When dinner came it was steak. On a plate. One steak, nothing else. I guess they gave us some wonder bread or something like that too, but mostly it was just steak.  

The dress code even recquired "Tucson Business Dress", meaning "No Ties Allowed". This place has made itself famous by cutting of ties of unsuspecting male, and female, patrons. The ties somehow have found their way to the ceilings. This story is true because while we were eating an elderly man wandered by missing half of his bright yellow and green polka-dotted tie.  

After an hours wait, easily spent with the natives and at an exciting and authentic gun show, complete with slapstick comedic (still authentic!) stunts, we finally sat down to eat at the Steakhouse, a traditional greasy western eatery, complete with the hicks.

Me, forced to capture the Native essence.  

We also explored the Native's native habitat, including their ingenious wood, leather, straw and chicken wire homes. Brandon and I inside the traditional 70's dwelling.  

... as well as amazing gender changing abilities. 

The natives were very peculiar, possessing large quantities of viciously curly hair and white-man like expressions...  

... and Natives, with whom Dustin made fast friends.  

Local wrinkly, stunted Western women in authentic dress,... (a.k.a. Brandon)....  

Including gun totting cowboys...

Pinnacle Peak ended up being a whole corny reconstruction of a Wild West town...  

One Saturday night in February, we thought it'd be fun to go to Tucson for dinner. So we (Dustin, Kate, Drew, Me, Brandon) pilled cozily into his 4runner and drove merrily down the 10 for two hours to eat at Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse, on recommendation from Dustin, who despite being a foreigner was the only one among us who had already been to Tucson.  

More sunset, from the top of a rock off the 88 I think... I climbed up the hill barefoot anyway because I was wearing flip-flops for some reason, just being stupid I guess, so it was easier to take them off and go with free feet. The sunset made our frantic scramble worth it though (we were almost too late to catch it).  

Desert sunset in Tonto National Forest, with Ocotillo.  

The other picture didn't actually have saguaros in it that you could see I just realized, so here's one with a slightly larger than normal cacti (30 ft ish?) - you can't really see me but I'm there at the bottom for scale...  

Beautiful rocks all over the desert near Saguaro, and some actual saguaros too (not that those are very uncommon) seen from where we left the trail and began bushwacking + rock-hopping, which takes an amazing amount of talent if you want to avoid falling into something thorny, sharp, spikey, pokey, prickly, barbed, pointed, jagged, bristly or otherwise painfully armored. These cliffs were across the lake from us, but the pictures of what we climbed don't want to load right now, so you can just imagine our side.  

Tounge #2, On-the-Rock, Saguaro Reservoir AZ 

Brandon developed lots of close relationships to cacti on this hike...  

Jumping cactus, and they really do jump!! Bits fall off and sit innocently on the ground until you walk by and then they jump and stick you, and they have nasty, sticky little barbs that take forever to get out. I actually made Brandon get these stuck to him so I could take a picture, but then they got stuck and he was hopping around flailing about trying to kick them off - not that I laughed.  

Arizona at night, near Saguaro reservoir outside of PHX.  

Back at the Ranch: Kate and the Drew, watching movies, eating popcorn, plotting how to take over the world, Pittsburgh style. 

Tounge #1, Lift Line, Flagstaff (not on a rock) 

Standing in the lift line, Brandon in Glacier Glasses, Hannah in Brandon's one-and-only-raffle-win glasses. 

Looking back down the top of the mountain lift - on the chair below are Jordan (with two skis) and Dustin (with one ski). Flag is off to the left, you actually can't see it. The top sits around 12,000 ft. which Brandon noted was higher than any mountain in the Nevadan Sierras (Mt. Rose - 10,899 ft).

One Ski, One Mountain, One Man. The man in this case being Dustin, not Brandon even though Brandon's jacket, pants, etc. are pictured. Dustin - "If I die going down this put this picture on my tombstone." This is the view off the top of the mountain looking southwest-ish. Behind is the notable "sheer cliff" which was nearly fatal and involved 45 minutes of trying to put Jordan onto Dustin's skis and vice versa while being aided by two friendly but exasperated ski patrol. At least they weren't snowboarding.