Mary Ann and I made our annual trip to Aravaipa Canyon. As we have been doing in recent years, we bookend the Aravaipa hike with visits to some other spots in the area. This year’s trip we hit the same spots as last year. On April 10th (Monday morning) we drove to Roper Lake State Park and Dankworth Pond State Park. On Tuesday we hiked Aravaipa. On Wednesday we went to the town of Portal. This post is for the first day. We stayed at the Motel 6 this year. The price of motels has gone up a lot since last year, and the Motel 6 was cheaper. It was a good room, and met all of our requirements.
It was a 3 hour drive from home to Roper Lake State Park. We arrived there at about 11 AM. We hiked around the island (actually it’s a peninsula) in the middle of the lake. Last year, it was loaded with Yellow Warblers, but this year there were none. We went in May last year, and they are summer residents, so I guess they hadn’t arrived yet. The Hooded Orioles had arrived, though; we saw two males and one female.
Our next stop was Dankworth Pond State Park just about 5 minutes down the road from Roper Lake. Dankworth Pond is a small man made pond fed by a warm artesian spring. We hiked the two mile Dos Arroyos Trail to a replica Indian village, and hiked the 1.5 mile trail around the pond. In the reeds around the pond there was a very large flock of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, making a loud racket.
The drive from Dankworth Pond to the Motel 6 was about 15 minutes. It was a good first day. My next post will be for Aravaipa Canyon.
