The Garden Canyon Linear Park is a 3.5-mile connector trail built by mountain bikers to get from Brown Canyon Ranch House to Buffalo Soldier Trail and SR90. It's mostly flat. The views of the Huachucas is the selling point here, with open views in all directions.
I've been on this trail several times now. It had been a year since I was last on it with Fritz that morning, when I still lived with CC. I spent last summer house hunting and I had already found the place I eventually settled on by then.
The trail starts out following a wash between two neighborhoods. It had always been popular with neighborhood kids taking their BMX bikes to practice jumps. Part of the trail was then "upgraded" with some pavement, benches, and trash bins.
Bill and I met at 5am by the canal. We didn't see anyone on the trail for the first two miles. We hit the boundary gate with Fort Huachuca and I was blocking the narrow path from a mountain biker who waited quietly behind me before I noticed his presence.
The lack of any rain made this a boring hike as there were no flowers blooming anywhere. Rain brings out the desert sunflowers. That made me curious about the duckpond off the Nature Trail by the ranch house. Would there be water in it?
We made the ranch house our destination point, resting just briefly by the windmill to let Hansel jump into a water trough to cool off. He also jumped into the duck pond that had been filled with water. The reeds that normally hide the pond had also been cut back. A squadron of javelina darted into the tall dead grass to evade us.
We walked back the way we came. I cut through the hidden cholla grove to see if the desert wren from last year was again nesting in a cholla. She wasn't there, but the nest was. There was another nest nearby.
This eight-mile walk took us three hours.
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