Cemetery-Cottonwood Canyon Loop

Another day,another hike up to the Arizona Trail.  This one started next to a trailer park and led to the historic Roosevelt cemetery. It hold the graves of some of the 77 workers killed during construction of the Roosevelt dam and relocated graves from the flooding of the reservoir.

From there we took the Thompson trail, planning to go as far up the AZ trail as we got and turn around.

We spotted 2 Couee's deer, the tiny desert race of whitetails that live in this part Arizona.

Do all whitetail deer have this fluffy ruff?

They spotted us too, and took off up the slope.

The trail filled a Forest Service road for a while

Then turned down to a corral in  Cottonwood Canyon

Here it intersected with the Cottonwood trail which looked so green and inviting that we decided to make a loop hike instead.

For now' we crossed the canyon and continued up into the Superstition Wilderness.

Where we found some desert paintbrush growing in the shade of a yucca.

 Is it just me or are these saguaro giving us the finger?

We found this cristate saguaro, a malformation thought to be caused by frost damage.  Now it's grown a million new arms.

Closeup:

Then we turned around and hiked down via Cottonwood Canyon.

A very nice trail along the creek.  It came out at the Frazier trailhead, and then we had to walk along the highway and across abridge to get back to our truck.

Here's an owl clover.  Not a real clover but a Castilleja like the paintbrush we saw earlier.