Back to Gardner Canyon hike

We were here on Feb 5, so for the first half of the hike I’ll refer you to the photos I posted back then. Today we wanted to get to Bear Spring, which we didn’t reach last time.  It’s about a mile past the point where we turned around last time.  Most of the photos I’m posting today are from this new section.  It was about 6.3 miles round trip today. Mostly along the contour so it was pretty easy.  The hike reference says Bear Spring is a good place to turn around since the trail goes uphill steeply after that.

It was a windy and grey day at the start.  But we found a lot of shelter from the wind on our side of the mountain.  And then the clouds mostly scattered to let a good amount of sun shine in.

Tomorrow they talk about rain and maybe even a bit of snow in the morning.  Cold all day with a high of 45°. Brr.  But the radar shows the bulk of it passing by noon, showers in the afternoon, just not warming up until Saturday.  No worries, I set up the generator tonight so if we need some extra electricity to run the heater it’s all already.  And there are plenty of wineries around here to keep us entertained!  Sounds like a fine day for wine tasting.

When we arrived and parked the cattle were checking us out

Kind of cloudy and a bit threatening

Nice rock work supporting the trail

This was built long ago as a water supply route to the mine 

This rock looks like it recently came off the ledge

this rock fell onto another and made a mini cave

Sign indicates the horse trail goes down here

It would be difficult to get a horse through that cave

Trees and succulents 

We didn’t see Bear Spring but Skye found the water coming out of it

Back at the truck a cow wanted to get a drink but was leery of us

She did eventually get her drink after we got in the truck

Found some deer on the drive out.