First Water Overlook

On Wednesday, Erik and I headed for the First Water Overlook trail near Canyon Lake. Erik wonders why it's called First Water Creek when there is obviously no water in it. Good question, but I don't name these things. Well, I only name a few of them.

As usual, the view was fantastic.

Erik is a very adventuresome person, always looking for new things to try, always looking for new experiences. He's one of those people that when he's old and gray, he won't be saying, "I wish I'd done such-and-such". On this hike he did something that I haven't done in six years of hiking in Arizona.

I usually see a lot of these ants while hiking. Horned lizards eat them.

On my hikes, I usually come across large red or black ants. A lot of people here call them fire ants, but they are not fire ants. I've had numerous encounters with fire ants. These large ants are very gentle compared to fire ants. In 6 years of hiking past them and probably over them, I have never been bitten. On his second hike in Arizona, Erik stopped to get some pictures of a particularly busy ant nest. (I started to call it a mound, but they don't make a mound. They carry the dirt they excavate away so there is no mound.) He didn't seem to notice that he had stopped in a heavily traveled ant path (these ants leave visible trails along their heavily traveled routes). Soon his pants legs had about 20 ants each. He tried to shake them off and we went on our way. I asked him to let me know if they bit because I've never been bitten by one, to which he replied, "Ouch!". Before they were done they had bitten him 4 or 5 times (fire ants with as much time as these had would have bitten him about 30 times). He said they were quite painful for a while.

While trying to figure out what kind of ants they are, I found out that Arizona has 318 species of ants, which is more than any other state. I haven't found a web site that's good for novices to look up ants, though.

That evening we went scorpion hunting. We had been looking for about 10 minutes and I was about to give up and go look someplace else when I spotted the biggest scorpion I have ever seen in Arizona. I should have put something next to it for scale when I took pictures, but I didn't think of that. Also, I didn't have a tripod with me so I didn't get very good pictures. Erik had been saying he wanted to catch a scorpion, but after his encounter with the ants he didn't seem anxious to tangle with a scorpion.

A large scorpion. Erik took a flash picture while my shutter was open, which produced an unusual effect.

2009_08_19