We run from the bad weather at the Land of Pioneers trailhead and arrive at Los Burros Traill. Well one entrance to it, it is quite long and has multiple access points. After orienting ourselves it is time to explore and hopefully avoid to get wet.
We find multiple lobster mushrooms nests close to the parking and mark them before starting a hard ascent towards a powerline road. On the way we add another special warbler to our list, the beautiful red-faced warbler.
After the tough climb the trail is flat for a while and here it starts raining, this time we decide to perservere. We are in a forest so lightning might not be a problem and also we hope against hope that the rain might be passing soon.
And it does after about twenty minutes, just enough to help us and our clothes get wet. At least the trail picks up again with some tough stairs so we generate enough body heat to counteract the wet clothes.
On top lies our cache, with a view of the wooded valley and an olive-sided flycatcher keeping an eye on us. This cache is in good shape so we just eat some snacks to fortify ourselves for the return hike.
Last time we came in from the other direction which is more flat and likely placed it right before the descent started, wished we would have remembered that.
On the return trip we take time to look for mushrooms and enjoy the nature all around. We are wet alreadyt so it doesn’t matter if it starts raining again, we have found the cache and we are on our way back so we are quite relaxed.
The squirrels are not so relaxed, we notice that we are actually in their territory based on the droppings on the ground so we move on.
And we do find some mushrooms. Besides the initial lobster mushrooms we find a nest of Barrow’s Boletes, most of them too old but at least one was salvageable and quite tasty. And then we are back at the car and it is time to drive to Phoenix after a beautiful trip as it is getting late in the day.
