With a big dig in temperatures in the middle of the week we decide on an after-hours hike close by and we settle on the Goldfield Recreation Area. While close to us we never visited it before and we are quite curious to explore the network of trails.
We are not sure where an official trail starts but our GPS is showing a trail following the river on top of the riverbank so we follow it trying to find a way to reach the river.
The first wash that we cross is overgrown and doesn’t appear a good choice for reaching the river but the second one looks much better and we start on it towards the river.
And we make it! It is a nice spot to enjoy the river in solitude but there is no solitude unfortunately. There are people tubing slowly down the river having a party with loud music and alcohol shouting at each other, quite annoying.
There are also quite a few birds in the riparian area. Many of them are Lucy’s warblers, we haven’t seen that many ever. Hopefully the count of warblers is not the reason for the Kestrel nearby who is quite alert.
One of the things we are keeping an eye out for is a flowering saguaro. For quite some time all we see are unopened flowers and just when we are about to give up we finally find one with flowers, jackpot!
We also keep an eye for horses and for quite some time we hear them both snorting and moving around but we can’t see them. And then finally one of them breaks cover while still playing hide and seek with us, it is quite fun how a huge animal can hide so well. Later we find a few more that are not that adept at hiding, no you cannot hide behind a bush that is knee high only….
In fact on our return trip which is more inland we find a lot more horses. At some point we pass through an entire herd of them with groups on both sides of us so we are careful not to get to close to younger one or to spook any that are deep in thought while eating.
The area inland is also grazed a lot more and you can see where the horses are spending the majority of their time. And then we are back at the parking lot and lo and behold there was the trailhead sign, hidden under a bush with no way for us to see it. We laugh about it a bit and then return back home after a nice day out.
