Picket Wire Canyon Lands

This last Sunday, Candy and I hiked down in the Picket Wire Canyon lands. This was the second time for me and the first for her. We got lucky as it was overcast cool in the morning. We had great weather all the way out to the track site. On the way back the clouds had broken and it heated up quick. There is no shade to speak of so hard to cool down. Total miles came in at 11.4 and total time out was six hours.

I was on the look out for snakes, scorpions and tarantulas but didn’t manage to find any. Of course I didn’t venture to far off the trail to look for them. We did see lot’s of birds, grasshoppers and beetles. I think it was mating season for the beetles or maybe they are just at it all the time. We came across a box turtle and one grasshopper that I had never seen before. Most of them were grey, black or green. But this one had orange, yellow, blue, black and white colors. Looked it up and it is called a Painted Grasshopper (Dactylotum Bicolor).

The river wasn’t running to high, we took off the shoes and socks and made our way across. Took a break had a peach and some almonds. Checked out the dinosaur tracks for a while and then headed back. For more info on the track site visit: http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/psicc/coma/palo/index.shtml

We headed back to town and grabbed lunch and then stopped at a couple of farm markets and got some peaches, corn, tomatoes, etc. all good stuff. Then we headed home, the drive back was just about 90 minutes.

All pictures can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/drobincorvette/20090809#