Today we start our day in downtown Mesa with the Dia de Los Muertos festival which is near the Museum of Contemporary Art. We park in our usual parking lot and then wander over to the festival which is about ten minutes away.
There are lots and lots of people in the festival area and it is even difficult to walk from time to time and explore the different booths. We are happy to be able to breathe when we turn the corner and there is a separate art installation that we can walk through towards the food truck area.
There are some interesting things for sale and we even find something we like and buy before getting hungry and arriving at the food truck area.
There are some interesting things for sale in the food truck area and we explore all the different offerings and the lines to get them before deciding on two items.
What we settled on was a hot dog which is quite good and a mangonada which we wanted to try after seeing how it looked, which is quite colorful.
Before leaving we also check the artist area and there is a mariachi band here training as well as a formation painted and dressed in day appropriate fashion, which is really cool.
Then it is time to drive to northeast Mesa to the Hawes trail parking lot where we have our second outing for the day. Our plan is to find a series of caches on a trail we were never able to reach previously. It is about a two miles to the section that we want to do so on we go.
We have never started from this trailhead in this direction and are surprised by how it starts, with a steep descent into the wash that really doesn’t seem safe for bikes even though we see multiple bikes navigating it just fine.
The views are great and we enjoy the walk and stop multiple times just to take in the great views. The trail also evens out in this section and we can walk faster if we want and we do want to reach the caches while there is still sunlight so on we go.
After about one hour we reach the Boundary trail with the many caches in the view of million dollar homes. That is one of the reasons we wanted to reach and do the caches during daylight, not fun to search for them at night in front of other homes.
One of the caches is on top of a hill and climbing it gives us a good view of the surrounding neighborhood and area.
One of the interesting things that we observe is that this area is used by lots of historical aircrafts, probably because it is quite scenic and they tour over it with flights from the nearby museum.
Then it is time to return through the beautiful countryside, we are doing a loop so the return trails are different and sometimes they can be quite confusing. Having signposts at intersections really helps when we are not sure in which direction to go.
At one of the major intersections we find something we have never seen before on all our hikes, a bike repair station. I assume it is quite welcome if something happens but the surprise is that nobody destroyed or shot at it yet. And then as the sunlight is fading we arrive at the parking lot at the end of this full day with both cultural and physical activities.
