Kittens From The Dark Side: Hieroglypics Trail Hike

Hooray! I had enough energy over the weekend to go for a lovely hike with my favorite guy!

We decided on the Hieroglyphics Trail in Gold Canyon.

Here's my hiking outfit:

t-shirt: souvenir from Alaska
shorts: Lucky Brand from Ross (I LOVE this pattern!)
backpack: anello, bought at consignment store
shoes & socks: Target

Close-up of pattern on shorts:

I have not been able to wear these shorts because they have always been too small but I could never bring myself to get rid of them because I love the pattern and style so much.

I happened to lose a bit of weight recently and these fit wonderfully now (in fact, they're slightly too big now). I love it when that happens!

We drove east on I60 and I'm always scared by / interested in these

stacked bridges. It's crazy because they are in pretty much empty scrubland at the moment.

I guess they're built to accommodate future population growth.

Many places have pine tree cell phone towers, but here in the desert we have

palm tree towers!

As we got closer, there were signs pointing to families' homes.

We kept following the signs to the hike trailhead.

We made it and the parking lot was very full.

We slept in after a late night and we definitely weren't among the first to arrive!

But right as we pulled in, a truck pulled out, so we had a wonderful spot.

There's where we headed!

This parking lot is the beginning of a number of different trails into

the Superstition Mountains.

Right away, the views were wonderful.

Way up there on that mountain is a little group of Saguaros.

Usually they don't grow up that high.

It's slightly steep in a few places, but not bad.

Most of the year, ocotillo plants look brown and dried out and dead.

But this time of year, the get all sorts of leaves and look very green.

In a week or two, they will have bright orange flowery tips!

We were in the Tonto National Forest.

A forest with scrub and cacti instead of trees?! Why, yes!

There were two gates along this trail to keep the cattle off the trail.

The second gate was extremely squeaky.

The view kept getting better!

There I am!

Mistletoe grows like a parasite in some desert trees.

At the main stopping point of the hike, the rocks get squarish like bricks.

And we begin to see drawings on the rocks!

There were a LOT of people up there, as usual.

This is a popular hike because it's not too long, it's not too hard,

and people want to enjoy the water and rock art at the top!

If you look closely, you can see me in the middle of the photo,

climbing down from the perch where I'd been eating my picnic.

Water!

There's Greg!

This one made up of squares looks like a robot to me.

Goat? Unicorn?

Dogs? The one with the long tail might be a ringtailed cat, which are native to the Arizona desert

(and tameable!) They're related to raccoons. I saw some on a hike a long time ago near the Roosevelt Dam.

Greg did a panorama and I moved in the middle and I ended up getting a second pair of legs!

That's where I ate my snack (pasta salad and an apple!)

You can see how many people there were.

It really thinned out by the time we left because it was getting into late afternoon.

We saw this amazing family with a dog that had wheels instead of back legs.

He was happy as could be to be outside with his favorite people.

He went everywhere and one of them just walked behind him, giving him a little push or boost whenever he needed one. My heart grew three sizes!

The moon was very visible during the whole hike in the bright blue sky.

Greg worked hard to capture a photo of one of these beautiful butterflies

with white and orange wings.

Looks like a Sara Orangetip

There's Greg!

This looks like the rattle on a rattlesnake.

Coyote?

The one in the middle looks like a prickly pear cactus.

Looks like a person doing yoga or perhaps a frog.

We saw some cairns, so we decided to go a bit farther to see what we could see.

We followed the stream uphill a bit and found an area where there were thousands of tiny bubbles hanging on to the green goo at the bottom. It was gorgeous!

I've never seen anything like it.