We had arranged to meet up with two other Williams Lakers who are staying in Yuma for two weeks so we chose the Sonoran Desert National Monument near Gila Bend, about halfway between Yuma and Phoenix.
It was a cool windy day, which was good, because by the time we met and drove into the trailhead down a rough dirt road it was 10 am. As you enter the reserve there are signs about illegal drug activity but there were no signs of any kind of people around for the whole drive. So we were surprised when a Jeep pulled into the trailhead right behind us. Not a drugrunner, just a computer programmer from Phoenix who was just as surprised to see anyone else this out of the way.
It was a long walk across the desert before we even got to the base of Tabletop Mountain; fortunately, it was beautiful desert in bloom, much more arid than we've seen this far with lots of empty space between the cacti and no grasses. Lots of saguaros, very tall and thin.
A little further on we came upon an old lava flow.
Unlike the staghorn cholla we saw at Usury Mountain Park, these ones had reddish flowers.
When we reached the mountain it was steep hairpins all the way to the top.
Near the top the vegetation changed to grassland with banana yucca and prickly pears and pretty bunches of yellow and white flowers.
It took us 3 hours to reach the top and almost as long to figure out how to take a time lapse photograph between our 5 cameras.
Success!
Great views, and for a change, no urban sprawl.
Smog, though, but probably mostly dust after the previous day's windstorms
By the time we got back to the truck we had hiked for 7 hours.
We climbed that mountain!
Two jackrabbits strike the identical pose
We topped the day off by having supper at Sophia ' s Mexican Restaurant in Gila Bend.
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