This weekend we decide to spend two nights at an AirBnB and explore the Flagstaff area to escape the heat. We leave right after work and are quite famished so we stop at a Mexican restaurant on the way to buy some takeout to eat at our AirBnB later. It takes a bit but we have time and at least the food is good here in our experience.
Our AirBnB is one we selected some time ago and weren’t able to make it, an A-Frame cabin in Mountainair. This time we do make it, even before sunset and in we go after some researching on which door to use to enter.
Inside it is a two level cabin with the bottom having the kitchen, bathroom and one of the bedrooms. We explore everything and bring our luggage inside and then it is time to eat.
The food is quite good and plentiful and then we have time to explore the second level with two more beds, quite a few for such a small A-cabin.
We also leave our moth trap over night outside and in the morning it is time to see if there are any moths. And there are quite a few moths and even a few bugs.
We catalog all of them during breakfast and then it is time to go on the trails. The weather seems to be reasonable even near Flagstaff so we choose a trail a bit higher but still near Flagstaff for today, the Deer Hill trail.
But first we stop at the Old Navy in Flagstaff as we wanted to check for the availability of some products that cannot be found in Phoenix anymore. Unfortunately they aren’t here either so we continue to the trailhead.
We find the trailhead relatively easy and park nearby and then it is time to start on the trail.
Unfortunately we discover soon that it is quite hot and the weather forecast was quite wrong. Still we are here so we push on on the trail hoping for shade as we walk through the Ponderosa forest.
At least there are some beautiful birds here including a Western Tanager, they have become quite a fixture on our birdwatching walks.
Even more special we find a resting Violet-green Swallow, they really do rest from time to time! And next is a plumbeous vireo, a relatively rare bird here, we are lucky to see it.
We continue on finding multiple caches and enjoying the shade whenever we can find it. There are also multiple flowers especially milkweed which should attract butterflies but we do not see many today.
There are Ponderosa trees that give us shade but unfortunately they aren’t that dense and we have to walk in the sun which is a bit uncomfortable at around 85 degrees.
The trail passes through a gate and we continue finding caches as the trail passes through a field with no shade that seems to melt us really.
At the next road intersection we have enough and decide to return via a slightly different route that hopefully will give us a bit more cover. But we still have to go through the exposed field, this time though we time it so there is cloud cover while we pass, cool.
It is getting late in the day as we return to the car and the weather is cooling down already so the hike is much more enjoyable. Even so the hawks are circling hoping for an easy meal, no luck for them today as we make it safely back to the car and then to the cabin after an exhausting day.
