More Regional Parks, A Long Drive and a Trail

Today, Gordon felt he was up to a drive. First I had to get my beef roast in the crockpot so I peeled some veggies and got that going.

Then off we went to visit the San Tan Regional Park, one of the Maricopa County parks as is Usery. It's not far from where we are located. We followed Ellsworth south and found our way there with no problem. It has no roads within the park and also has no camping. It is mostly for horseback riding and I photographed these people enjoying their Saturday on horseback. There were also lots of horses in the staging area. Since he didn't feel like walking a trail, we continued on.

We drove west through the city mostly on Riggs Road crossing I-10 and continuing west toward the mountains. You go through Gila River Indian Reservation on the west side of I-10 and eventually wind up back in the city around Avondale (a suburb of Phoenix). On our way there was some water around a golf course and we saw our first egrets of the winter!

Our destination was Estrella Mountain Regional Park which we managed to find without too much trouble. Again we drove through the park but although there were lots of tents, the only RVs we saw again were in the horse staging area. There was what looked like Renaissance Festival going on.

We just drove through the park and again left. We are definitely at the best park as far as we're concerned. Gordon had his eye on some mountains that he wanted to shoot but we couldn't get close to them. We went by the Phoenix International Raceway, again saw some egrets which I did photograph as we were driving by along the Salt River, the backtracked and drove along the Estrella Parkway thinking that might take us to the mountains. Wrong! It took us into very upscale neighborhoods with all new houses. I wonder where they think they will be getting water in the future? All along the way we saw all kinds of new buildings and new building going on. Also within the city we saw lots of cotton fields and orange groves.




Our departure for home was via I-10 but Gordon did get off on Jefferson Street downtown where I managed again take some photos from the truck. So, forgive me if they're not great photos. I took some photos of the downtown skyline. After driving along Jefferson for a while we got back on I-10, then Hwy 60, then the 202 loop and arrived home around 3 p.m.

The city if Phoenix is huge with a good amount of traffic for a Saturday. It took us about an hour to get from the San Tan park to the Estrella park.

Since we had been sitting all day when I got back I decided to go for a walk. Then Gordon said he'd come with me as he hadn't taken his 'photo of the day' for his photography site.

As we went out the door the moon was just above our saguaro. I took a photo of it but liked this one better. We decided to walk partway on the Blevins trail within the park so I took this photo of the moon just dotting the top of the saguaro.

This is part of the trail.

This is the inside structure of a cholla tree.

Our roast beef dinner was delicious. We spent the evening watching Runaway Jury and then I spent some time in the rv-dreams chatroom as usual.