Third part, Cave Creek Regional Park

We vis­it­ed Cave Creek Park on Sun­day. My daugh­ter signed on three class­es in one semes­ter. She takes one class in col­lege and the oth­er two online, and gets angry when every­one at home inter­feres with her stud­ies. There­fore, her hus­band tries to walk my grand­son and me out in his free time.

We left at 10 am. There were many peo­ple run­ning or cycling. I was aston­ished by a woman run­ning along the road with a child in a stroller and a small dog run­ning after her.

We drove a lit­tle, and then my son-in-law remem­bered that he only had a cred­it card and no cash, and card pay­ments were not accept­ed in the park. We Had to come back for 10 dol­lars. We drove for about 30 min­utes, and when we arrived, it turned out that we had cho­sen a good day, and the vis­it on that day was free. My son-in-law said he made $10 extra, but that did­n’t hap­pen. When they returned home, the grand­son told me some information.

There is a booth at the entrance where pay­ments are accept­ed. You pay with­out get­ting out of the car. Although the day was free, we were still giv­en a tick­et, where the price was $ 6. I didn’t under­stand if it was from a car or $2 per per­son. The park is a huge area with a bunch of moun­tain ranges cov­ered with their tra­di­tion­al desert veg­e­ta­tion. I did­n’t see any fence. We drove to an asphalt park­ing lot with marked park­ing lots. We left the car, left a tick­et-pass on the front pan­el of the car and went for a walk.

Here it is called “hik­ing”. The moun­tains are not high, but they offer very beau­ti­ful views. Rough­ly wide trails are laid through the moun­tains, along which hik­ing, horse rid­ing, cycling and even quad bik­ing are car­ried out. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to go off the trails, but I think there are no par­tic­u­lar peo­ple who want to, because you can peel your­self off of cac­ti or meet some rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ani­mal world of the desert.

In some places, stream beds are vis­i­ble, but they are all dry, appar­ent­ly, the water in them in cer­tain sea­sons. Hik­ing peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ages con­stant­ly met and, sur­pris­ing­ly, every­one smiled at each oth­er, greet­ed like fam­i­ly. We also smiled and greet­ed (hi, good morn­ing), only the grand­son grum­bled a lit­tle: he was cold, he want­ed to return.

The moun­tains are not that tall, but the view is intense.

The day was real­ly a lit­tle windy and cool in the morn­ing, but then, when we round­ed the moun­tain, there was no wind and it got warmer, it went more cheer­ful­ly. There were also groups of tourists on horse­back. Yes, there were not enough hors­es. I thought more than one strong horse would not be able to sup­port me, but there were women in the eques­tri­an groups more sol­id than me. I have already described the veg­e­ta­tion, but the moun­tains them­selves amaze with their stones, some­times puff like a pie, or like hewn bricks, of the cor­rect shape. There are both small and huge lay­ers of white mar­ble. In Rus­sia, these would have been tak­en as souvenirs. ☺

As a result, we walked around the moun­tain, and came to the begin­ning of our path. I think we walked six and a half kilo­me­ters. In the place of start (fin­ish) there is a cov­ered area with tables, where we set­tled down with our sand­wich­es and had a bite to eat. There was even a play­ground for chil­dren, and a group of girls a lit­tle old­er than my grand­son was run­ning around. They cel­e­brat­ed their birth­day with their parents.

On the way back, before leav­ing the park, we went to a small muse­um, which dis­plays exhibits of local flo­ra and fau­na (spi­ders, scor­pi­ons, taran­tu­las), some­thing was writ­ten about the Indi­an tribes liv­ing in this area. There were also sev­er­al live snakes in aquar­i­ums, and then there was a sem­blance of a store with sou­venirs, caps, T‑shirts and toys.