Saturday February 9, 2008

The photo on the right was taken from the patio as the sun was setting last night while we were blogging. There is a notch in the mountains here called the window (hard to see in the photo as it was getting dark) and that is the hike we took after breakfast this morning. We hiked for 6 1/2 miles with an elevation of nearly 1000 feet (Dad finally figured out how to use the GPS) - unfortunately it was mostly downhill going and uphill coming back when it was hot, but it was a great hike and we enjoyed the views. Much of the trail was made by the CCC and we walked through some small treed areas. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of a mountain lion, but all we saw were white tailed deer and a multitude of birds. In the window itself, the stone is well rounded - there was a small creek running, but I am sure that during high water there would be an awesome waterfall. We didn't get too close to the edge because of the smoothness of the stone and the immense dropoff into nothingness, but we did climb up to a viewpoint above and got an awesome view of the desert below and the distant mountains in Mexico. We met a couple that we had seen before in the other campground and we sat together and shared a bench as we ate our granola bars and fruit. They are RVing full time - we didn't ask, but assume that they have no family ties. The photo on the left is of a century plant with a flower stalk from last year - it was all dried out and rattles when the wind is blowing. We got back to camp and decided to sit in the shade and read - did not want to wear ourselves out on the first day here. There are other days and other hikes. We didn't hear any wildlife last night and we miss our resident roadrunners although there are a couple of small birds who show up when we are doing food preparation - I'm sure they have been successful in the past in stealing some tidbits from people who have not been paying attention.