GICL: Blooming Dales

 This week, we once again rounded up Nancy, and headed out to hike on the Continental Divide Trail from the same starting point as before but in the opposite direction.

There were legible words on this sign, contrary to how the photo turned out, although none of the destinations listed were ours because we didn’t really have a destination.

The hike began across some open – and very wet – meadows.

 There were no water crossings until later, but the dew on the grass soaked our feet as thoroughly as if we had been wading in a creek.

 The trail eventually crossed the meadows and hugged the bottom of the rock wall on the opposite side of the dale where there were plenty of trees as well as a few stunning natural formations.

It then dropped into a lush canyon.

 Climbing up from the water a bit, the trail remained in the trees for a ways where it paralleled the water below and provided views into the deepening canyon.

 Soon enough, it left the shady cover behind and began a gradual ascent across an open slope.

 The day was heating up rapidly by then, so we scouted out a tree large enough to shade all of us under which to take our lunch break before heading back. The diversity of the terrain coupled with the relatively easy grade earned this 7-mile hike high marks from all of us.

Tree sniffing, second only to tree hugging.

Ponderosa Pines are known for their sweet-smelling bark, which is often described as having a vanilla or butterscotch scent.

As always, Nancy was a consummate Interpretive Guide, and we saw many newly-blooming wildflowers. Not all of the following were seen on this hike, but many were, and I promised you in a previous post that I would share some blossoms again.

 Bee Balm (purple), Coneflower (yellow), Evening Primrose (white), Indian Pink (coral), Larkspur (blue)

Showy Four o’clock

 

Pineywoods Geranium (fuchsia), Wallflower (yellow), Bee Plant (lavender), Milkweed (orange), Spiderwort (blue)

 

Scarlet Cinquefoil

They are all beautiful, but those Four o’clocks and Cinquefoils will stop me in my tracks every single time. For reference, the Four o’clock blooms are about the size of a half-dollar, and the Cinquefoil are slightly larger than a dime.

We again visited the local hot springs that evening.

 

The resident doggo found a little stick and kept tossing it in the water for us to toss back until it accidentally went floating into the outtake. Game over!

See you next week for my last post from the Gila, which will have some dog and cat tails (hee!) hopefully one last big hike, and our final thoughts on our time here. Safe and happy until then, my friends!

COMMENTS

Laurel What a beautiful hike, and such gorgeous and diverse wildflowers! I appreciate that you identified them all for us. Some I knew, and some are new to me. That Showy Four o’Clock is stunning. I’ll bet you’re going to miss hiking with Nancy, who seems like a terrific hiking and nature-loving kindred spirit.

I cannot believe you are heading into your last week at Gila. You’ve done a great job keeping up with your blog. Can I coerce you into ghostwriting our blog? :-))

Chasing Dirt Just when I think we won’t find another good hike before we leave here, we do! We have one bigger one planned in between bigger cleaning projects before launch Hiking with Nancy, answering visitors’ questions, and working on the Native Plant Garden plans have all helped me tremendously with identification. Like you, some of these I knew but many are new-to-me, too. Don’t those Four o’Clocks look like they should be in Hawai’i? Yes, we will really miss Nancy, but we are hoping to meet up with her again in Tucson this winter.
If you would stay with us, I would be happy to write the blog for us both!

Shannon If you and Nancy are available, I am in desperate need of assistance identifying wildflowers here in Colorado! The pay is great (if you like receiving beer in thanks).

Looking forward to hearing your final thoughts on your volunteer experience. The duration of several months probably gave you a little taste of everything good and bad, so please spill it all in your next post!

Chasing Dirt I would be happy to help you with flower I.D.! I’m sure Nancy would, too — send pics or ask anytime (I will do my best with spotty internet) and no pay is necessary at all 🙂

I’ll share what I can in my final post from here, for sure. We have to stay in the good graces of the NPS if we want to work in this town again 😀

chapter3travels The cinquefoil is both a beautiful flower and a fantastic photo. Love it! I am still somewhat surprised every time you post about one of these hikes and I see just how much green there is out there. It truly is lush and, I dare say, verdant!!! (#vocabwin)

This summer has flown by, for us at least…. hopefully for you too? I guess we’ll find out for real next week with the big summer wrap up! I truly am looking forward to hearing your honest thoughts on the whole thing since it’s something we might want to do at some point.

Enjoy your last week!!

Chasing Dirt Oh, those cinquefoils! The first time we saw one, I was sad it was by itself and so small. I was sure we’d never see one again, but on this hike we came into a whole field of them. Well, “field” is the wrong word here because they were along the bottom and side of a wash, but it was a whole bunch of them! It really is very green here this time of year. We knew it would be greenER than other areas of the southwest in the summer, but we are also pleasantly surprised by just how much.

I’ll do my best in my final post to be honest about our time here without getting us black-balled from the NPS 😀

Lowe's Travels That’s pretty sad 😦 what happened to our good sense? folks these days are clueless or just into themselves… but wait I think I can relate to the one that asked later what snake or flower that was 🙂 Honest I did ask that question some time ago!
Thank you so much for labeling your wildflowers, it will help me down the road. I still have to see the Snowy four-o’clock and the blazing red Cinquefoil. And when we do hike together you can help me id flowers on the trail.
And I wish we have a hot spring to soak to after every hike, enjoy that while you can.

Chasing Dirt I know you combined a few posts in your comment, but that’s OK LOL! We didn’t mind anyone asking us to identify a flower or critter, it was that they would ask the question just like that, “What kind of lizard did I see?” with no other info — how the heck should we know? hahaha

I hope I have learned well from Nancy and can be a Novice Interpretive Guide for you when we hike. I’m getting better every day! As long as we get good photos, we can always figure them out later, too. I hope we get to the hot springs one last time before we leave, too. It’s so nice to have them close by.