Today we already have to return to Phoenix after two nights in Vernon. However we have one more hike planned to find a lonely cache on another section of the Land of the Pioneers trail. In fact we have been here twice as our oldest placed cache is around here. We start at the well known parking lot and continue on the trail. There is no one else around today which is great and we enjoy the nicer weather, no rain forecasted today.
There are some new sights along the trail that we missed before like an old, weird tree and some skeletons which really weren’t here previously.
We reach the area of our cache and we find another thing that we missed previously, a whole dam or wall structure next to the trail with no identifiable reason to exist as far as we can tell.
From here we continue on following the trail near the dry creek and trying to pick the best route to the cache. At least the area is flat which makes the going easy and also allows us to crosscut from trail to trail as needed.
The trail leads us to another road that seems to have car traffic on it from time to time but luckily none during the time we are hiking on it, as we use it for some time to approach the cache.
On the way we discover an interesting sight, a cabin that seems functional but is actually abandoned which we discover as we approach it carefully.
Inside it seems it is used as an emergency cabin, which is good to know in case a storm passes by. It even has some books to read including a birdwatching book, cool.
We then pass a dry lake and then it is time to leave the road and cut towards the cache. This area has quite a few birds including a Townsend’s Solitaire.
The cache is in a beautiful area near a dry waterfall. Well the waterfall is dry but there is still water in the pool at the bottom that we pass as we reach the cache. And find it after some search, phew.
And then it is time to return following the non existent trail back to the road. At this point it is too hot already and we really wish for some cloud cover as the previous days, but no luck.
At least when we reach the forest trail we get the shade we crave and it is the same for the birds, we find quite a few of them here as we eat our lunch. There is a Brown Creeper a Hammond’s Flycatcher and also quite a few other birds.
There are flowers and lizards also along the way and we stop the watch all of them while hiding from the sun and making our way slowly to the car.
And then we are almost at the car and take a few more breaks to enjoy the pristine nature before driving the four hours back to Phoenix. The drive is uneventful and we arrive back in Phoenix after a beautiful long weekend out in the White Mountains finding birds and caches but no mushrooms.
