It's Great To Be Back on Natural Trails!

We left San Diego and the relatively cool coastal zone on September 10th and spent one night in Yuma, AZ at our awesome moochdocking site at my sister and brother-in-laws place. The only drawback was the 109 degree heat in the desert. We were grateful for the 50amp electrical.

We made it to Prescott the next day and are happily set up in a sweet site backing up to giant granite boulders at Point of Rocks RV Campground. Though we've stayed at this RV park several times before, we'd never stayed in site #62. It's a great site, we have wonderful privacy and access to the granite boulders...but it was challenging to get into with our big fifth wheel, some tree trimming was required, as well as a little roof repair.

It's a little dark, but that's a 5 ft long gopher snake that Rosie is eyeing!

We've enjoyed hiking almost every day since we arrived. It's wonderful to immerse ourselves in nature on dirt trails after months of urban walking.

Prescott takes their trails seriously, there's currently over 80 miles of trail within and adjacent to town, and more being built all the time. The trails are well marked and well engineered. Check out the excellent "Birth of a Trail" video on the Prescott Trails website.

We've previously visited Prescott in the spring when the area is rather brown and dry, so it's nice to see it all greened up from the heavy monsoon rains they've experienced this summer.

Walking through a lush green meadow near Thumb Butte.

A giant grub found on the trail...I think it's going to be a scarab beetle.

It's been hotter than usual for our first week in town so we did an easy hike around Lynx Lake one day. The trail around the pretty lake is only 2.3 miles but if you throw in a walking tour of the two adjacent forest service campgrounds you can get a decent, easy hike in that's mostly shaded.

Lynx Lake

There are numerous seasonal creeks in Prescott that probably only run during monsoon season. We've been happily surprised to see a trickle of water remaining in several of the creek beds we've hiked past lately.

Mint Creek flows sporadically even though it hasn't rained for a couple of weeks.
We love how green everything is right now!

It hasn't been cold enough for fall color yet
so I think these bright colors are some of the monsoonal growth going through their normal color cycle.

If this horned toad hadn't moved I never would have seen it!

Granite Lake is really only big enough to be called a pond but it sure is pretty,

Especially when it's covered in these delicate little lily flowers.

With temps getting up in the high 80's and low 90's each afternoon we've been getting on the trail well before 8am to beat the heat and have had no problem finding forested trails near town.

Vibrant, feathery grasses add texture to our hike.

We were worried that Rosie might be bummed to move back into the RV after having the run of a whole house all summer, but she seems to have taken the change in stride.

No, we didn't let her touch the praying mantis!

We have a great sunset views from the boulders right behind our RV.

That's it for our first week in Prescott, we've got several more weeks to go. We're doing a little house hunting while we're here but inventory is low, especially when RV parking is a requirement.  Wish us luck!