Yesterday we took a little day hike in the Superstitions. We headed to the Peralta Trail Head (along with half of the people who live in AZ) for a nice Saturday hike. There were so many cars that people were parking along the side of the dirt road. We saw a bunch of cars leaving (since it was almost noon), so we headed to the main parking lot. We were met by a Park Ranger at the parking lot just before the main parking lot who said the main lot was full. We got the last parking spot in the secondary lot (which the Park Ranger said was only an 8th of a mile away from the trail head). We got out and headed to the TH.
We spoke to the awesome volunteer park ranger and asked him which way everyone was going because we wanted to go the opposite way! He said everyone is going on Peralta. He suggested Dutchmans Trail to Coffee Flat. Which was great because that was the trail that I had actually looked up! We headed out and nobody was around. Perfect!
As I was taking a picture, Jeff walked up behind me. So it's both of our shadows, lol.
As we ascended we could see the mass of cars. That is the "main" parking lot. There were several others a ways down the road that were also "full!"
This is a typical trail in Arizona. I sent Kendal this picture and asked her how many times she's been on this trail. 100's!
Since we had wi-fi pretty much the entire time...we were getting texts from Greg and Beth who are in Idaho looking for a house to buy. They sent us a selfie so we took one of our own!
The turn off for Coffee Flat. By this time we passed a few people but they were all going the other way. We even passed a boy scout troop!
It took us about 2 hours to get here. We took it slow and took pictures and enjoyed ourselves.
I sent this picture to Kendal who sends me pictures of the snow and beautiful scenery and Greg & Beth who are sending pictures of beautiful Idaho and said, "Why wouldn't you just want to live here!??" (Very well knowing the answer- it was definitely rhetorical!)
Greg mocked me back and sent this picture! Too funny!
All while sitting on a log, under a tree, eating a bar. It took us two hours to get here so we figured we'd get back around 4:00 since a lot of it would be going up hill, ugh!
Jeff, as always, let me set the pace and I set off to motor back as fast as I could! We passed just a few people. One was an older couple (older than us but not ancient) that were sitting pretty much in the middle of the trail in some shade (it was the uphill switchbacks). The woman was dusted. We motored all the way up and made it back in an hour! It felt so good to be back on the trail! We're now planning an overnight backpack trip in the next couple of weeks!
