Coffee and Canyons in the Aubrey Hills

It's our habit first thing every morning to take our coffee mugs out for a walk.  Usually this is a stroll of only an hour or so before breakfast, and so our options are limited.  Often it becomes a perambulation of our campground.  Occasionally, we have more scenic choices, such as here at The Steps, where we could walk off in any of a half dozen directions and see things of interest.

This morning we found a wash at the south end of our boondock area.  The wash had potential as it wound eastward up into the Aubrey Hills and disappeared around a bend thick with cottonwood and other greenery.  So we headed down a steep ATV trail to the bed of the wash and turned upstream:

Surprise!  This wash had three beautiful drop-offs, where periodic flash floods had polished the red rocks to a white luster:

Each dry waterfall was easy to navigate.  Here's Kathy looking up to Dave's clearly masterful rock-climbing skills:

This is the ecotone between the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, to the east, and the Mojave Desert of California, to the west.  Thus, saguaros are few and far between.  But we did see this lone sentinel who undoubtedly was marking our progress and trying to decide whether to warn his fellow cacti that danger was near:

Every turn of this wash had something new and interesting.  Among other things, we found rich veins of quartz that diverted us for long hunts among stones for the perfect specimens; and David spotted this dramatic cliff formation carved by the rushing waters:

It is early Spring here, and we noticed a beautiful little purple wildflower clinging to fresh life in the rock walls above the wash:

As all good coffee walks go, this had to end, but we decided to mark the far point of our exploration with a rocky shadow photo.  Cheers!