Sam And Saundra's Second Time Around - Part 19

Sam And Saundra’s The Second Time Around – Part 19

Arizona

11/1/10-3/1/11  Yuma Mini-Adventures – Palm Canyon

Sam and I tried to take another left off of the road to Quartzsite to see Cibola Lake.  This is another area that is actually in California.  We made the left turn successfully, but after traveling a jarring three or more miles, we came upon a nice, big sign that explained that whereas we were welcome to drive on through to our desired destination, we first needed to call the local military base and let them know where and when we were entering ‘the area’, then call again when we were clear of ‘the area’, just to make sure that we were not caught in ‘the area’ during a weapon testing maneuver or some such.  We looked closely into each other’s eyes, smiled and went back the way we came.  Cibola can remain a mystery, at least for now.

Searching

We then went in search of the elusive native palms. Most palms apparently are not native to Arizona.  I am not sure where they are considered natives, but not here.  The one exception is the colony of palms in Palm Canyon.  We knew that we needed to make the hike into the first canyon of the foothills just before noon, because without direct, overhead sunlight, you may not be able to see into the canyon where the palms hide out.  These palms are capable of surviving without human help to trim their fronds, as they drop on their own and provide the ‘mulch’ needed for new infant palms to sprout and thrive.  Clever trees. We enlisted the help of neighbors, Dave and Irma, to help us find these rarities.

Finding

Since we got there early, we decided to hike around the foothill’s base.  There was a pretty good foot-beaten path and we all started following it.  This is desert, rocky, prickly, sandy, not flat terrain.  We had a blast.  Irma has so much knowledge of the vegetation and she is very interesting to listen to.  We hiked quite a distance (for me) and the special sights included the holes through some of the rock formations forming ‘Tiger Eyes’ and one stone bridge that could be seen only with the right light and looking back towards where we had left Brutus.  Amazing! We returned to enter the canyon just before noon and made the short, but fairly steep climb to the area where you can see into the side canyon that holds the shy palm colony.  Sure enough – there they were.  They were awesome.  Not only because we knew their background story, but because it was obvious that this is not an area that one would normally expect to see palm trees.  Wow!  We watched them grow for a while, thought about – but decided against trying to get closer to them due to the steepness, and returned home.  When in the Quartzsite or Yuma area .. Ya oughtta!

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