T-Bone Trail

Monday, January 24, 2022 

Hike #10 of 2022.  4.5 miles / 39.0 miles YTD

Today's hike was right on the very edge of town on the T-Bone trail.  There is a parking area at each end of this trail so you can approach it from either direction.  We have done a small portion of the trail - starting from the end closest to the city - a couple of times.  Once was on a vacation out here a number of years ago and the second was not long after we moved here.  Both of those times, we turned off the T-Bone trail and continued on down a different trail.  This time, we parked at the end that is farther outside of town and hiked in from the opposite direction.  For the most part, this is just another OHV trail.  So I honestly was expecting it to be rather boring.  It is fairly straight and it goes through a wide open area so the majority of the views are far off in the distance, until you reach Pioneer Park on the edge of the city.  However, even though it is fairly straight, there is quite a bit of up and down and some of the trail surface is rocky.  So it ended up taking more effort than I anticipated.

There was one vehicle parked at the trailhead when we arrived, but they were wrapping up and heading out.  We did not see anyone else until we started to approach Pioneer Park.  There we came upon a pair on horseback.  We moved way off the side of the trail again because Summit got super excited over the horses the last time we encountered some.  She isn't really a barker - just in rare instances when she gets startled, and then it is only one or two - but when she gets excited about something, she jumps and pulls quite a bit.  She got excited again this time but was able to contain it better than last time.  We also saw a couple runners on the trail after the horses.

Once we reached Pioneer Park, we spent some time on the overlook over the city and the Red Hills Desert Garden.  

As a general statement, we live in the area near the closest high point above my head.

This is just the opposite direction of the first photo.  We hiked in from back in the direction of the snowy mountin.


We had taken Summit through the Christmas lights at the garden but there were way too many people there that night.  However, it was not busy at all today so we decided to go down and wander through before heading back to the truck.

https://redhillsdesertgarden.com/






Summit was so well behaved tonight - both on the hike and in the garden.  She enjoys hiking so much that she can lose focus and try to get us to go at a faster pace (she is always on leash so that makes her pull).  She was relatively calm tonight though.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that there weren't really any obstacles or any curves/turns to get her excited about.

Going into this one, I was thinking it was just going to be one to check off the list so we could say we did it but I would definitely be open to doing this one again - especially since it is so close to home.


Almost back to the truck.




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