We wanted our Boonie trip into the desert to be a special on Saturday. My niece, Lavon and her husband, Dan were visiting from Vermont and we wanted to take them and their family into the desert and show them an extra special day. Dan had never visited Arizona before and this trip was a fast one: arrive on Thursday and depart on Monday, so the one day Boonie trip had to show him a good time!
We departed for Battle Axe Mountain around eleven, in two cars. I was driving the Ford Explorer with half the crew and Bill took Dan, Lavon and Al in the FJ Cruiser. We were armed with rock hammers, canvas collection bags, binoculars, guidebooks on birds and wildflowers and rocks, cameras, ice chests with drinks and cheese and deviled eggs and snacks galore. Oh yeah, lots of 15 and 45 sunscreen too. The weather was perfect: mid-eighties, no clouds and the wind, light, if any.
Last Wednesday, Bill and I scouted out Battle Axe as a likely spot. As soon as we spotted the carpets of golden poppies blooming up its flank, we knew that "THIS" was the spot we'd bring Dan and Lavon and the girls to see a springtime Sonora desert. Dan was anxious to try his hand at gold panning and in the canyon at the bottom of the mountain was still a gurgling brook just waiting for the gold pan.
It took a bit of an effort to get both cars as far as the canyon. Fact is, there is a nasty boulder that needs to be straddled some half mile shy of the stream. The Ford Explorer could not muster up enough clearance to giddy-up over it, so after some manuvering, which involved watching my poor faithful car almost hung high center, Bill climbed in it while Al, Glo, Dan, Lavon, Kim and I pushed on the hood (the youngest girl, Jenny, was busy holding Chuy) and it finally eased backward off the rock. Bill backed it into a clearing, we unloaded the picnic goodies and transferred them into the Cruiser, then half of us hoofed it the rest of the way to the clearing for the picnic. No, I'm sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the almost stuck car. I remembered that after we'd gotten it free.
On the walk down the streambed, though, Glo and I stopped frequently to take pictures of the towering cliffs and mountains above us. They were beautiful besides the poppies, the sun was hitting the red rocks just perfectly. Towards the top of Battle Axe, nearly four hundred feet above, there were some unusual cactus formations (I thought) but couldn't think what kind of curly cue cactus they might be. As we reached the picnic place, we ran into a couple on four wheelers and they asked us if we'd seen the bighorn sheep. Really? Where? They pointed to the top of the mountain. What I had thought was curlycued cactus was the horns of a bighorn sheep peering over the edge at us. We grabbed the binoculars and spotted nine of them. They were busy checking us out just as were were busy getting a look at them.
They spent the next hour or so scrambling all over the peak. They were a lot more mobile on it than I would ever be! We took movies and pictures of them. Bill even climbed the neighboring bluff and got a better 'birds eye' view of them with his camera. So that's the pictures I'm including here.
I would never have guessed we would find such a surprise for our Vermont relatives. If we'd planned it, we wouldn't have found them. So it's really the unexpected that makes the best surprises!
We departed for Battle Axe Mountain around eleven, in two cars. I was driving the Ford Explorer with half the crew and Bill took Dan, Lavon and Al in the FJ Cruiser. We were armed with rock hammers, canvas collection bags, binoculars, guidebooks on birds and wildflowers and rocks, cameras, ice chests with drinks and cheese and deviled eggs and snacks galore. Oh yeah, lots of 15 and 45 sunscreen too. The weather was perfect: mid-eighties, no clouds and the wind, light, if any.
Last Wednesday, Bill and I scouted out Battle Axe as a likely spot. As soon as we spotted the carpets of golden poppies blooming up its flank, we knew that "THIS" was the spot we'd bring Dan and Lavon and the girls to see a springtime Sonora desert. Dan was anxious to try his hand at gold panning and in the canyon at the bottom of the mountain was still a gurgling brook just waiting for the gold pan.
It took a bit of an effort to get both cars as far as the canyon. Fact is, there is a nasty boulder that needs to be straddled some half mile shy of the stream. The Ford Explorer could not muster up enough clearance to giddy-up over it, so after some manuvering, which involved watching my poor faithful car almost hung high center, Bill climbed in it while Al, Glo, Dan, Lavon, Kim and I pushed on the hood (the youngest girl, Jenny, was busy holding Chuy) and it finally eased backward off the rock. Bill backed it into a clearing, we unloaded the picnic goodies and transferred them into the Cruiser, then half of us hoofed it the rest of the way to the clearing for the picnic. No, I'm sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the almost stuck car. I remembered that after we'd gotten it free.
On the walk down the streambed, though, Glo and I stopped frequently to take pictures of the towering cliffs and mountains above us. They were beautiful besides the poppies, the sun was hitting the red rocks just perfectly. Towards the top of Battle Axe, nearly four hundred feet above, there were some unusual cactus formations (I thought) but couldn't think what kind of curly cue cactus they might be. As we reached the picnic place, we ran into a couple on four wheelers and they asked us if we'd seen the bighorn sheep. Really? Where? They pointed to the top of the mountain. What I had thought was curlycued cactus was the horns of a bighorn sheep peering over the edge at us. We grabbed the binoculars and spotted nine of them. They were busy checking us out just as were were busy getting a look at them.
They spent the next hour or so scrambling all over the peak. They were a lot more mobile on it than I would ever be! We took movies and pictures of them. Bill even climbed the neighboring bluff and got a better 'birds eye' view of them with his camera. So that's the pictures I'm including here.
I would never have guessed we would find such a surprise for our Vermont relatives. If we'd planned it, we wouldn't have found them. So it's really the unexpected that makes the best surprises!
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