Usery Mountain Regional Park

Usery Mountain Regional Park sits at the North edge of Mesa, AZ. It has 30 miles of hiking trails, a huge archery range, picnic sites and camping. This is lush desert landscape right at the edge of a big city so it gets a lot of use, especially on a cool Saturday which was our one full day here.

Here are a few pics from our stay at this very pretty desert park.

We were greeted with lush desert plants under brilliant blue sky just steps
from our camp site upon our arrival.

Hiking the Wind Cave trail on a cloudy Saturday morning.
The cave is the slim black horizontal slit near the top right of the hill.

The trail makes its way up the boulder strewn hillside to the yellow volcanic tuff layer,
highlighted with  bright green lichen.

A small portion of the wind cave...the remainder was full of other people! Being so close to a major city,
this park gets major use on the weekends.

This beautiful hawk was watching the crazy people hiking to the cave.

Even under cloudy skies the cholla seem to glow.

Sunsets have been spectacular here!

After glow