Catching Up with the Dixon's take 2!

Boy I've been bad! It is hard to believe we are already 2/3rds the way through the month and I am only now catching up with my blog. We can't figure where the time goes but we sure keep busy! The weather has been crazy all winter and seems to want to continue this way. We have days where we are in the 80's temperature wise and 3 days later it is in the 50's! We go from shorts to jeans and goose down vests back to shorts all in a weeks' time! I am wishing it turns warm and just stays like that from now on.

Our riding group decided to trailer our ATV's south of Superior AZ to a start off point where we could ride into Walnut Canyon and get down to the Gila River. We have never done this route before but people gave us an idea where to go and we had our ATV book and GPS so figured we were good to go for the day

Here's Doug just finished unloading the ATV and putting our gear in it ready to go

 We are just heading out into the mountains, we are riding shotgun with Sharon and Craig in front of us and Trent and Ann further ahead

 This was our first time in this trail so the scenery was all new to us

 Everywhere we looked there was beautiful rocks and bluffs to see

 We were riding in a wash so lots of scrub bush still hibernating

1.  Craig took us in a little side road to an old well he had heard about that was pumping warm water to the surface at a pretty darn good rate! It was bath water warm. Craig is filling his water bottle but I can't quite imagine what he wants a bottle of warm water for!
2. 
   

 Of course Ann and I have to go over to see what the sign says

 Obviously the photographer didn't let Ann know the branches were in her face

 Saw a beautiful red-tailed hawk sitting up on a bluff

 

The scenery was just amazing 

 

 Trent standing at the top of the hill looking over wondering what is taking us so long. They hadn't seen the hawk on the ridge so didn't stop to take a picture

 We spent the whole day exploring trails and only once met another group of riders. There are just miles of trails and peace and quiet

 Just love those saguaro cacti and can't take enough pictures of them

Sharon and Craig are behind us now and you can see the rocky ledge from the other side as we have gone around it

 We have climbed way up into the mountains as we have to get over them and down into the valley below to get to the Gila river

 Doug heading in to visit a cacti!

 We spent hours driving in roads that dead ended on us and this spot we came to a huge rock ledge drop off that there was no way we could navigate down so as it was early afternoon, we decided to just stop here and have lunch. It was a lovely sunny spot.

Trent and Doug discussing our next steps. You can tell we are the only Canadians! We are in short sleeves and everyone else still has their sweatshirts on

 We are now heading back up and over the mountain to head home. We never did find the road into Walnut Canyon or the Gila River but we had a wonderful ride none the less! You can see one of our ATV's at the bottom of the hill just coming up to meet us. This was our last picture of the day and it was a fun day. We made the decision to come back next week and try one other tail we missed the first time we went in to see if it would take us through the canyon down to the river.