Walnut Canyon ATV Ride

The weather remains excellent, warm and sunny so we decided this week we would head off to Walnut Canyon for our weekly ride. We also decided to not invite anyone to go along with us other than Trent and Ann as it is so dry out in the desert and the dust so bad when you get in a larger group that we figured just the two ATV's would be enough. The dust was causing us all to cough, our eyes were blood shot after a day of riding, even with our goggles on! Doug and I sat out on our patio for coffee before we headed out to meet Trent and Ann and I just had to take some pictures of the menagerie of birds that visit us each day. At one point we had our favorites: the silly quail but also wood peckers, hummingbirds, sparrows, finches, cactus wren, thatchers and the %$#@doves (you can tell they are not my favorite bird). They certainly entertain us for the very reasonable price of a quail block!

 The male quail have the black face and the larger plume

 

The woodpecker tries his darndest to get a drink from the hummingbird feeder without a lot of success. I give him credit though: he continues to try every day.

I had to take a short video just to demonstrate how active these birds are and how entertaining they can be

 

 Walnut Canyon is south of Superior AZ so we need to trailer our ATV's to the trail head. Here is Doug driving the ATV off our cargo trailer. It was a bit cloudy that day but nice and warm. We started out with sweatshirts on just to protect ourselves from the dust but quickly had to remove them as we were too warm!

 We are just locking everything up as the truck and trailer will sit in the loading area for the day so we wanted to ensure all would be safe till we returned at the end of the day.

 It was so beautiful as we started out. If you look really closely at the saguaro in the middle of the picture, you will see a hawk sitting on the top of it.

 We are getting a little closer to the hawk and he isn't at all concerned by our precense

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 We are right up beside him now and he appears to be feeding on something and doesn't give us the time of day!

 We decided to take a new trail just to see where it went and this is a view as we headed up the mountain side

 There were beautiful views everywhere we looked

 We got stopped at a big metal gate that was locked with a "NO TRESPASSING" sign, saying it was a RAY Mine site. It was obvious by the red coloured tailings, that this was an old copper mine site and we could see an old opening in the mountain down below

 Copper tailings

 View from where we were stopped by the mine gate

 Opening to one of the mine tunnels down below us

 We had parked our ATV's and walked around the gate and followed the road till we saw the old mining site. Obviously, we can't read English and the no tresspasing sign!

 We had to turn around and go back the way we came and that is Trent and Ann ahead of us. It was an interesting ride none the less.

 Hawks were out in plenty today as we saw another hawk on top of a saguaro. We also saw a road runner but it was going so darn fast i couldn't get my camera turned on, focused and ready to shoot before it was long gone! 

 We are down the other side of the mountain range, heading into a wash that will take us down to the San Carlos river. The washes were pretty rough as they had some pretty major rain storms this past summer. Most people say they didn't get the usual amount of rain they normally get during the monsoon season but when it did rain, it came down in buckets. We witnessed that on our ride when we had to go down hills. They were majorly washed out in places. Made for some fun sections!

 We are down at the San Carlos river and stopping for a lunch. The river is very low at this time of year and we know we can cross with our ATV's so we plan to do it after lunch.

 

 This picture is taken looking in the other direction and you can see the sky is much clearer.

 Trent is thunbing or I should say "handing" a ride as Doug decides to try the river and see how deep it is. I guess Ann and I are looking at the river to see if we can figure how deep it is in the center??

This is Doug heading across the river, he kept telling me I was going to have to wade over to join him....

He did come back and get him. He knew what was good for him thank-goodness!

 Only a retired railroader would take this picture. There was a railroad track on the other side of the river that we followed for a bit and Doug just couldn't resist taking a picture of mile post 980. Now don't ask us 980 miles from where as none of us could answer that one!

 Here we have to go under the tracks. Doug was wishing a train would come along as we had heard one earlier before we got down to the river but no way would I be going under the bridge with a train crossing it!!

 You can see the trail through the trellis and Trent and Ann up ahead of us

 I just love all the different  mountain peaks out in the desert. You never lack for pictures to take!

We had noticed a hole in the hillside off our trail on the way to Walnut Canyon that we had never see before so we stopped on our way home to explore a bit and see if any animals were using it for a den. We climbed up the slipperly slope and to our disappointment, it appeared nothing had been using the hole for living quarters.

 It was quite a large opening and we can't believe we had never noticed it before even though we have done this ride many times before.

We had a beautiful sunset to finish the ride off as we were just arriving back to our vehicles. It was a fun day with just the 2 ATV's, minimal dust even though we were all covered in a layer of it but not nearly as bad as the week before. The other couple, Sharon and Craig that ride with us weekly are arriving this week so we are looking forward to them joining us next week.

Our First Week In Arizona

Wow, it's hard to believe we've been in Apache Junction for a week now. The weather has been incredible with most days being 30 - 34 degrees and the nights nice and warm. It is so incredible to be sitting out on the back patio at 8pm looking at the stars wearing just shorts and t-shirts. Sure beats Brown's Bay!

