We wake up and today decide to eat at the hotel. And then it is time to leave towards the Red Rock Park where we intend to hike a bit before moving on to Fort Wingate road and hiking a few additional trails. We are even more excited when we see balloons rising from Red Rock Park, we can’t wait to go there. But then disaster strikes, as we start the car it alerts us that a tire is deflated. So we have to repair our tire first and we spend most of the morning at a tire shop. Luckily it can be patched and then we decide to skip Red Rock Park and go to Fort Wingate road directly.
The road is surprisingly busy with trucks and we will see them on the road throughout the day. Our first stop is at the first trailhead we see. It is an unexpected one and afterwards we learn it is a really new one with some new trails too.
We are going for a cache that is supposed to be hard to reach but now we have a trail going in that direction now, quite a bonus for us.
The trail turns into an old dirt road that we follow for a while. It is going in the right direction passing an old dam and then descending slowly.
There are quite a few jays species here, surprisingly. We see a few Woodhouse Scrub Jay and even a Stellar Jay from up close, a rare occurence.
The trail then enters the ponderosa forest for the next stretch. It is a nice hike with some fall colors in a quiet part of the forest.
The oaks especially are in fall colors while the other decidous trees are lagging behind.
Soon the trail passes the entrance to the Milk Ranch Canyon and down we go. The going is easy in this section as we just negotiate a few small drops and go through the dry creekbed.
However the trail ends at a sheer drop of about 40 ft with no way around it. Luckily the cache is up top so it is time to look for it.
It takes quite some time to find the cache with lots of acrobatics and then it is time to have a snack break in the shade and enjoy the cool area before returning to the trail and back to the car.
As we return we see a huge flock of Pinyon Jays (third Jay species in the area) harassing a hawk and the flocking around. This is the first time we have seen a flock of jays quite impressive.
And we know what they are because they descend to rest on the trees around us, quite an impressive sight. We enjoy them and the other birds like nuthatches and robins as we walk back to the car to continue further up the mountain.
