Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Waterfall Hike at White Tank Park with Doug.

12/4/15. Friday.  Doug felt like we ought to do something interesting while the weather was comfortable.  The hiking club had told me about the Waterfall Hike at White Tank Regional Park.  That sounded interesting so we decided to take the 2 mile round trip hike.  However, the water only flows after a heavy rain storm so the name of the trail sounds a bit misleading.  Um, I am not so sure I would want to be in a canyon right after a heavy rain with fast flowing water through a narrow canyon anyway!  We paid the $6 entrance fee and drove all through the park to checkout the scenery and the campground before hiking.  

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The day was a bit overcast and made the hike pleasant.  Right many people were on this very popular trail.  The trail was nice and level, wide, and hard packed over what used to be be pavement, so was an easy hike.  We also had lots of nice views of the valley and distant mountain ranges.   

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This bird in a desert bush nearby caught my attention and I was really pleased at what the camera captured when I enlarged it.  I haven’t seen a bird with these colors before.    

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We reached the portion of the trail that narrowed a little and took us into the canyon and the base of the waterfall.

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I bet the fall is pretty when flowing and the canyon was filled with huge rocks along the streambed. 

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The only water we saw was just a small pool at the base of the rock face where the water would flow.

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There were also some interesting petroglyphs up in the canyon.  Makes you wonder who the people were and what they were doing way up in the canyon, plus how the petroglyph rocks got to where they were, and obviously something caused them to break apart and tumble into the canyon.  Wonder what the carvings mean. 

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This little guy was waiting for us back in a tree by the truck.  He even waited to pose for me!   Just a fun little short hike to get us outdoors.  We stopped by the nature center and watched a live snake feeding,  They fed 7 snakes, some were rattlesnakes, with warmed thawed out frozen white mice.  Yuck!! 

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