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| Hiking | 5.64 Miles |
352 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.64 Miles | 2 Hrs 14 Mns | | 2.53 mph |
| 352 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Despite hitting 1,000 combined hiking & biking miles for 2022, I slacked off through much of December. Day after Christmas, I got sick. Not Chinese Lung AIDs, but the same congestion & cough all night thing I used to get every winter until some guy in Wuhan decided Peking Bat sounded delicious. (Ironically, I was not sick a single day during the three COVID winters.) 
I delayed hiking the Maricopa Trail for a week, but want to complete it before the end of the year. So, despite only three or four hours of “sleep”, I hiked from Monument Hill to Tres Rios. (For some reason the easement to the MTB trailhead was locked, despite there being no events at PIR.)
It doesn’t look like much, but Monument Hill is a steep little climb. Gravelly too. Mind your footing. Despite barely over 200 ft. of prominence, the summit of Monument Hill has great views due to miles & miles of flat surrounding terrain.
I have never had a problem with Panasonic DMC-TS5 pocket camera’s date/time stamp until a few weeks ago, when for some reason, in mid-hike, it decided to start setting photos’ “date created” to 2003-05-21. But still with correct time. Odd. Okay, whatevs. Reset date on camera.
On yesterday’s hike from PIR to Tres Rios, I took a few photos, then checked the camera’s date. The first few photos were okay, but the next couple were back to 2003-05-21. What the  ? Reset camera date again. Delete mis-dated photos; retake them; check; dates all okay. Off I go. Check an hour or so later and … dates screwed up AGAIN. No way I’m walking back.
I saw coots, a great egret and what may have been a dark-morph Ferruginous hawk — all too far away for my pocket camera. I would have fed the coots if they had stuck around. 
There was less graffiti than I expected on the Jersey barriers lining the road through the Base & Meridian (B&M) Wildlife Area. I made up for it by scouting up under the Avondale Blvd. bridge. The large cement culvert / pipe segments just past a mile also had graffiti. There wasn't much else to look at the first 1½ miles.
Hike Video: https://vimeo.com/787366249 |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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| http://prestonm.com : Everyone's enjoyment of the outdoors is different and should be equally honored. |
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Route Editor
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