It was a mile's walk to get to the foot of the mountain. We knew the area had gotten rain recently, and it looks like the desert floor has been carpeted with tiny green buds. It might be a good year for wildflowers near Quartzsite in a few weeks.
There were even a few little purple wildflowers bravely poking their blossoms out in February.
There are ATV roads that wind through the desert, and we followed one of those roads as long as possible.
Then we had to hike off-road as the mountain got too steep for the motorized vehicles. Even though it isn't visible in the picture, we could see our motor home only as a dot from that height.
On this steep mountain-side, we found a barrel cactus with curiously red needles.
But our best find of the day was this young bighorn sheep that was right in front of us when we topped the next ridge! His white rump is the most visible part among the brown rocky mountain. He looked very surprised to see two-legged creatures up on his mountain.
When we left on this "short" hike, we didn't take the backpack, or the binoculars, or more importantly--the good camera. So the only pictures we have are those taken with a phone. The phone takes a good landscape picture, but it can't get important details.
The detail in the picture above is the same desert bighorn sheep, barely staying ahead of us as we hiked higher. We were so sad to miss a good sharp picture of this guy with his short curl of horns.
So we were super sad to not have a good camera when we noticed that an older and bigger horned sheep was a little higher on the mountain. We were spell-bound at we watched this magnificent creature climb effortlessly on the side of that steep mountainside. The fuzzy picture below is our best effort to share that completely curved set of horns on the older ram.
When he gave us the classic side-pose from the ridge of the mountain, we were really wishing we had brought the camera. But we were enjoying the scene before us too. In the upper left hand corner, you can barely see the ram's head sticking up over the ridge, just to put some scale to the side of the mountain.
Our best fuzzy picture of our National-Geographic-posed desert bighorn ram is below. You can be sure that we won't be forgetting our camera on any future hikes!
The sheep out-distanced us as our terrain got rockier and steeper. Denisa often says that Mark can climb like a mountain goat, but today he had his wife slowing him down. But we both did make it to the top. That's Denisa perched on the very top, with the valley far below her in the background.
Mark is holding one of those tangerines we grabbed when we left on this hike. It was a nice snack at the top, but we should have grabbed the camera instead!
The problem with making it to the summit, is now we have to make the tough climb back down. The only thing harder than climbing up, is going down over those loose rocks. Now we are glad we don't have a camera in our hand as we are sliding and crab-crawling down. It wasn't pretty, and it was a long haul down to those little roads in the valley that will take us back to the motor home.
It was good to see our home on the horizon as our tired legs finished this loop hike. We had left on a "short hike" several hours and several miles before. More than ever, we are sure that this is a great camping spot!
We were invited to another dance that evening, but we were too tired after going on our mountain hike. So we limped our way to another Quartzsite institution--Silly Al's--for pizza.
We walked in the door of the restaurant at 7:00 p.m., and were seated at a table right in front of the dance floor just as the live band started. Mark thought it was interesting that Denisa's tired legs were suddenly feeling good enough to dance every song until our pizza came out of the oven. You won't be surprised to know that we forgot the camera (again), so we don't have pictures of our Reuben pizza either. There are days like that!
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