The First Hike...Red Mountain

First things first...I posted the wrong picture on the last post of the Native American village...it was supposed to be this one...picturesque, don't you think?

Here's where we were going to try out our hiking legs and adjustment to altitude.  The area in which we were staying is between 6000-7000 feet above sea level.  Yes, that is higher than the Mile High city of Denver!  Doesn't look too bad does it?  It was supposed to be a half hour hike.  Red Mountain is an extinct volcano...pumice stone everywhere.  All the mountains around Flagstaff come from volcanic eruptions.  They use the cinders from these mountains for the roads, railroad tracks, etc. just like we use gravel.

The young men right before the hike...

The common sense people right before the hike...

Monkeys were found in the trees...

This is part of the cinder cone on the front side of the mountain...more about the views from here in a minute.  It was like walking on little pebbles...and it wasn't exactly a 'slight incline'.  We were only about 50 feet above Melinda when she took this picture.

The rock is full of erosion holes.  We noticed several of these holes were used for bird nests.

I climbed up the back of the mountain and this was the view...

We setup the automatic timer to get a shot with the red walls in the background.  Other than another group of 3 people, we had the whole mountain to ourselves.

The other group told us about a slot canyon that we hiked up into...well not everyone made it all the way into the slot...this was the view out.

Melinda wanted everyone to know that she made it up this little log into the next section!  That was as far as she made it.  The next sheer portion had another log but the last three feet was just some indentations in the rock.  I'm still proud that she made it past this little obstacle.

Due to the fact that we weren't huffing and puffing enough we decided to climb the cinder cone portion...what a view!  If you look way off in the distance, that is the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in the distance.  They were doing a bunch of prescribed burns (they set the forest on fire purposely) in the area and I think that's why it was so hazy.

Seth kept wanting to take some of the prickly parts off the cactus...this particular area only has the smaller variety.  Could be that nice quality ground on which it's growing!

Here is a view of the mountain from the cinder cone.  Looks completely different from this angle.

Melinda decided she wanted to climb up the cinder cone too...It's nice that she has some gentlemen to pull her up!

Another family picture this time from the cinder cone.  Those are additional cinder cone peaks in the background.  That should also be the north rim in the background.  The little Ponderosa Pine tree made a suitable - but difficult - tripod.

David my boy, this last one is for you.  Mule deer everywhere!  No buck in this particular group but I did see some on the train ride.  Start planning your trip now!

My first impression of Northern Arizona was that this doesn't look like desert to me.  I guess technically it's not.  More of the grassy plateau environment.  Wildlife were in abundance everywhere.  It is beautiful country right around Flagstaff and Williams.  As you move east, it gets a little more like the desert and considerably flatter but there are still white faced Arizona buffalo in the fields (those would be the local definition of a cow).