Hike With Cindy

Yay!

A hike day with my dear friend, Cindy, who had the day off work.

I finally learned from her how creosote looks!

(She's really good with Arizona plants and I'm better with birds, though not great yet.)

Creosote has a lovely fresh deserty smell.

It was a beautiful day, even though it was still on the warm side. 

One of these days, it will actually be chilly ALL DAY LONG, but

that day is not yet.

This sign is a bit worn.

It says:

Supertsition Wilderness

Tonto National Forest

Cindy wore a really cute hiking outfit:

jeans, striped t-shirt with matching bright pink details.

Do you see the rock balanced on the other rock?

It's weird that sometimes that happens!

Zoom in . . . 

When we got to the top, we had a snack and enjoyed the view:

Here are some hieroglyphs

(symbols drawn on the rocks):

The moon is usually visible from inside the canyon.

If you look closely, you can see some more rock drawings.

You can also see the black on the rocks, and that is called "desert varnish."

This means water has been there regularly and has evaporated regularly!

I felt happy.

Ring-tailed cat?

Coyote?

Rattlesnake tail?

Prickly Pear cactus?

Tadpole?

Deer of some kind?

Here's part of the riverbed, going up into the mountains farther.

And here's in the other direction, where we walked.

Cindy isn't the biggest fan of heights or being close to edges,

so this is a photo of a very brave woman!

After that, she went down and I went up.

Can you see her standing down there near the middle of the photo? 

There she is again!

And again!

And what a gorgeous view!

Check out the shadow of my arm and the camera on the rock - ha!

And then we headed down again to go to a late lunch!

This little cholla ("choy-uh") is celebrating FALL

by dropping a bunch of babies!!!

(Of course, that's not how chollas work . . . these babies have 

dropped over a loooong period of time and are the cactus's way of reproducing.

It has nothing to do with the fall season.  We just thought it was funny!)

We went to Joe's Farm Grill for lunch and there was a line out the door!

I've only ever been there on off-times when the line wasn't very long (it's almost never NOT busy!) 

I got a huge basket of fries and the farm veggie salad with citrus vinaigrette dressing.

YUM!

Now I'm really hungry again even though I just finished eating.

Many of the veggies are grown in the farm right behind the restaurant!

The design of the building is really cool, too.  It just reopened after a revamp,

and it's even more beautiful and stylish now than it was before.

In spite of being in the Arizona desert, it feels very GREEN and cool and airy inside

thanks to the surrounding trees and all the gigantic windows.

After the revamp, there's even more seating outside amongst the trees and foliage.

There are cartoons playing in the bathroom!

And there are dolls in lit cases!

I wonder if they are toys that belonged to Joe and his siblings when they were children?

I hope you enjoyed this little hike with me!

I had the blessing of ANOTHER HIKE the very next day - 

post coming soon!