Today we start the day relatively early. It might be raining in the afternoon so we did our best to find a route that avoids the rain and that also touches something that we haven’t seen before. And we start with the White Mountains Grasslands Wildlife area something we wanted to visit for some time but somehow never made it. The drive there is quite scenic with unending views of grasslands and craters.
With no one else around the birds and animals are out in force especially horned larks, soo many, and Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs which surprisingly are more stressed out, possibly because this might be also a hunting area.
There are lots of flowers all around us and we enjoy the expansive views and weather. Well except for the heat, it is getting warm and there is no shadow around.
We arrive at the parking and here we have a three mile loop hike planned and after a bit of thinking we decide to go ahead, it is warm but not hot and there are some trees in the distance that promise at least some shade.
However first we look around the parking, there are lots of pipes in the ground we try to understand if it is for prairie dogs or burrowing owls, but I guess the original intention does not matter now there are prairie dogs here.
The trail is flat and easy in the beginning and rellatively well maintained as it follows an old road and even has wooden bridges over inexistent creeks.
There are lots of birds around, especially jays and pewees but also some warblers especially in the wooded areas. And of course bees and butterflies enjoying the flowers all around.
And then the trail goes up reaching the peak of a small hill after what feels an exhausting climb due to the heat. At least there are some nice views of the pond below, we really want to reach that one to look for birds.
As we descend into what seems a crater the trail levels out again. So we decide to search for a cache while eating lunch under a tree. No luck with the cache but when we look up we get the scare of a lifetime as we see the unblinking eyes of a bobcat cub looking right at us! Oh my god we really should have taken a better look when we set up camp to have our lunch, we take photos and move on as fast as we can.
Instead of finishing the loop which seems to be overgrown from here we decide to return on the much more maintained main road that lead from the closed administrative building to the parking. There is a fence that blocks car access but we can easily climb it and we expect to also meet up with the trail earlier.
This also allows us to pass next to the pond which is very scenic but a disappointment from the point of view of birding, the only birds around are kestrels but a surprising number of them, about ten. And then we are back at the parking and half baked decide to go higher up into the mountains to look for mushrooms.
