Back to Bulldog Canyon

It was another absolutely gorgeous Saturday afternoon, and I spent it in an absolutely gorgeous place. There was a lot of traffic on the drive to our parking spot. There must have been some church group that had spent Friday night there. There was a ranger on the road checking passes of everybody that went by. He was writing a ticket for a guy driving a Suburban. There was no traffic once we got past the intersection of 10 and 3554, though. This time, I was able to drive up the hill I could not drive up last weekend. It was nice being able to park a little closer to where we were going to hike.

I keep saying "we". A friend and coworker went hiking with me today. We used to hike together a couple of years ago, but he got too busy with school to hike for a while. Paul is taking a break from classes now, though.

I was looking at Google Earth a couple of days ago and saw what looked like it might be a route to the top of a ridge I've been trying to get to for a few years. That's where we went today. I don't think we even got halfway up to the top of the ridge, though. That's OK. The view was terrific where we were.

Near the beginning of the hike, a couple of hawks kept flying over us and screeching. I don't know if they were screeching at us or at each other. Here's one.

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After a while, one of them perched on this rock and watched us for a long time.

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We stopped climbing when the trail got uncomfortably steep. This is looking up towards the ridge. It looks too steep to walk up.

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It looks like I could walk up this way, though.

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Or maybe over that way.

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You can see Spooky Hill, Horse Shoe Mountain, Red Mountain, Fountain Hills, and a bunch of other stuff in this picture.

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My GPS data logger seemed to work OK. At least I didn't have any trouble downloading the data this time. My position seemed to jump around a lot, though. I think the military must have been messing with the signals or data.

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