Ciao from Tacna, AZ & Kofa National Wildlife Refuge!

Run Stats:

Day: 551

Miles Completed: 1901.8

Miles to San Diego: 198.2

Avg Miles/Day: 3.5

Marathons Completed: 72.6

Longest Run Streak: 20 days

Shoes: Skora Fit/Skora Tempo

Playlist Favs: Catalyst Podcast, Northpoint CC Podcast

Bible Verse of the Day: "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms" 1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

Run Reflections: Hello from the virtual road and Happy Independence Day to everyone! I'm continuing west on I-8 and reached two new milesstones since the last post. Despite ongoing thunderstorms and some pretty hot weather, I was able to set a new running streak record of 20 days. I also crossed the 1900 mile mark after my run this morning and am getting closer to the AZ-CA border every day. Since the streak ended, I've missed a few days and my legs feel a lot better so, at the moment, I'm not sure when I'll try to take on the streak again.

In todays post, I'm going to talk briefly about the town that I most recently passed through and highlight a wildlife refuge that is located north of the town. Information and pictures from this post are from wikipedia and the refuge web site.

Tacna, AZ & Kofa National Wildlife Refuge: Tacna is a small town in Yuma County along I-8. I couldn't find much info on the town but wikipedia did have a picture of the town post office which I included in the photo album of this post. I mainly selected Tacna as it most closely reflects my current location on this virtual run. In terms of sharing sights and sounds from the road, this post will focus on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge which is located north of Tacna.

The Kofa refuge was established in 1939 to protect desert bighorn sheep, it encompasses 665,400 acres of the Yuma Desert region of the Sonoran Desert. Of this, 547,700 acres are designated as wilderness, making it the 2nd largest wilderness area in AZ. The name "Kofa" comes from a former area gold mine: the King of Arizona which was active from 1897 to 1910. Kofa is a contraction of the gold mine name.

In 1936, the Arizona Boy Scouts mounted a statewide campaign to save the bighorn sheep. The scouts first became interested in the sheep through the efforts of Major Fredrick Burnham, a noted frontiersman turned conservationist who co-founded scouting. Burnham observed that fewer than 150 of these sheep lived in the AZ mountains. Burnham and the scouts started a state-wide awareness campaign that included a "save the bighorns" poster contest in schools throughout the state and the contest-winning bighorm emblem was made into neckerchief slides for the scouts and the bighorn sheep is still the offical mascot of the AZ scouts today.

Through their efforts the Kofa Refuge acerage was set aside and a civilian conservation corps camp was set up to develop high mountain waterholes for the sheep. The picture that is part of this post shows one of the bighorn sheep in the refuge. According to wikipedia, the population of bighorn sheep was recently estimated to be 428. In recent years, this herd has provided animals for transporting throughout AZ and neighboring states. Hopefully, this will allow for the population to continue to grow.

The Kofa Refuge acerage contains a variety of terrain including desert plains, gently sloping foothills and sharp peaks of the Kofa Mountains. Other notable wildlife species found in the area include badgers, desert tortoises, kit fox(es), kangaroo rats and the elusive and venomous Gila monster, the largest land lizard native to the US. Many bird species including the white-winged dove, northern flicker and orange-crowned warbler and plant species including prickly pear and the desert fan palm can also be found.

There are many trails throughout the refuge that provide opportunities to observe the sights, sounds and critters mentioned above. Other tourist activities include rock climbing, exploring old mines and remote wilderness camping. I've included some pictures of the refuge and some of the trails in the photo album associated with this post. I hope you'll take a minute to check them out. Clearly, if your an outdoors person this is definitely a place you'll want to visit.

Although this post didn't contain as much history as some of the previous posts, it does reflect another beautiful and unique area of our country. I continue to enjoy what I am learning about our country through this virtual run/blog. Areas like the Kofa Refuge remind me that America truly is a majestic place to live and I really appreciate the unique diversity of the different areas that I've virtually traveled through. I also really appreciate the fact that I am physically able to run these miles. I hope I never take either of these things for granted.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it. I'd like to send a special shout-out to any current or former servicemen or women who read this. Thanks so much for your service to our country and for the sacrifices you've made and continue to make to keep our country free!

God Bless,

Pat