Today we have a hike planned, again on State Trust Land, but farther away from home. And before that we have to use a gift card that we have received at a relatively expensive restaurant in Scottsdale. To use the full gift card we decide to start with cocktails, non-alcolic, before ordering from the brunch menu.
The food is surprisingly good for a more bar/drinks oriented restaurant and full we are ready to explore whatever the State Trust land can throw at us.
Which is not a lot from an elevation change way. It is as flat as it could be, just desert scrub land and…what is that a pine cone? It is one of the many caches that we find in the area, we are here to find a series of 40+ caches which is a lot. And that forms a hummingbird shape which is cool.
There are lots of house finches here, not unusual, but then we find something interesting. It is a pair of red-tailed hawks, the second pairs of predators we have seen in a row after the Great Horned Owls last week. And the hawks really do not care a lot about us, they just sit on the branch and keep watch.
On and on we go through the desert, it is sparcely vegetated here and we are happy when we see even a small saguaro. Still this makes finding caches relatively easy which is good as we don’t have lots of time to spend per cache if we want to return to the car before sunset.
And we do want to return due to the fact that the area seems to be taken over by homeless encampments and thrash, we really do not want to be here in the darkness using flashlights and bringing attention to ourselves.
There are lots of hummingbirds out, makes sense as they are just now building nests and starting the breeding cycle. The red tailed hawks are now circling above but the hummingbirds do not care, they are not worth it for the hawks and couldn’t be caught either.
We pass another long term encampment that has besides the encampment proper thrash all around it and cut vegetation. It is a bit annoying that no one is checking these lands but it is what it is given that the state does not fund enforcement.
We continue on from cache to cache enjoying the birds and the sparse vegetation, at least there aren’t many chollas to attack us.
Above us passes a police helicopter, there is money for that of course but not for State Trust Land enforcement activities. Like finding who shot saguaros and destroyed these magnificent cacti.
And of course who is throwing thrash on public lands. We have not seen so much trash for a long time in Arizona, it feels more like India or another less developed country.
As the sun starts to fall below the horizon we are making it back to our car with all caches found on the way. We enjoy for a while the hot air balloons soaring over the horizon and then it is time to return home after a nice hike through a piece of State Trust Land that unfortunately has been mostly trashed.
