Not to be different, we — like half of Phoenix — went out last weekend to traipse the great outdoors. We — like half of Phoenix — were sure this was a legitimate interpretation of “sheltering-in-place,” a term that joins our new daily vocabulary along with COVID-19, flattening the curve, supply chain, and self-quarantine.
In our defense, we neither tarried in groups of 10 or more nor tailed other hikers closer than six feet. Yet it was with some chagrin, we opened our Monday morning newspaper to the Arizona Republic‘s lead story and photo shot of a crowd at the Hole in the Rock in Papago Park.
Our original intent was to look for wildflowers and find the nest of a Great Horned Owl I had seen two years ago on a trail north of Phoenix: a trail I remembered as less rocky and steep than the one we had taken the day before up Shaw Butte.
I thought it was the Dixie Mountain Loop Trail.
Maybe it was, but typical to the adventures I “plan,” once we had GPSed our way out via 7th St. to the North Valley Parkway and West Malvern Trail, we had to get directions from locals on how to find the Desert Vista parking lot.
At 10 am, there was a line-up at the large lot. Note to self: next time start earlier.
No worries. We activated Plan B. Why not head further north on 1-17 and try to find that trail out to the petroglyphs we’d read about on an earlier road trip we’d taken a few weeks earlier?
What was the turn-off called? Did we have a map in the truck? Nope. Plan B I begin to call “SaturStray” in honor of my Thursday cycle buddy Jamie who has instituted a small group bike ride called “ThurStray” that invents itself as you ride along.
Let’s just drive and see what looks familiar, we tell ourselves. We knew it was somewhere between Sunset Point and Cordes Junction.
“That’s it!” I say. “Badger Springs.” At Exit 256, we turn east and continue on a gravel road about a half-mile to a substantially full parking lot.
At the restrooms, we find a description of what we would find ahead: a .8 miles trail of sandy, watery and rock-hopping to the Agua Fria River. The payoff would be 86 symbols tapped into the rock face of cliffs by early native peoples: petroglyphs left by prehistoric travelers on a trade route that dated from 1250 to 1450.
On the visit we had made to Crown King, we had added an earlier visit to the Agua Fria Monument. At Cordes Junction, we had crossed 1-17 to Pueblo La Plata, an archeological site excavated and maintained by the Museum of Northern Arizona and Arizona State University. That trip was a longish drive east from I-17 over gravel roads and a longish walk back west to a rubble of remains with signage touting a prehistoric village of 80 to 100 rooms. The mound that now stands refers to a farming people of the Perry Mesa Tradition. Abandoned in 1450, probably due to drought, it sits at a picturesque overlook of the Silver Creek Canyon. Starkly beautiful and windswept, the site attracted only two other visitors in the hour we were there.
The Badger Springs trail was a whole other story. We met or were passed by families with dogs and children, heard teenager’s voices echoing along the stream as we crossings from one bank of the water to the other. The abundance of rain this winter made charting a path an adventure.
“That’s the longest .8 miles (actually, it was 1.5 miles) I’ve ever walked,” I said to my husband. “And the slowest,” Bruce said.
The shady, grassy bank of the Agua Fria was worth the walk, a lovely spot to stop and rest. The river was a rush of rapids and eddies with rock faces on either bank, both of them potential canvasses for rock paintings. I asked a women who had continued on ahead, rock-hopping the boulders further on.
“Did you see the petroglyphs? There should be some rock etchings on the walls — 86 of them,” I told her. She looked puzzled. “No.”
Sigh. We’d had enough. We’ll save the rock painting . . . and the Great Horned Owl and the wildflowers for another day. Or days. Going back, we passed by a family group who had brought their own picnic and portable table. At the parking lot, another group had put a grate over a fire pit and were roasting hot dogs.
They probably had an RV parked nearby. Definitely sheltering-in-place.
Flaneuse 
Utterly exhausting. I need a nap.
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