After hiking at Sipe Springs Wildlife Area and being too hot we decide to climb as high as possible with the car to maybe catch some colder weather. So we drive up Escudilla Mountain to the trailhead but even though it is colder it is also raining here. We decide to try hiking a bit, maybe we get lucky and find some mushrooms and who knows with the rain here, maybe it will stop.
We soon notice that there are no mushrooms and the trail is quite wet so we decide to change routes and hike the Terry Flats Trail. At least it is actually a road so it is less likely to make us as wet and also there is a change of a rare bird, a Dusky Gouse.
The rain stops soon and the hike is actually quite nice, the only negative being that it is soon in the open and with the rain stopped the sun decides to come out from time to time to roast us.
But with the rain stopped the birds come out, we really like seeing a Brown Creeper and more rarer to us, at least recently, a Western Warbling Vireo.
There are also more common birds like Green-tailed Towhees and Mountain Chickadees and we enjoy the hike, it is quite beautiful outside with nice views and reasonably nice weather for a while.
While we are in the sun in the distance we can see the clouds building up, it seems a storm is heading our way. But it might also go around us and we think that the loop is about four miles long so we should be able to finish it before the rains arrive.
There are birds and butterflies along the way but unfortunately also other people with cars, some even shooting in the distance. And one car stops telling us there is a herd of elk in the distance but it is a phantom herd as we never see it even though supposedly it is over 100 elks large.
What we see is the mating of the bulls on a pasture far in the distance. We are happy they are no closer and that there is a fence between us and them as the bull is looking quite annoyed at us and the cow doesn’t seem too happy either.
About here we discover that the hike is actually six mile long but we are about halfway on it so it makes no sense to return versus pressing on. But now the storm is becoming a more pressing problem, it is both closer and we have a longer distance to go.
The storm is looking worse and worse and we pick up the pace as this is the worse area to be caught by the storm, in the open with no trees nearby. And on top of that the whole forest burned here, likely from a lightning strike so we are not looking forward to seeing lightning close by.
Even in a hurry and with the dark clouds following us we have time to look for the grouse and when one is flushed we have to follow it and we catch a glimpse, not more. Which is fun but unfortunately we have no good photo so that is a goal for next time.
However we can take photos of other wildlife we observe as we hurry back to the car, deer trying to hide and failing and a chipmunk not trying at all to hide.
And then the rain catches us and we hurry even more, luckily it is only rain and no lightning so we get to the car wet but unharmed otherwise. And then it is time to return back to our AirBnB and relax after a long day of hiking and being rained on.
