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| Hiking | 5.50 Miles |
500 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.50 Miles | 2 Hrs 30 Mns | | 2.20 mph |
| 500 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Day 3 of our Red Creek trip began with a great breakfast and then a hike west from camp. Love this section of the creek and was eager to show the sister-in-law how pretty and interesting it is. Got off to a great start as we scared up a Gila Monster less than 5 minutes out of camp. That is only my second one in all the thousands of miles I've hiked in AZ. Big boy too. Somedays things just go right, well for a while anyway.
We kept going up though the landmarks I knew well, stopping to examine tracks in the wet sand and flowers and geology. The hanging gardens are really nice. Canyon wrens sang to us ever few minutes, my favorite sound.
Soon we arrived at the large alcove. I detoured off north to see if it were possible, or advisable, to check it out. Eased along the wall until I saw the bee hive and it was seriously busy. Paused long enough to point it out to the sister-in-law. Mary Jo was having none of it and hanging way back since she hates bees and pretty much bugs in general. We eased away and the girls head on upstream. I wanted to zoom in from afar and get a photo of the hive. This thing hung several feet down from its anchor on the rock wall. Just as I zoom in i get a bee buzzing me, but ignore it. Well until it landed on me I ignored it. the there was lots of buzzing. Yelled at the girls to move fast and I took off in trail. Didn't dare catch up with them because then we'd all be under attack. Of course there was no way to catch Mary Jo. She would have won last year's Kentucky Derby the way she was moving. I kept swatting and moving. Got 3 good stings but eventually the buzzing sound quit and we were good. I'm one of the lucky ones that doesn't react much to stings, so all was good. Could have been much worse and is a good lesson learned for me.
As the adrenaline settled we dropped back into a relaxed mode. I stopped along a strip of wet sand to show the girls some large raccoon tracks. They were 30 feet back and of course talking. Then there was some screaming as the largest raccoon I've seen burst out of the bushes across the creek and headed up the side of the canyon. And the adrenaline is back. Probably for the raccoon too with the volume of those screams. Poor critter.
Hiked on the FR16A and then turned back having lunch in the shade of the narrowest part of the canyon. We began to hike back to camp. Stopped by the smaller alcoves on the southern canyon wall just before we got to the bee infested larger alcove. We had not stopped to explore these on our hike in since we were at full speed as we passed. The girls signed the memorial log book in the more accessible of the alcoves. We passed the bees very quietly this time and with far less waving of hats and hands.
Video: https://www.youtube.co...
The hike was a great end to nice weekend trip to Red Creek. We will be back. |
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Wildflowers Observation Moderate
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All you have is your fire...
And the place you need to reach |
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