Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Hike in Saguaro National Park West



On Monday we had an appointment to have our hot water heater looked at (it’s always something on this trip), so we thought it would be a town day, but the work was done sooner than we thought, so after we set the trailer back up at our campsite, we looked for a short hike in the Western portion of Saguaro National Park, right next to our campground.
In my fantasy the trail we chose was flat, but actually it climbed up toward Wassen Peak; fortunately. it was an old mining road so the slope was very gradual. Fortunately also, today was cool and windy though sunny because we forgot most of our water at the campsite.  The trail followed along the side of the mountain (Okay, hill, by BC standards) with a great view SW to the wide valley below and passed by an old mine site with a very treacherous looking (fenced and screened) abandoned mineshaft.

Eventually we climbed up to a ridge with a great view to the northeast.  



Then we headed back downhill, where we met Kings Canyon Wash which led back to our truck.  Part of the way down we met an amateur petroglyphologist who’d set up a time lapse camera.  He pointed out all the rock drawings on the cliffs we would never have noticed.


We talked to him for half an hour about his idiosyncratic  (read possibly crackpot) theories about the astronomical significance of the spiral drawings.
We finished off our afternoon by popping into the National Park visitor centre for a slideshow identifying all the wildflowers we saw today.



Rock  Hibiscis (flower of the day

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