Prescott Arizona Part II

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With our spot at the Prescott Elks Lodge extended for another week, we could try to squeeze in a bit more hiking and sightseeing. Just a few miles north of the lodge is the trailhead for a hike up Glassford Hill. The hill is a prominent feature of the surrounding landscape and while it doesn’t seem to have any trees and not even much vegetation, it looked like the view from up top would be worth the effort. At the beginning of the trail are several pieces of art. Scrap metal has been welded to create unique horses that stand guard at the bottom of the hill. The trail to the summit is actually a fairly wide dirt road that’s in good condition. It’s a little over 2 miles to the top and gains about 950 feet. It’s a pretty consistent 8% grade with eight switchbacks up the side of the hill. Since there aren’t any flat sections, it is a constant workout to continue up. The town has considerately placed picnic tables at each of the switchbacks giving the hikers a place to rest on the way up. Once up top, there is a commanding view of the Prescott Valley area. With no trees, you get a full 360 view.

Horses at Glassford Hill Trail

Part Way Up Glassford Hill

View Over Prescott Valley

Our Rig is Down There

Heading Back Down

The following day we headed back several miles to the west to check out the Lynx Lake area. We started at the Highlands Center for Natural History just to the north of the lake. There is a beautiful facility here that appears to host all sort of programs and events. We take a quick look inside the building before heading out to do the 1.5 mile Highlands loop trail. It was a pleasant walk and had the added benefit of several geocaches to look for along the way. One section of the trail has a small creek which we needed to get across for one of the caches. Along the way, we realized that this trail also has access to the Lynx Lake Trail which was our plan for after lunch.

Unique Roofline at Highlands Center

Nice Woods

A Creek to Cross

Rather than moving the car to an area that may require an entrance fee, we just stayed put and after eating we headed back along the Highland trail until we hit the spur trail which leads to Lynx Lake Trail. This 2.5 mile hike follows the perimeter of the very pretty lake and had very little elevation change which was appreciated after yesterday’s hike. The south end of the lake has a day use area that was more crowded than I would have expected for a Tuesday. There were a few people fishing and others out on the calm waters in kayaks and canoes. Along the western edge of the lake is a small but nice looking campground. It was a pleasant hike.

Lynx Lake

Small Bay on Lynx Lake

Ducks Enjoying the Day

We switched it up the next day and went for a bike ride along the Peavine Trail. We had hiked a portion of this during the pretty walk around Watson Lake earlier in our stay. This time we parked at the trailhead parking near where the trail intersects Route 89A. We knew that this parking lot didn’t have a fee since it’s where we parked to do one of the fun puzzle caches. As we start south down the trail, we can see a great deal of smoke in the direction we were heading. We figured (and hoped) it was well beyond how far we planned on riding. The trail is in good condition and not very crowded. The first 2 miles of it was rather uninspiring. But after coming around one long sweeping bend, we hit the section of the trail that had some cool rock formations. We were only a mile or so from the north end of Watson Lake so we were back in the area called the Granite Dells.

Prescribed Burn in Distance

Trees Living with Boulders

When we got to the intersection with the Iron King Trail, we took a left and followed this  route instead of continuing towards the lake that we had already walked past. For just over a mile, we continued to wind thru some incredible rocks. There were a few small rail cars along the route that were interesting to check out. We investigated one for 15 minutes but only because there was a well hidden geocache there and we were unwilling to give up. The rock formations seemed to just suddenly end and the trail continued slightly downhill for a couple miles but reverting back to uninspiring views. We had exited the Granite Dells. It wasn’t clear we could find a way back to the car by continuing on so we turned around and retraced our path. It was a fun 10 mile ride.

Interesting Rail Car with Well Hidden Cache

As we were investigating other options for hiking in the area, we had spotted a handful of geocaches on the map just east of the Peavine Trail in the Granite Dells section of town. Surprisingly, the “All Trails” app didn’t have any trail listed in that area. But our “Trail Forks” mountain biking app did have trails. We discover that the land here was just purchased in early 2018 and a trail system was conceived and started a few months later. So what is known as the Storm Trails are quite new. There isn’t a super convenient spot to park to access these trails but we picked a lot a bit further down on the Peavine Trail near the humane society. This is a pay lot but is only $3 so not too bad. It’s a little over a mile on the Peavine before getting to the trailhead for the Storm Trails.

