Enchanting Enchanted Rock

It’s been so crazy around here lately that I haven’t had time to go through my photos for awhile — hate that! Decided to put an end to it today, starting with a hiking trip to Enchanted Rock with my friend Scott on April 11th.

Enchanted Rock (or E-Rock as we call it) is the second largest granite batholith in the world, behind Ayers Rock in Australia.

Here we are taking a breather on the way to the top

The white dot at the top is a fellow hiker — click the image to view it larger.

Looking back to where we’d been

It was a little crowded at the top, so we didn’t linger long — instead we found some shade and had our first lunch…mmmmm, strawberries, blueberries, crackers…more on that later!

After lunch we headed over to the second batholith in the park — it’s behind Scott.

But first we had to stop and admire this poison ivy for J — one of his favorite plants, ha ha ha. It was blooming and loaded with neat bees.

There’s tons of cool plants growing in cracks in the granite. We kept finding claret cup cacti — one with a nectaring hummingbird!

At one point Scott managed to take a picture of me, but not before I dropped into the “hunker down and hide under your big brimmed Texas hat” position — ha!

We did pretty much all the trails in the park — so relaxing and pretty. We got back to the parking lot after around 7 hours of hiking — but I just didn’t want to leave. So I convinced Scott that we could make the summit again before dark.

me: Let’s go back up to the top!
Scott (looking at the time): No way, it will get dark!
me: Nah, we can get there in 20 minutes or so. You’ll regret it if you don’t, you may never get here again!
Scott: Hmmm. Where’s that Strawberry C? (gulp gulp gulp ahhhh…) okay.
me: Woo hoo!

Here’s one of the vernal pools up at the top — there’s little shrimp in them during the spring. Oh and the dark green patch is onions — mmmmm. The tawny grass is little bluestem — it’s a prairie grass.

Speaking of food, here’s where we had lunch