Empire Ranch 6, AZT

 Another day another AZ Trail hike   This was a great 7 mile trip from Kentucky Camp; we hiked northbound to KYC last month   This time we started there and went north on a brand new trail   They are rerouting the AZ Trail to get it off the road.  we have done a lot of that on the Long Trail in VT.  Here they use a machine to cut and fill making a flat footpath in the hillside.  We met a crew doing some finish work, raking the rocks off from the footpath to make it much nicer for foot or bike travel.  The machine operator is a mountain biker so you can see some banking in the curves that he added.  😄  We saw the rakes laid on the side of the trail where they had left off last time.

We met another couple hiking the trail while we were stopped for lunch.  She had knee problems and he had foot issues, so they were hoping they could make it to UT.  We went on for a bit but since we did not know how long the reroute was we had no way of knowing when we would get to the junction with the old trail.  So we turned back at 3.5 miles.  Good thing too.  When we ran into the trail workers we found out the reroute is 5.5 miles.  We were not ready for an 11 mile day!

When we got back to KY Camp we met a group of 3 hikers who had been lounging on the veranda of the central building (now a small museum).  A guy from IL, one from — and a girl from all over.  She said she hadn’t lived in one place more than 4 months in 3 years.  So here she is living on the trail for a while.

Back to the truck, out to the ice cream store, and then Dollar General for some cheese, and back to camp.  We finally found the Pronghorn along the road home.  Right on Rt 82, not 75 yards off the highway, a herd of maybe 10.  We’ve been looking for them all the time we’ve been here.  It was too quick for a photo.  I barely had time to point them out to Carlene.

Another hike tomorrow, then over to our friends in Hereford.

Yup, another deer leg

This time a whole left rear leg bone assembly 

Hip joint to hoof

“I know Dad put my bone in that tree”

If you look really close you can see Venus in these photos:

Empire Ranch 5, a lazy day

 After the rain last night the ground was wet this morning but not really muddy.  There are mud ruts next to the camper that are several inches deep, like mud season at home.  It was nothing like that.  Just enough moisture to make you carry extra gravel into the trailer on your shoes.  Last night after all that wind I went out to check the solar panels, you remember, the ones that flipped on their face last month.  I had lowered the angle and tied them down to a full 5 gal. gas can.  They had stayed up, but moved 8’!  They dragged the gas can with them but stayed upright.  😃. So I laid them down and put the can on top of them.  Set them back up this morning.  No more wind overnight, just occasional rain.  Limited wind today.

This morning things were wet as I said, so we were not in any rush to do anything.  We hung out and caught up on the pile of backlog emails.  Did some reading, small jobs, play with Skye.  Walk with Skye.  The radar said rain again at 11, more reason not to rush into anything.  It rained lightly at 11, only minutes off the forecast.  And only for a half hour at most.  Sonoita only gets 15” of rain per year and 5” of that is in July.

After lunch we took a walk out the road behind camp.  Kept Skye out of the cow pond, too cool today for a wet dog.  It only got to 57º, but we’ll see 90 again next week.  With nights warmer than today.  Tonight expecting 37º.

We saw lots of doves today.  Skye put up maybe 8 coveys.  They were resting under the Mesquite along the wash.  It became a nice sunny afternoon, just not hot.  No problem!

Every night I take Skye out for her nightly walk around 8:30.  I always turn on the outside lights and when we step out I scan around with my flashlight, looking for critters.  Tonight I found a rabbit out in the open.  Hard not to be in the open some of time here.  It scurried back and forth wondering how to get out of th light.  Skye was looking elsewhere so she missed it.  Probably a good thing, she would have tested the strength of the leash if she had seen it!  As we made our way around the camper she came across the scent and was quite excited.

Foggy sunrise today

Evening Primrose

Skye found a bone, a scapula from a cow

She carried this bone for a while.  Trot ahead then lay down to chew while we caught up.  And repeat.

Empire Ranch, 2 hikes today

 We picked out 3 options for hiking today, chose one and then did the other 2.  

It also included a weather forecast of scattered thunderstorms by 3 PM.  Since the first choice hike was higher on the mountain we switched to a lower elevation option.  That was to go back to where we hiked yesterday but at a different road to finish the section of trail leading to the next road.  We are just connecting various sections of AZT to make a continuous string of completed trail.  No real intent to hike it all, it’s 790 miles.  We’re just doing pieces and making bigger pieces out of smaller pieces.

So we drove over to the road on the map (we mostly use Topo + for a map app) and found a closed gate.  Well… get out and check.  It is dummy closed, just a ring on a peg to keep it closed. Many gates in this country are closed to contain the cattle but not to keep out humans.  Another guy came in behind us, he was going shooting.  Another favorite activity in the Nat. Forest.  We had a good hike, less than 2 miles to the road I mentioned.  We found what I thought was a bear box, a large brown shell box for storing food so bears cannot get to it.  But this one had a cache of water jugs!  Commercial 1 gallon water jugs with a note to take what you needed.  Someone had left a $20 bill in there too.  We met two women hiking the whole AZTrail, or as far as they can get with 2 months off work.

That wasn’t enough so we went back to the truck and drove down to the Madeira Canyon Road and found the next section of AZT.  We had done a piece last month in which we turned around before hitting the next road.  So we were back to finish another small piece of unfinished business.  That was only 0.7 miles.  Just right for the time of day and the building gray clouds.

