Bucket List Adventures: November Hike - Passage #22 of the AZ Trail

Bushwhacking most of the day!! :(

Our fall hike felt more like a winter hike! We began at Sunflower, where we left off last month, and hiked (well Kent hiked) from there up to the Mt. Peeley trailhead. Since we returned back to Sycamore Creek, the fall colors were still plentiful, so I took some more pictures down there. We then headed up the mountain to begin our hike down towards Kent. The plan was to meet him somewhere along the way, and hike back with him to the vehicles. Needless to say, the trail on our end was not very well marked. We wandered all over, what appeared to be trails, but never could find a definitive trail. With all the techy gadgets Dain has, I was a bit frustrated. He finally did admit it was his fault for not sitting down and figuring out how to use that fancy Garmin, he begged for!

Before we left the house, I asked Dain if he was going to take a jacket, and his quick response was NO. When I took my gear outside, it felt chilly so I grabbed a jacket, and a pair of long pants, and boy was I glad I did. Dain was too, he ended up wearing my hoodie, that I offered up to him. I really didn't think he'd take it, but he literally snatched it out of my hand!

Mt Peeley trailhead is at an elevation of about 5500 feet, that's pretty high for us desert dwellers. We ran into dense fog driving along the ridge, wondering how Kent was doing on the other end. We got a few sprinkles, but nothing too significant. We all bundled up, and began our hike. We wandered around that wilderness for quite a few hours, enjoying the creek, with running water! That's always a treat for us, when we see water on our hikes. The area was burned last year during the Sunflower Fire. The vegetation is coming back, and we did notice from all the bear scat around, that the bears are still in the area. We also noticed TONS of acorns, uneaten, fallen off the oak trees, so maybe the squirrels, haven't returned to the area yet. It is still beautiful out there, and the fire damage is not as shocking as you might think. The manzanita brush was pretty much burned up, the bark on them at this time was bright white, and they looked beautiful in the daylight. As usual I took tons of pictures of the fall colors, and even saw a few trees with the deep RED colored leaves, my absolute favorite! I had to dig out my zoom lens, and get a few fairly decent photos of the trees, way down in a canyon.