A long hike

Date: January 12, 2008
Location: Bulldog Canyon
Time and temperature: Start - 1305, 67
End - 1650, 63
Distance hiked: About 3 miles
Elevation change: About 500 feet
The numbers:
72 Pictures taken
2 Plastic bags removed from the desert
2 Beer cans removed
1 Quart size glass Gatorade bottle removed
1 Michelob bottle removed
1 deer photographed

Ramblings: It was a very nice day for a hike. I tore myself away from the computer games and headed out to Bulldog Canyon. At first I thought I might try to get to the end of a side canyon I've been trying to get to for a while, but instead I just kept going east until it got too steep. I wound up climbing up to a notch in a wall of rock. The view was nice from up there.

I saw a lot of deer tracks. The seemed to be made by very large deer. I stopped to get rid of some used water once and was gazing at a hillside across a wash from me and spotted a deer. It wasn't moving very fast so I snapped a few pictures. I was putting the camera away and watching the deer disappear over the hillside when a cool breeze reminded me why I had stopped in the first place.

The total elevation change was only 500 feet, but there was a lot of going up and down in between. I bet I climbed at least 750 feet.

Near the top of the climb, I found a beer can. Hard to believe somebody took a beer all the way up there. I guess they were too tired to take the empty all the way back down.

I also found pieces of a desert tortoise shell way up there. A year or two ago, Lindsey and I found a live desert tortoise high up on a steep mountainside. Seems strange that they would go way up there.

BC_2008_01_12