We had a stormy weekend. I did no hiking until the clouds cleared up and the wind died down. Shortly after noon I packed up four dogs and drove back to the San Pedro River, but this time I stayed on the official trail and headed north. The official Hereford Bridge trail head parking was still closed off. There were no cars parked nearby, which is always good. I wanted to make sure the dogs stayed away from the prickly burrs this time.
The dogs enjoyed this hike. It's pretty much a straight trail on an old jeep trail heading north, staying on the west bank of the river which is 1/4 mile away. The trees along the river still had some yellow and green leaves on the upper canopies. This is a great place to find birds, especially wintering raptors, but I didn't see any until I was on my drive back home a few hours later.
I planned on no more than four hours: two hours out, two hours back, with breaks along the river. I had my backpack with water yet never used it. The dogs seemed to enjoy wading in the stream anyway at every break we took. The primary colors were khaki from the dried grass and all shades of brown from the trees. It may not have been a feast for the eyes, but the cool overcast made this short hike enjoyable for the dogs.
The storm clouds were breaking up, yet the sky never got a true blue today. (It was warmer than it was this morning, with me wearing a fleece jacket in the house and keeping my socks on. We finally turned the heat on yesterday.) More dark clouds lingered to the east over the Mule mountains and Bisbee. The peaks of the Huachucas were shrouded in fog, too. We walked north, and I watched Sammy to see if he could still make this distance, four miles, without too much pain.
I hadn't been on this trail for a long time. There isn't much landscape to see on this section, and it's a trail I prefer to mountain bike. It stays west of the river and is flat for the first two miles until you hit a dry wash which flows into the river. Then it meanders around several smaller hills. What this hike lacks in scenery, however, can often be replaced with wildlife.
I made this wash my turn-around point, but not before stopping here to let the dogs play in the water. The trail does get more scenic further north, but that will be for another time. Sammy lay in the cool shade of a cottonwood while the other three chased each other around the muddy banks of the river. Minnie and Sadie even enjoyed going after sticks I threw for them.
There was a lot of flood debris here, as if it were a choke point during floods. Snags were piled up along the treeline. The river today was low, which surprised me after the storms. We didn't get as much rain as points north and west did, and the Nordic Blast will reach Chicago midweek. That town is having its earliest single-digit days in 20 years. I don't feel so bad with our lows tonight being in the low 30s.
The sun cast pretty hues over the mountains to the east. The peaks were brown; there had been no snow fall here, whereas the storm brought snow to the peaks north of Tucson and across northern New Mexico. Darker clouds were moving in. We saw more birds on our return trip and even came across an alligator lizard in the middle of the trail. At first I thought it was a juvenile rattle snake, but then I saw its feet. It seemed odd to be out this late in the season, especially with the cold weather we had this weekend.
Target shooters were audible from nearby Copper Glance Road. Once we got back to the truck by 3:45pm, the dogs were happy to head back home. Sammy looked tired, but the other dogs were grateful for their time outside.
Maybe next time I'll hike south from the San Pedro house. That part is more scenic, but with scenic come more people I'd have to be cautious of with the dogs around. Today there were no signs of human life around me. Not even evidence of trash lay around save for one dirty blue shirt off the trail. This area used to be heavily trashed by border crossers coming over from the Mexican border four miles to the south. Now the trail feels abandoned from human memory.
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