February 7 to 13, 2009

Well, since our last post the weather has gotten decidedly colder. We've been enjoying a rather long warm spell of weather in the high 70s to the low 80s, which I understand is warmer than usual for this time of year. Last weekend we had a significant amount of rain and the temperatures dropped down to a daily high of about 59 early in the week. It has been gradually warming up since and today we enjoyed a balmy 65 degree day.

In spite of the weather it didn't interfere with our usual activities for the week, so all is good. On Wednesday we had a hike up Usury Mtn. to the pass, a distance of about 1.8 miles, a fairly easy hike. We had 23 people out for this particular hike. We forgot our camera back at the RV so don't have any pictures. Once we reached the pass 5 of us continued around the mountain and came back to the parking lot from a different direction. It added about another mile and a half to our hike and we didn't get back til about 2 hours later than the main group which returned on the same trail we came up on. It was fun bushwacking a different route. It took us about half an hour of traversing the hillsides before we found the trail we were looking for.

Our friends, Michel and Micheline from la belle province (Quebec) left the park on Thursday. They were heading to Texas to spend some time before continuing east. We enjoyed meeting them this year and have made new friends that we will probably meet again in the future. It's a small world when living this life style.

Our hike coordinator arranged for a late afternoon hike up Silly Mountain, just southeast of Apache Junction. It is an easy hike, offers great sunset views, and we cap it off with pizza and beer (or soda) at the Garage Restaurant - a very popular watering hole. Unfortunately the restaurant was full to overflowing so we decided to go to the pizza place across the street. They didn't sell beer but two of our group went up the road to bring back two cases of 24 for those that wanted some. Apparently the pizza place didn't have a problem with this arrangement and we had a great time before heading back to the park. There were 33 people on this hike; it was popular last year as well. I wonder why :-)

Silly Mountain as seen from the parking lot

It's an easy hike but has some steep parts

as the sun was setting behind me it cast the mountains

in a reddish hue; love these views

some of our hikers, on top of Silly Mtn.; note Superstition Mtn in background