Empire Ranch 7, Parker Canyon Lake

 This turned out to be a great wildlife day.  We decided to do a hike we have done a few times.  Parker Canyon Lake, about 35 miles south of us.  It is a good size leak with a trail all around it.  Skye loves it.  A water oriented hike.

Driving out we see a big ol' jackrabbit crossing the road.  He didn’t stay for photos, just disappeared in the grass.  Then 2 pronghorn crossing the road!  They hung out for a photo op!  Later in the afternoon there is another lone Pronghorn out on the grassland, all alone.  That’s unusual.  We’ve never  seen one solo.

The lake was beautiful, quiet, cool, nice breeze, full sunny day all day.  We met a few people along the trail, several fishermen on shore, a few dogs and 4 horseback riders.  The only boats we ever see are fishing boats and those are almost always trolling if they are moving at all.

Moving tomorrow, going over to Hereford, just east of Sierra Vista.  Only about 45 miles.  We’ll spend the weekend there at Guy & Elaine’s house.  Same VT cowboy friends you read about a month ago.

Great Mullein, velvety soft leaf

Photos got a bit out of order here

Stocking fish, probably Rainbow Trout

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