverton, and Durango. Our first stop was Black Canyon National Park, it is a very impressive canyon. We then did a little hike in Ouray and the whole time I couldn't stop saying how scenic it was. We camped out in the high mountains and the next morning drove into Silverton and ate breakfast at a small cafe. It was really fun because there were a couple chatty locals we visited with while eating. One local suggested we go on a mine tour so we went and toured the Old Hundred mine and learned about mining in the old days.

Jen and Kasey riding around Augusta

Crit racing

Dave brought his 29er and I had my road bike so we found this hard packed dirt road for both of us to ride.

We rode Rollins Pass to Moffat Tunnel 

Kasey was my tour guide around Boulder. We rode Sunshine Canyon, Four Mile Canyon and visited Skratch Labs.

Black Canyon National Park

Hiking around Ouray

This was part of our hike

This let to a cool waterfall

The little cafe in Silverton where we ate breakfast

All ready in our rain coats and hard hats for the mine tour