Favorite Retreat Threatened By Fire

For our anniversery, a month ago, we got away to a cool, moist, woody area for a great respit from the heat and hard work of the house and family care. We went to the Chuperosa Inn B & B in Madera Canyon. It is actually a world-famous birding area and though we are not birders we did identify a number of birds we had never seen before. We throughly enjoyed ourselves and were delighted to know there was such a lovely retreat spot available to us. About a week ago one of the pre-monsoon storms spewed lightening without rain and sparked a fire, now called the Florida Fire (pronounce: flor-ee-da), in the mountains which surround Madera Canyon. Yesterday all residents of the area were evacuated. The firefighters expect to save the structures in the area but we fear for the unique environment of the canyon. I'm afraid our retreat will be unavailable for this summer anyway. So I'm sharing the photo below of this wonderful location. Arizona isn't all desert!! Much as we'd like the monsoons to hold off for our roof's sake we really need some rain.