South End of Watson Lake

Even though the trail system here is brand new, the signage is excellent. Which is a good thing because there are numerous crisscrossing trails so having a sign with map at every intersection keeps us on the intended course. It’s a beautiful area and the hiking was excellent. Not too difficult as long as you pay attention to your footing as the paths winds thru the rock formations. The only time it got a little dicey would be when we headed slightly of the trail to find the geocaches. Often we would need to climb up and around the boulders in order to look in all the cracks and crevices where a cache could be hidden.

Watson Lake from Peavine Trail

Strange Patterns in Rock

We knew if we hiked most of the trail system here and found the caches, it might be a long day. So we had brought our lunch and filled our Camelbacks so we could take our time and enjoy the beauty. Many of the trails have been named after the Flintstones cartoon such as Bedrock City, Bam Bam, and Pebbles. Near one end of the trails was even a new bench firmly bolted to a large rock that provided a spot for a break with high above the surrounding area - appropriately named the Yabba Dabba View Trail!

Bench at Yabba Dabba View

View at Yabba Dabba

More Odd Formations

Large Puddle

As we worked around the trails, we ended up on one that was well above the Peavine. From this vantage point, Watson Lake was in view and what a view! Even though we were out on a beautiful day and were here for many hours, we never ran across another person. It was cool to have our own little park for the day. I suppose as the locals learn about this option, it will become very popular. Our loop ended up being just over 7.5 miles. Personally I think it was a great hiking area but a bit too technical to try on a mountain bike.

Gorgeous View Over Watson Lake

We had been working on one particular puzzle geocache while staying in Prescott but not having much luck. The puzzle had a link to a video that needed to be watched in order to come up with the coordinates. We watched the video dozens of times and had gotten rather tired of listening to the song featured in it. After many attempts at different approaches, we finally correctly solved the thing. If you’re reading this and feel confident in your puzzle solving skills, I challenge you to give this one a try. Here’s a link to the cache page - I'm Going Slightly Mad... (this is a premium member cache so it isn't available to everyone but here is a link to the video to decipher coordinates from - Slightly Mad Video)

Having spent so much time on the cache, we were pleased to see that the final location was back in the Granite Dells area. There were a set of trails just north of Watson Lake so we were happy to get a chance to return for another new hike. The Flume Trail was fun and not too long. Our complete hike was just under two miles. Later in the day we headed into Prescott proper. We had a geocaching event to attend. It was at the library and we enjoyed the chance to meet so many local cachers.

Along Flume Trail

Bridge Over Creek

On our last full day in town, we headed back to another trail north of Lynx Lake. We had a series of caches to find along trail #9263. We managed to find the correct road to the trailhead parking lot and started our hike. In a short distance, we came upon a gate with a sign about free range livestock. As we were reading it, a local walked by and started to tell us about some petroglyphs to be on the lookout for. The initial portion of our hike was a fairly consistent climb. That wouldn’t have been too bad but it is also an ATV trail so it was rather loose rocky footing. We found most of the caches along the trail and eventually ran into trail #95 which would allow us to make it a loop back along the Salida Gulch. We managed to spot the petroglyphs even though there wasn’t a sign pointing them out. Whether we would have noticed them on our own is questionable. It ended up being a 3.5 mile loop and was fun but not nearly as good as those in the Granite Dells area.

Rocky Trail

Petroglyphs

Our 17 nights in Prescott turned out to be quite a lot of fun. We will need to remember to come back in the future. Our next destination will be the Boulder City Nevada Elks Lodge. It is a 230 mile drive from Prescott so we decide to split the distance and do a single overnight at the Kingman Arizona Elks Lodge. This lodge does not have any utilities but is back in a quiet residential area so it should be a safe area for our stay. The camping area is a large lot adjacent to the main building that used to be several tennis courts. No other campers were there so we had no problems getting setup without even disconnecting the Jeep. When we went in to pay, we found out it was taco Tuesday, so we even stayed around for dinner and chatted with some of the locals about living in the motorhome full time.