Driving Through South Mountain Park

When we finished our Holbert Trail hike, we drove over to the entrance of South Mountain Park.  We were surprised to find that the park is free!  A road goes through the park, and ends at the stone building right above where we ended our hike.  It is called Dobbins Overlook and it has a huge parking and some fun sights worth seeing.  The view of Phoenix is fantastic too, very similar to what we saw at the end of our hike, so either way, it’s a must see if you are in Phoenix!

There are several of these stone buildings in the park.  It is amazing how cool they stay even on a hot day.

This brass marker was very interesting, it points to all of the main attractions in Phoenix.

There are lots of overlooks and picnic tables throughout the park, so it would be a great place for a picnic lunch.  We stopped at the entrance on our way out of the park to take this picture of the bathroom.  We didn’t go in to check them out, but it was a very nice building.

Holbert Trail, South Mountain

We headed out this morning to visit the mystery castle at South Mountain Park, but when we got there, it was closed, so we had to figure out plan B.  A trail headed off from where we were parked, so we took it not knowing where it would go.  We started out on a paved road, but soon the road dead ended at a City of Phoenix water tank, and a trail headed up over the hill.

Parts of the trail were pretty smooth, but most of it was large rocks.  

The higher we got the better the views of Phoenix were.

This is where we stopped our hike.  The trail continued a little further, and we could see a stone building above us that was full of people, but we didn’t really want to go join them, so we enjoyed the views from our quiet little overlook and then headed back down.

This art rock was just off the trail.  It appeared to be a combination of old art, and new art.

This is what the rockier parts of the trail looked like.

The total hike was 2.6 miles from where we started.  Apparently there is an actual trailhead inside the park, but lucky for us we found the trail our own way.

This is the mystery castle that we were hoping to tour today.  Hopefully we’ll have a chance to visit it some other time.

Golfing at Ocotillo

Loved, loved, loved this course!

We met Sam and Sharyn at Ocotillo today for a game of golf.  They have three 9-hole courses.  We played white and then gold.  White is their signature course, and it is amazing.  The first hole is pretty easy, but then the next three holes are tough.  After that we settled in and enjoyed our round.  With our Arcis card, during prime season, we paid $60 per person, and it was a very friendly course.  These pictures aren’t necessarily in the right order, but they give you a good idea of what this course feels like.  Notice the white herons in the trees and the yards.  They were everywhere on this course, and made it so enjoyable.

Many houses in this neighborhood are built on canals.

This tree is growing herons.

Saguaro National Park (East)

When we finished our drive around and through the Silverbell Mine, we decided we weren’t ready to go home yet.  In fact, if we didn’t have a golf date set for tomorrow, we might stay out another night.  So instead of heading back home, we decided to see what Saguaro National Park has to offer.  We stopped at the visitors center, and the ranger said that if we only had today, our best bet was to drive the Cactus Forest Scenic Loop Drive.  It is an 8 mile loop that that goes through the west side of the park.  The east side of the park is hiking trails only…no vehicles.  Since we have spent a lot of time in the desert in our RZR, we knew that we probably wouldn’t see anything new, but we’re still excited to see what this park had to offer.  The thing that surprised us the most about this park was how many different types of cacti it has.  In this picture, prickly pear, cholla, barrel and saguaro.

The park overlooks the Santa Catalina mountains.

While we were walking around, we came across this toppled giant.  It probably came down in last summer’s monsoons.  We couldn’t imagine how old it must have been.  

The one thing that the ranger didn’t tell us, is that the only crested saguaro is in the picnic area, not the scenic drive loop.  If you’ve never seen a crested saguaro, it’s definitely worth a peek.

Saguaros Are So Cool!

 Everyone has seen pictures of the perfect saguaro, but I’m not sure many people realize how interesting saguaros can be, so here are a few fun ones.

A saguaro group hug.

A Christmas tree saguaro.

Silverbell Mine

When we left our campsite in Ironwood Forest National Park, we continued down Silverbell Road, heading west.  We were using Gaia GPS, which showed that the road made a large loop around the backside of Raggedtop Mountain, but it also showed that it went through a private copper mine, so we weren’t sure that we’d be able to get through.  When the road turned south, we drove through some private property with a couple of houses on it.  This must be where the cars were going last night.  These houses felt to me like they were in the middle of nowhere.  OK, they were in the middle of nowhere.  Then further down the road, we spotted the mine for the first time.

It seemed like we headed south for a long time.  The road became more washed out, although you could tell that it was periodically maintained.  Then the road started heading east, and this is where we thought we might run into a locked gate, but we didn’t.  We did however run across what looked like a man-made lava flow across the road.  We’re guessing that it is from an old smelting operation, but we don’t really know.  It was black, and shiny like glass.

As we were looking around and trying to decide what it was, we looked up on the hill, and a truck was dumping onto the tailings pile.  It was very sketchy looking!

 

We were trying to decide how many miles we followed this mine, on the dirt road, and our guess is about 15 miles.  It is a huge mine!  There are active mines hidden all over Arizona but you don’t see them from the major highways.  This tailings pile is so colorful!

We were surprised that we had cell service on and off for this whole loop drive.

Ironwood Forest Shakedown

Our new tow vehicle/short term camper is far from complete, but we’re at a point that we wanted to take it out for its inaugural run.  Ironwood Forest National Monument is only about an hour from our house, and very close to Marana and Tucson, so it seemed like the perfect place to go.  If we had any problems, we would have a lot of resources available.  It was early in the day, so rather than find a camp spot, we decided to do some exploring first.

We took a walk on the back side of Ragged Top Mountain and found the remnants of an old settlement of some sort.

It was fun to see the mountain from this perspective.  Last time we were here, we only saw it from the north side.

When we had enough exploring, we headed back to the north side, where we had met a nice couple (Dave and Kathy) earlier in the day.  They had said that they’d be happy to share the group camping area with us, so we found a flat spot several sites away from them and started settling in for our first night.  Once we got the camper popped up, which took about 2 minutes, I started working on dinner.  We kept it simple with fried potatoes and burgers with carmelized onions.

Bon Appetit!

We had beautiful weather and a beautiful sunset for our first night out, and everything is working perfectly!  We couldn’t ask for more than that!

We were a little bit surprised by the amount of traffic that came through the park during the night. We assumed that it was a few late-comers still looking for a spot to camp, but it sounded like they were moving along awfully quickly for that.  Other than the cars, it was a very peaceful nights sleep.  We woke in the morning to the songs of the birds.  We had the tent flaps zipped closed, so it was still pitch black inside our tent.  But we knew it must be morning.  When we came out, we were greeted by this bird, all fluffed up, trying to stay warm.

Before we headed out for the day, Steve took a few pictures of the new rig in our first-ever camp site.

After hearing cars during the night, we decided to continue Down Silverbell Road too see where it went.