Arizona Adventure: The White Tank Mountains, Part 1

I totally forgot about this until I started to try to find a place to hike with non-flat trails.

While in Arizona I took Conker to the white tank Mountains located on the far western side of Phoenix. It was a short drive from my grandparent's place and unfortunately, we only went once.  I would have liked to have gotten in more desert hiking but it just didn't happen.

 The trail we took (Ford Canyon and connectors) started out as an easy walk. It was flat, the trail was wide and there were relatively few people around. Conker had to stay leashed (park rules) or he's have been let off to roam the trail at his own pace.

Never complete without a Shiba butt photo or two

Conker didn't seem to notice that the plants on the sides of the trail were sharp. He stuck his nose into many, got stabbed, then stuck it right back in to take a second shot at it. He even tried to bite one. He is not very cactus savvy.

Speaking of cactus...

It has been some years since I'd seen a saguaro.  Like the other cacti, Conker got stabbed by this one too. I also happened to step on one of it's spines that had fallen to the ground (remember, I wear those thin-soled Vibram toe shoes).

So we continued down the nice trail. We didn't see too many animals but every now and then one of those desert jackrabbits would show up and Conker would go bonkers. He wanted to chase them really bad, so I guess it's a good thing he was on a leash.

Conker being adventurous

A small ravine popped up out of nowhere. Conker, being his usual fearless self walked right up to the edge and leaned over.

After the ravine the trail got more interesting. It stopped being flat and well groomed and turned into a jagged, rough and rocky trail. This is what I'd been looking for, something that made you pay attention to where you're going.

Grass!

We came around a large bend in the trail and found something somewhat unexpected. A large flat expanse of grass! It was pretty cool seeing the short grass in the desert, I had never really seen that before despite living there for 19 years.

Conker didn't much care though, so we kept going after I snapped a couple shots of the grass.

Interesting...

Eventually we came up to a sign. A set of signs... warning that the trail was hazardous up ahead. I was quite interested to now what "hazardous" meant, and if it was anything like the trails I'd normally hiked while living in Arizona.

Part 2