Scouting a path

There's an area of Bulldog Canyon that I've been meaning to explore for a few years now. I tried to get there using the shortest path I could think of once, but it turned out I would have to swim across the Salt River for that to work. I might do that yet. For now, I'm still working on walking there. It will be a long hike, so I decided I'd better work up to it. Yesterday I tried out the beginning of the route that I'm planning to take.

I'll park here. This is an excellent parking place. Just look at the view!

The very first think you encounter on my planned route is a deep, steep-sided wash. I thought I remembered that right after I crossed it before, I encountered another one almost as bad, so I tried to get smart and avoid the second one by going downstream to that second wash and following it upstream before climbing out. I outsmarted myself, though, and found myself on top of a mesa that I was planning to avoid climbing. Oh well, the view was nice.

The ground on the mesa is covered with small, dead plants.

There were thousands of small bugs buzzing around in the dead plants. They wouldn't be still long enough for me to get a good picture. I got this picture by pointing the camera at a rock and waiting for a bug to land.

Just being on the mesa was worth the trip.

I eventually got to another deep, steep-sided wash. It was time to turn around, though, so I didn't cross it. Maybe next trip. While I was enjoying the view there, and at several places along the hike, I caught a whiff of some flowers that smelled wonderful. I tried to find the source but never did. I got a few nice flower pictures.

These have no detectable fragrance.

Creosote flowers.

As I started back to the truck, I came face-to-face with the desert animal that has threatened my health and safety more than any other, the one that has traps waiting for me no matter where I go, the one that is waiting for me to relax just a little so it can break my ankles. It was getting dark so the pictures aren't very good, but it's easy to see, racing stripe and all.

The meanest critter in the desert (after people, that is).

It's very unusual for an antelope squirrel to hang around for pictures like that. Speaking of hanging around, that was about the time the gnats started hanging around. Lately, they seem to leave me alone until I start heading back to the truck. Maybe by then they're attracted to the spots of blood on my arms from brushes with catclaw acacia. It wasn't too long before it was their bedtime, though, and the air temperature dropped a few degrees, too. It's nice in the desert then. It was getting pretty dark by the time I got back to the truck. I was just about to get in when a lesser nighthawk flew directly overhead, singing its strange strange spring song.

BC_2009_04_07