For a few days we try to decide if we should go to the film festival this year. And on the last day we decide, why not? Unfortunately the horror short stories we wanted to see are already full so we have to go to our second choice Arizona short stories. There are not that many people here but at least from the six short movies three are reasonably good. One however is so bad that we cannot see how it was ever considered worthy to be shown even at a local film festival.
Next is time for lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. The food is out relatively fast and is reasonably good.
It is quite filling but we are also ordering a desert as we really wanted to eat some fried icecream today and it is quite good also.
Then it is time to go to the third place we wanted to visit, the nearby state trust land. Here there is a series of caches in the form of a dollar sign and we are planning to do quite a few of them. We park at the beginning of the dirt road and then it is off in the wilderness.
There are lots of round-tailed ground squirrels all around but more surprisingly we see a rock squirrel in a tree. It is quite unusual to see them so high up and it doesn’t seem happy either to be in that situation until he finally escapes.
As we get deeper into the wilderness there are more and more stinknet covering the ground in beautiful yellow.
While beautiful we soon have to pass through it which covers us in yellow pollen and releases a pungent smell which seems really like a good allergen. Luckily we escape ok but now we understand why stinknet is considered so invasive.
After a while the worse is over and the mix changes with a few more globemallows and other flowers appearing more often.
While we enjoy the walk through the desert we do not enjoy the many homeless encampments along the way. They are right in the middle of trails with people shouting randomly or sleeping along the roads making the whole area feel unsafe. We decide to do our best to return before darkness to avoid any issues if at all possible.
There are also birds along the way, the most interesting being a horned lark. They are quite a beautiful bird and we haven’t seen many in the Phoenix area.
Red-tailed hawks are common but still they are an impressive sight whenever we see them. And we really enjoy the flowers, even the stinknet especially if we can avoid passing through them…
As we return back towards our parking we study the moon for a while, it is almost a full moon and quite impressive. The sunset is not something that special but we still enjoy every sunset that we see in the desert. In this case we make a beeline to the car and we reach it right before darkness and then it is time to return home after a very busy day.
