Estrella Mountain Park

Kyle wanted to go hiking someplace different today. That's a little funny, because he has only gone on about half a dozen hikes. Anyway, after I vetoed the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater (too far to drive, and you can't hike into Meteor Crater anymore), he decided on Estrella Mountain Park, which is on the west side of Phoenix. It was a long drive. There were lots of photo enforcement locations along the way. I think I got my picture taken while going 54 in a 55. I'm going to be really mad if I did.

Anyway, it was an overcast and gloomy day. I was afraid that pictures wouldn't come out very good, and they didn't. Also, I was not very impressed with the scenery. It was kind of blah. On the other hand, it was a very nice and well-maintained park. Trail intersections are marked with signs. If you carry the map given to you at the entrance, it would be darn difficult to get lost (but I have run across people that could do that).

Once we got into the park a little ways, we could no longer hear the cars in Phoenix International Raceway. We couldn't hear cars on nearby roads. We couldn't hear birds. The covey of quail we stirred up even flew away silently. It was eerily quiet, except for the occasional plane flying over.

I tried to create a photosynth of one of the mountains. I don't like the way it turned out. I don't think I picked a good subject, and I certainly didn't have enough pictures. Photosynth was happy with the pictures (it was 100% "synthy"!) and did a good job of putting them together, though. Click here to see it.

If you look at the @trip representation of the hike, you can tell where I was when I took the pictures for the photosynth.

Finally, here are the pictures. These are the same ones that are on @trip. Nothing spectacular, or even very interesting.

2008_12_07