Location: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, AZ
Super Bowl 49 was held in the University of Phoenix Stadium, just a short drive south from us. We joined 80,000 of our closest friends by heading to Glendale to experience the game's festivities, entry lines, vehicle congestion, concession stand lines, inebriated screamers, parking fun, and bathroom lines.
Okay, no way did that happen. We tried to stay as far away from 80,000 people as we could, in fact. To that end, we actually drove north (not south) to a nearby park for an early afternoon hike. So actually, let's just go ahead and re-title this Blog post correctly at this point...
Pinnacle Peak hike
(Dateline: 2015-02-01, Sunday)
(Location: Pinnacle Peak, AZ)
Pinnacle Peak Park has a hiking trail that winds through the mountains that is one of the most popular in the area. There was something less than 80,000 people on the trail today, probably in the 150-200 range. Even though it's about 2 miles long, that makes for a pretty busy trail area — definitely more heavily trafficked than some of our other recent hikes. The route goes up and down in elevation several times and provides great vistas from different perspectives, which is nice.
This first picture is a good example of the scenery and surroundings. The massive saguaro in the center is likely 200+ years old.
Ever wonder what the inside of a saguaro is actually like? This is a picture of a fallen saguaro, where you can see the individual stalk-like branches that make up the "skeleton".
I wasn't lying about the name of the "teddy bear cholla" in my previous post, see?
These next two are red barrel cacti. I like the trio of siblings all bunched up together in the first picture. And the second picture is astounding — that's definitely the coolest red barrel on the entire hike. It's a pretty good-sized cactus growing straight on top of a massive flat section of rock jutting out from the cliff side.
This is looking up one of the mountainsides that we were about to climb. The trail is invisible from this perspective, but it winds back and forth up in elevation until you're just below the massive rock cluster at the top. I like how this picture captured the clearness of the sky and the brightness of the sunshine.
The full Flickr album of all photos taken during the hike can be found here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/CPGetaways/sets/
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