Saturday, October 2, 2010

aravaipa

Suzanne and I have been hiking in the Aravaipa area a couple of times before. It's a gorgeous canyon southeast of Superior. We went with a larger group this time, a really fun day.
We saw a little bit of wildlife, most of which zipped into the brush faster than we could get our cameras pointed. We saw a javelina, frogs, a snake (which I will not post a picture of for Katie's sake), butterflies galore, fish, tent catepillars (hundreds of catepillars in a nest-like thing in a tree), and a coatamundi - which I honestly thought Suzanne made that name up. How do you have a name like that on the tip of your tongue when you see an animal dash quickly by in the distance?? (I actually did look up the name when I got home, and what do you know, it's a real animal! although we have had some discussions as to whether that is what we actually saw, or maybe something even more rare/exotic). Anyway, we also saw a centepede. The perspective of this photo doesn't really show how big it is -- but it's crawling on the stick and it was a good 8 inches long! Melanie was like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Her bedazzled headband was our beacon if anyone got lost.It is such a pretty canyon. There has been some discussion of a trip next spring - hiking all the way through to the other end of the canyon -- 11 miles. That would be cool.

1 comment:

Suzanne Barker said...

Fun to see photos different from mine!