 This is one of our orange trees (Navel orange) and there are plenty of oranges on it. They are just starting to turn orange and should be ready about Christmas time. They are huge also which means all our trimming and fertilizing is working!

 We got all our patio furniture out so we could sit out and enjoy the sun. Trouble is, we are so busy down here it is hard to find time to sit out in the sun! I have started back going to my aerobics class two mornings a week and I am also leading a water aerobics class 6 mornings a week so that uses up a lot of time. I go down to the club house Thursday evenings for a couple of hours to ladies craft night. We all sit around doing our own projects and just visit. This time of year all us winter residents get caught up on the permanent residents lives and of course all the gossip!

 This is my lemon tree we planted 2 years ago and this is the first crop of lemons from it. The poor little tree is so loaded the lemons are almost touching the ground. Doug can't wait for his lemon pies and lemon loafs!

 We went out to where we leave our ATV and cargo trailer and unloaded the ATV,. Doug checked out the motor, added the battery back into the ATV, added oil and we were ready to take it for a test run. We went out into the Sonoran desert for a couple of hours, found a lovely Palo Verde tree for shade, got out our lawn chairs and had a lovely lunch out in the desert. We just love being out in the ATV and in the desert.

It has been fun connecting again with all our friends and our riding group made a date for our first long ride for Wednesday this week. We planned to leave at 0830 in the morning and spend the day riding in the back country

 This is just a picture of us going thrugh what we call Sherwood Forest on our way to the base of Montana Mountain. There we 8 ATV's and we were riding with some different people this time. We knew everyone but had never rode with some of them so it was fun to have new members in our riding group. We were heading for the town of Superior, would cross the freeway and head up Picket Post mountain. We planned to circumvent it from about half way up, visit a few old mines and then head home.

 This was our group stopping for a stretch break. See what a beautiful day it was? Most people are wearing jackets just to protect themselves from the dust. It was so dry and dusty out there it didn't take long before we were all coated with red dust!

 That's Picket Post mountain in the back ground that we are heading to. It is going to be a hot day as by 10 am we were already roasting

 Dust doesn't look too bad in this picture but it really was. By mid morning we were all filthy and looked like we hadn't changed our clothes in months. Doug's white beard was no longer white: it had a reddish tinge for sure!

 Looks like we are headed away from Picket Post but we are heading up to visit an historic cemetery out here in the desert and then we will circle around and come back to the mountain.

 We have just arrived at the Historic Pinal Cemetery.

There was a great sign explaining about the cemetery

 This was the view of Picket Post mountain from the cemetery

 One of the old headstones from the late 1800's. Most of the headstones were for very young children or young adults. Obviously people didn't live long lives back then!

 This headstone the writing was totally faded so you really couldn't read it.

 We presumed there must still be family around that erected these metal pipes around their loved one's grave to prevent people walking or riding over it. Apparently it has only been in the last year that a fence has been erected around the cemetery to try and prevent vandalism.

 

 This was one of the nice headstones, many were just old wooden crosses as I showed above.

 This was Wyatt Earp's common law wife (she was a prostitute) and as the headstone says: she committed suicide! Rather interesting to see it written on the headstone

 We had to drive past the gypsum mine in Superior to get out to the freeway and across to head up Picket Post Mountain.

 We've stopped for another break and some food. One thing about us "oldies" most of the guys need frequest bathroom breaks so we can get out and stretch our legs

 We have come to a spot that looks down into a beautiful canyon. The guys are looking over the edge.

 You can see there must be a sping down in the canyon bottom as there are nice green deciduous trees growing.

 I'm looking pretty clean and tidy! Dopug kept telling me to "back up a bit"

 He's looking just a spiffy as I am and I think he looks like one of the old prospectors that roamed these mountains!

 

 The view as we are heading around the mountain

 The rock outcroppings are always so neat to look at

 We are on the other side of Picket Post mountain now and have a very different view

 We found a spring fed pond that the cattle use for watering so we stopped for a short break here. It is hot enough by now we were ready to go skinny dipping!

Us ladies are taking a break and eating our lunch or at least they are1

 You can see the road ahead we will be taking as we head to the other side of the mountain and then home

 We found an old miner's shack up on a hill so had to go up and have a look. They at least had a great view

 This is where we parked and then hiked up to the cabin

 You can just see the old mine entrance below the cabin. It was an old silver mine.

 The guys returning to their ATV's after viewing the cabin and mine

 We are heading off to oue next adventure

 From up here you can see the gypsum mine in the distance that we had driven paqst about 3 -4 hours earlier so we are coming full circle.

 The road just wanders on around the mountain. You can see how beautiful the day was. About 32 degrees by mid afternoon so we were drinking lots of water

We came up to the Ajax Silver Mine. It has been decommissioned for many years but the mine still provides quite a commanding view. This was the last picture I took from this ride. We arrived back home again about 5pm so was a long day but very enjoyable. We all went home had showers and then went out for Chinese food. All and all a very good week for our first week back. We live the good life!