As we got back to the truck there were four young ladies hiking north who had been at another water supply just yards down the trail.  I had heard them and seen their colors through the trees when we arrived.  Each one caught sight of Skye as they crossed the road and broke into a trot with arms out to greet her.  And of course Skye was her usual exuberant self to greet them too.  They took a good 10 minutes to talk to Skye, and us too.  Laycette (sp) was the first to greet, then Maddie.  We have forgotten the other two names but this is pretty good for me!  As we were leaving the storm caught up to us, blowing and a little rain and a little hail for good measure.  They scrambled for their rain gear.  Two had ponchos and the other two had plastic bag ponchos.  The kind of cheap thing you get when you don’t believe it will rain but want a little something anyway.  The rain only lasted a few minutes so that was probably OK for the time.

On that same theme, I was writing this at 8 PM when a thunderstorm cell came over us.  Strong gusts of wind and driving rain.  Carlene worried about the camper flipping over.  This is a 10,000 pound trailer.  It wasn’t that much wind!  It shook us but no big deal and was over in 30 minutes.  However we both thought of those girls and wondered what they had for tents etc.  that wind was plenty to take down a cheap tent.  Hope they’re OK.  No way to know.  They each  had good sized packs indicating they they should be well equipped.

Good ‘ol Arizona back roads

Emory Oak

Lots of gates on the trail.  And many varieties of locks 

The water box

Lunch break. Skye had some dog snacks then supplemented with her own findings

Fences seem to go for miles

Empire Ranch 3, AZ Trail

We woke up to find that the time had not changed.  It was still 7 AM and the sun was rising.  

Really, if you are one of those who can’t take the time change don’t bother traveling east or west, you might cross a time zone!  We are now 3 hours different than home, and will cross those time zones on the trip back.  It is usually one a day for the first two days.

We took another hike up Oak Canyon to the AZ Trail, starting out the same as we did a month ago.  This time headed north after a 1 mile connector trail.  This time instead of following a contour for miles we headed up a bit and then down, down, down.  OK, there was some up and down but it was a lot of down.  When we hot the 2.6 mile mark we had lunch and started back up.  But it did not seem nearly as hard as we had expected.  The grades are easy.  Not just straight up like home.  They slab around the hills a lot more.

Skye found a good pond for a quick dip on the way in and again out.  We met a few hikers doing the whole trail from Mexico to Utah.  One guy was from MT near Glacier Park and had to finish in a week so he could go start the Pacific Crest Trail in CA.  The AZT is his warm-up hike!  He must have a 3 season job.  He came trotting down the trial and had a rather small pack.  Some people travel very light.

Then another guy from VA who had started ahead of us this morning to do a section pretty much like us.  And a couple from upstate NY doing the whole trail who had stopped to rest.  We talked with them a while.  They had fair sized packs, 20º sleeping bags, a tent etc.  

We got back to camp around 3.  That’s pretty early for us.  A nice relaxing afternoon of reading in the rocking chair.  A few other campers and bikers came by, something to watch.  This pink camper they looked like a converted mini school bus came scouting around.  Two young women, one with very bright hair.  They walked out the road a bit and then left.   Two guys on motorbikes were on the ridge above us and later went up this road by camp, wandered about for a while and came back.  The lead guy on a 2 wheel bike came back to apologize for the young one on a 4 wheeler, said the kid sometimes liked to go fast and thus would make dust.  I really hadn’t noticed the dust but he did and wanted to apologize for it.  They’re from Benson, a small town NE of us about 45 minutes away.  We’ve been through there a few     

Interesting truck camper next door for a couple nights

This Ocotillo is starting to leaf out!

Odd shape for a barrel cactus 

Her pond of the day

Lunch break

Empire Ranch 2

 As I finished this last night Skye got sick, big barf coming under the bedroom door.  Carlene was asleep for a while longer but the cleanup woke her up.  We have a throw rug hanging on a tree.  This morning she seems fine but we did a short easy walk just for her.

We checked out the prairie dog town 4 miles up the road.  They are pretty cute when it’s not on your farm.  A couple of them posed for photos but were not really close.  They are in a fenced area to protect them.  We have seen them a few times before and once Skye was off leash and went right in to meet them.  They said “wrong kind of dog” and holed up.  Today we all watched each other and they sang to us.

We have hiked this road before too.  It leads to a creek but it is hard to access the creek.  Off to the south is a pond that had ducks on it the first time we visited.  Skye loves to swim there, but today she got a load of duckweed in her coat.  That is going to take some time.  Either a lot of time to remove it or a long time to grow the hair back after she gets trimmed.  As of this writing it appears to be some of each.

On the way back a pair of horses and riders came up from behind us.  Skye had been looking around like there was something out there but we had not seen them yet.  I had seen them across a couple ridges as we sat resting by a wellhead.  I heard voices and saw movement but had not recognized that they were horses.  We had been taking about not having seen any horses yet in Empire.  We usually do.  

We haven’t seen any antelope yet either.  Nor deer.  Just cows, and not a lot of them.

Prairie Dog checking us out

Earless lizard, found dried out in the road

Thirsty, and lazy, dog

Pontia Protodice

Now this is permanent fencing.  Steel pipe fence welded to the post.

With a support post also welded to the primary post