Yesterday we decided to do a hike to find out where all these lovely stones come from, to a place called Palm Canyon, which is the only place in Arizona that native palm trees exist. The canyon is part of the Kofa mountain range.  To make a long story short, Volcano, volcano, 25 million years, then earthquake…..  then erosion.

We have come back to this area, over and over, as it is so breathtaking…. but I can never quite capture this in my pictures with my phone, perhaps we shall get a new camera so we can share the beauty of this area with everyone else.  So if you look closely at the picture below you can see the windy road heading into the dark area at the centre of the mountains. It almost seemed to have a fairy tale feel to it, a windy road leading to a craggy rock cliff with a castle on it.  THAT is where we are going..

This is looking into the canyon from just outside.

So as you get into the canyon, suddenly everything becomes lush, and there are plenty of plants that we have not seen anywhere else. For instance, HOLLY, which we have never seen down here, and represented a whole new issue for Tucker. (can  you imagine walking on Holly with bare feet)

Well we climbed higher and higher up the canyon, in search of palm trees…

THEN the trail started to look more like this…. It essentially disappeared and we were just trying to find a way upwards.  It started to become more like rock climbing and there were a few places where we COULD have maybe used some rope…

It was starting to get a little scary… and I was thinking to myself that this hardly seemed the kind of trail that they considered mild to moderate in the brochure, and only suggested bringing water. We had seen NO sign of Palm trees, and the people who HAD been coming behind is never seemed to get any closer, they just went back. 🤔 🤔 🤔  So I said to Ken, this seems like more than a half a mile. He said that it HAD said a mile in.  So I pulled out the pamphlet and read it AGAIN.

It SAID about half way up the canyon (1/2 of a mile) there is a sign that says palms with an arrow point towards the palms.  WE HAD seen the sign, and thought it was pointing to where the trail led. So we hiked half way DOWN the canyon and found the sign and sure enough it was pointing up a narrow crack between 2 cliffs… to, sure enough, ….the palms….

So for certain you would have to be standing right there to see them. You go into the canyon from west to east, and this  little crack goes north. I guess it also explains how the trees survive there, they are  sheltered from all sides and they have this canyon pointing directly south.

So we laughed all the way back to the parking lot.

I have tried to include more “awake” pictures of Tucker, as so many people commented on how tired he looked. I was just taking a picture of every extremely uncomfortable place he seemed to fall asleep.

Another funny story of the day was the intense echoing you got in the canyon. When we were WAY up the canyon, we felt like we had microphones on.  Then part way down, Tucker barked at something, and we could not stop him from barking, because he kept hearing another dog. 

Much love…. thanks for reading, Janet… and Ken and Tucker.