After attending a film festival the previous day and then spending all morning in a car dealership we are ready for some hiking in the beautiful desert landscape. As it is late in the day and we plan to attend the Mesa film festival again in the evening we decide on something close by, the Hawes Trail System. Like in the previous week the Red Mountain is always in the background but we are hiking at least in the beginning away from the mountain looking for the chosen trail, the Big Sister trail.
Big Sister is quite advertised for mountain bikers and given its popularity they even implemented a one way direction on the trail to avoid crashes as people are barelling downhill. We decide to hike counter the traffic so we can see the bikes coming from a distance, hopefully.
The trail is beautiful but quite twisted, of course that is the name. Given how twisted it is we cannot necessarily see the bikes coming from a distance but it is much better than not seeing them at all. And with a bit of luck and lots of attention we are able to avoid all of them during our hike.
We also see some wildlife and a few birds on the hike and of course find a few caches. It is a great three mile hike in cooler temperatures, at least for this weekend, and we are refreshed for another evening of movie watching in Mesa downtown later in the day.
