Rice Peak

It was a lovely day for our first ride in Arizona yesterday. Sadie enjoyed a morning sunbath on the catio. If you're wondering about all the spots on the glass...it's cat snot. Yes. Hard to believe, but cats have snot in their noses. 

When she got too warm, she gave up her seat, and Smitty took over.

We were able to ride directly from the campground for yesterday's Rice Peak Trail. We had to ride about a mile on a public (dirt) road. Our ATV's are not registered, which means they are not street legal. (We did purchase all the required Arizona permits.) We stopped in at an ATV rental place with some questions about trails in the area and asked them what they thought about it. They encouraged us to plead ignorance. And when it comes to pleading ignorance, we are well-qualified.

Silly me, thinking our ride would be less punishing than in Colorado. It was at least as much so, and maybe slightly scarier. We were riding up a big hill and through a lot of dry washes, which meant a lot of up and down over large rocks. It's surprisingly taxing both physically and mentally. It isn't terribly scary, but it does require a lot of concentration. We were only about halfway up the hillside when we stopped to admire the view to the east.

Yellow wildflowers in bloom painted the hillsides.

We rode through a smallish burned out area from a recent wildfire. 

Optimistically, these burned areas are awash in wildflowers.

As we approached the top of the hill, the road looked like this. You can see it snaking up toward the top in the image below.

When the trail grew even more rocky and steep, we decided we'd ridden far enough to call ourselves ATV warriors and stopped, going no farther. We could see Biosphere 2 from here.

Here's a closer look.

Looking back, this is where we'd come from.

We rode through hoards of butterflies, but I could only capture a few in images. This one is known as a variegated fritillary. We saw these in Colorado too.

These next ones are known as a cloudless sulphur. I believe the flower they are sitting on is called a Chuparosa. And I'll just say I should never try to identify wildflowers because I'm almost always wrong.

Here are a few more we saw. I wasn't able to get a picture. Some of them never seem to light anywhere, but I found these images on Creative Commons. The first is known as an Arizona Red-Spotted Purple. (I think the "red-spotted" part of the name comes from the red spots on the caterpillar that metamorphoses into this particular butterfly.)

("Arizona red-spotted purple --- Limenitis arthemis arizonensis." 

by gailhampshire is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Also, this one, known as the Pipevine Swallowtail:

("Pipevine swallowtail butterfly, Boyce Thompson Arboretum, Arizona" 

by gwilmore is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Also, I was sad not to be able to capture a monarch that I saw, but I'm pulling this one from my own archives. We saw monarchs when we were traveling in Florida several years ago. I captured this one in a photo during our visit to St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge in St. Marks, Florida.

As for the wildflowers, this next one might be velvety goldenrod.

These next ones were the ones blooming in abundance everywhere. It's known as Brittlebush.

This is Arizona Thistle. Thorny buggers.

I wasn't able to identify this one. Maybe one of you knows what it is.

This one is known as purple mat. We've also seen this blooming in Death Valley.

This is the flower of the prickly pear cactus. The bugs seemed to like it.

This is the flower of a cholla cactus.

So we rode to within a half mile of the top, but then turned and came back down the hill. We'd passed by this structure on our way up, but I didn't notice it until we came back down. Apparently, this is an old trough for watering cattle. It is no longer in use, and a yucca is growing up through its center.

We were tired pups when we arrived back at the camper. After lunch, we joined the kitties for afternoon naps.

And that was our day. We'll ride again today, but our route remains a mystery, known only to Mike. We'll load the ATV's onto the trailer and drive to a staging area somewhere for today's ride. I'll tell you more about it in tomorrow's post.