Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Golden Gate Trail

Tuesday we hiked up the trail from our house that goes up to a saddle where you can look across the scenery.  Jim wanted to see where the Golden Gate trail went.  It branches off from the saddle. We were there, where the pin is. 


Looking at the map, notice where the yellow trail (Yetman) intersects with the burgundy trail (Sarasota).  That's the general area we're scouting trails to from the house.  If that sentence makes no sense, see the previous post.  It's interesting how many trails are not on this map.  Anyway, we could see the intersection as we continued up on the trail to the saddle.




The brittle bush is in bloom.  Those are the yellow flowers.  It's everywhere.


Still on the Golden Gate Trail.  Looking down you can see the road that goes over Gates Pass.  We used to ride that on our bikes.  It's really steep, and one must have faith that the cars you're holding up won't kill you.


There is the parking lot for the Yetman trail head.  It's not very big, and has been made even smaller by an RV parked there.  They're supposed to use the pullouts down the hill.  Bad RV!  After a little longer, we turned around.  I think next time we're going to park down there and come up to the Golden Gate trail from there.  It's a lot closer than the house.  Rumor has it that the trail goes down to a pull out, but we'll have to investigate that further.


Today we parked at the ball fields and rode north.  We pulled in to St. Phillip's Plaza to look for the Pedego electric bike rental store.  We couldn't find it, maybe next time.  They're right off the Rillito trail, and I'll bet they're renting them to people who are going to take them out on the trail.  Motors are forbidden on the trail, new signs are up on the subject.

It's a pretty shopping area.  That building houses a modern Mexican restaurant, Reforma, with tequila and mescal also written on the building.  There are a bunch of bars and restaurants there.


Big tree under a blue sky.


This was last night's sunset. 


Rain is in the forecast, with cooler temperatures.  However, we're not dressing like this!




5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the map. Wow, there sure are a lot of trails up there. I've been looking for a safe place to hike. Looks like that area may fit the bill.

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  2. In Prescott we've seen a few trail signs that say no E-bikes (picture of a bike with a little e next to it in a circle with a slash).

    Love that you are getting flowers already! We've got buds on lots of plants here but I am afraid it is too early in the season and these buds could get frost bit before winter is over.

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  3. What a beautiful landscape. It looks kind of otherworldly to me, since I've never been there and never seen anything quite like it!

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  4. Are those two dressed for biking? I know it's colder at higher altitudes. How high are you there? Five, six thousand feet?

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    1. No, they're dressed for the Polar Vortex. The photo caption didn't say where they were, it just looked really cold. Tucson is at 2,500 feet, we're pretty low.

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