Arizona: Mingus Mountain

Above: Watson Lake, Prescott, Arizona
For those of you who haven't been to my etsy shop and read my profile, my husband and I love to go out and be in nature and hike and drag the whole family with us, that is, if they will go.
Most of my readers have no idea what kind of exciting things there are to see in Arizona. Once I was visiting with a friend from out of town and she asked me, "So what's in Arizona besides mobile homes and dirt?" Her question only indicated to me that she had obviously never been here. Unlike the popular Hollywood images, Arizona is anything but mobile homes and dirt. Its rivers and streams, canyoneering dreams and monsoon frenzies, verdant (green for you simpletons), yes, verdant, blooming and beautiful. Actually, if you want to get technical, Arizona consists of at least 5 of the 6 major earth biomes. In fact out of the freshwater, marine, desert, forest, grassland and tundra, the only one Arizona doesn't have is the marine biome. Since Arizona doesn't have ocean front property (yet) I'll have to just write some entries on our other biome trekking. The pictures in this entry don't do Arizona justice, but stay tuned and in between the soap entries I will include some of our latest journeys.
Today we went hiking on Mingus Mountain in the middle of Arizona. Near Prescott, Mingus Mountain is home to the famous Jerome, Arizona and a number of hiking, biking and camping trails. Since this mountain is practically in our back yard we decided to trek it and go where, many have gone before, but where we have never gone before. O.k. so maybe once or twice before. Like earlier in the year when we went up on Mingus to throw snow balls at each other and see who could come the closest to a Sonny Bono on the pine trees. We've lived here the majority of our lives and had no idea there was a lake, er uh, pond up on top of this mountain. We found some interesting botanical features like the cacti growing out of the rock and the moon coming up over the trees at dusk. I have also included (for the skeptical) a picture of our weekend hike at Watson Lake. Yes, there is water in Arizona!


Above: Moonlight on Mingus Mountain

Above: Cactus growing out of rocks, or so it seems.