After she left on Jan 10th, I headed north to Picacho Peak State Park, between Tucson and Phoenix. One day I drove over to Casa Grande National Monument, a really cool Hohokam ruin:
Then I headed up to Lost Dutchman State Park, just east of Phoenix. It's a nice patch of desert right at the foot of the Superstition Mountains, but unfortunately I managed to accidentally delete my photos of it, so you'll have to take my word for it.For Xmas my brother gave me a guide book, Hiking Ruins Seldom Seen. I headed to White Tank Mountain Regional Park, a county park west of Phoenix, to do a hike called the Waterfall Trail that the book said had lots of petroglyphs. There were lots:
and lots:
of cool petroglyphs:
I'm not sure about the "Seldom Seen" part tho. Admittedly, I was there on the Saturday of the MLK holiday weekend, so I probably saw it at it's most crowded, but there were at least 50 cars in the parking lot at the trailhead. It was a really nice hike up a canyon, even if a bit crowded. A nice extra was that the book lead me to White Tank Mountain Regional Park, which since it was a county park wasn't in any of my brochures of state parks, national monuments, etc. It was such a nice park that I camped there for several nights - a really nice campground with spotless restrooms with free showers (aah... luxury). And a very nice patch of desert with lots of Saguaro and my favorite Teddy Bear Chollas:
One day I did a really nice hike up Ford Canyon:
On the way back I saw some deer:
Then on January 21 I decided the Phoenix area was just too crowded, with sprawl tentacles reaching way out. So I headed southeast to Chiricahua National Monument. A really amazing place -rocky mountains above forest:
Full of crazy rock formations:
On Wednesday I did a neat hike 3 miles or so in to the Heart of Rocks trail, a mile or so loop trail through some amazing rock formations. I underestimated the time involved, or overestimated my ability to do 1000 foot elevation gain at 7000 feet elevation, or maybe just read my watch wrong. Anyway as I was hiking the Heart of Rocks loop, I realized I was gonna have to hoof it to make it back to my Jeep before dark. Then to make matters worse I missed the exit ramp from the loop trail. The loop goes thru rocks, a lot of steep steps, and the trail was a bit hard to find in places. But the National Park Service does try not to lose their visitors, and in most of the places where the trail was hard to find, there were footprints painted on the rocks, or a sign with an arrow. At one place I came down into a clearing and there was a sign pointing out of the clearing so I followed it. A little later a steep rocky patch of the trail, kind of like a giant's staircase, felt familiar to me. Nah, I thought, rocks do tend to look alike, and I kept going. A bit further on I came to a sign pointing out the Pinnacle Balanced Rock - that I knew I'd seen before. Dang, I was on my second time around the loop! I had a bit of a panic - I knew I didn't have a lot of time to kill if I was gonna make my jeep before dark. But I thought I remembered that sign from the beginning of the loop, so I turned back and looked around at the sign in the clearing. Sure enough there was another trail out of the clearing and in a 100 yards or so it brought me back to the main trail. And I made it back to my Jeep just as it was getting dark. The hike was worth the adventure tho:
The next day I headed east, made my first foray into New Mexico. A pretty brief one tho, I turned south, then back into Arizona to Portal, on the east side of the Chiricahua mountains. Last night and tonight I'm staying at the Portal Peak Lodge (the forecast was for rain, but not much has actually materialized). Today I took a really nice scenic loop thru the mountains:
And then a short hike in Cave Creek Canyon:
Tomorrow I'm gonna continue east, heading towards Carlsbad Caverns, tho I doubt I'll get there tomorrow. First I'm gonna stop at the New Mexico Welcome Center and get a map and their tourist info, see where else I should go.
