First look at Boulder Canyon Trail

As you approach Canyon Lake from the west, you can see a trail going up a mountainside on the far side of the lake. I've been looking at that trail for years and saying I'm going to hike it some day. I finally got tired of hearing me say that and today I went out there and checked it out. It's a great trail. It's heavily traveled, so it's wide enough to hike with shorts if you want to (you won't be getting cholla balls embedded the the backs of your legs).

It was in the low 80's while I was out there, and very windy. I had to use the chin strap on my hat. I was out there in the early afternoon, so I had to have my hat on. I spent 4 hours on the trail. A lot of that time was spent taking pictures and movies (about 150 pictures and 5 movies). It's taken me a couple of hours to decide which pictures to put on the web album, geotag them, etc. The geotags may not be very accurate. The trail is in a low resolution area of Google Earth. It isn't possible to tell where the trail is on the map.

I think I hiked about 3 miles. It felt like 6. My legs are tired and my feet hurt. I'd be out there again tomorrow if it weren't for work, though. The views are spectacular. I saw dozens of lizards. One of them is an Eastern Collared lizard. It's the most beautiful shades of blue, yellow, aqua, etc. Suzanne even thinks it's pretty, and she used to cover her face whenever a picture of a lizard came up on the computer screen.

I tried to get a movie of a zebra-tailed lizard. They run a little and when they stop, they wave their tail back and forth in the air. I never caught one waving his tail, though.

I think I'll have to wait until tomorrow to add the movies to the blog. It's getting late and I'm tired and it might take hours to upload the video. I'll try to identify the rest of the lizards tomorrow, too.

There were a lot of people on the trail. I saw at least 10. Most of them looked like they weren't having as much fun as me, though.

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