Montezuma's Well

Had a change of scenery this tour, doing a 4 day hitch at Montezuma's Well National Monument near Sedona. The project was installing an irrigation system to support the replanting of a fallow field with native species. The water will come from Montezuma's well and support the plants for 4 years while they get established, at which point they should be able to survive on their own.

(the west field, hopefully this is not what it will look like in 10 years)

Our job was to connect 1/4" tubing to the 1/2" tubing snaking through the field, providing the last step for water to reach the plants. There were a lot of finger blistering tiny connections to make, first out of the 1/2", then into a tee junction and finally into the emitters, which hung inside the wire cage.

(1/4" tube coming out of 1/2" tube. Tubes are woven into the wire cage and emitters hang just above the ground on both sides of the little plant)

Our crew busted out some fine work and probably could have finished the project a day early if all the supplies had been in place. It was frustrating to have information trickling in about the correct way to hook up the tubes, and we had to redo a lot of the work from day 1 because we didn't just have a comprehensive orientation at the beginning. Since we finished the work so quickly, our project partner let us visit Montezuma's Castle and Montezuma's Well; two very cool sites with lots of pueblos built 1000 years ago.

(looking across Montezuma's well, ancient dwellings in the background)

(The water exits the well through a 300 ft cave and pops out into this nice little aqueduct, built 1000 years ago and still going strong. The well supports several endemic species including a water scorpion and a leech found nowhere else in the world, but no gill fish because of low oxygen levels. The water is always 74 deg)

We camped at a random pullout in National Forest, and it treated us pretty well, minus the hicks who heckled us from their 4x4s as they roared past in the middle of the night. Nothing stolen and no confrontations, so that's good enough for me. We had some delicious meals and it only rained at night. The days were beautiful and sometimes it just felt like we were all on a stroll through the park as we checked and rechecked all of our connectors. I'll be down in Phoenix later this week for a retreat, and then it's back to the Canyon on April 13th.