Cave Creek Regional Park

CAVE CREEK REGIONAL PARK

Located within a short driving distance from phoenix near Happy Valley this beautiful desert park offers rugged views of Sonoran Desert. It has numerous trails for multi purpose usage for horseback riding, biking and hiking.  The best thing about these trails are most of them can be made into loops combining each other into a distance of one's liking or to test ones endurance. 

Coming from Las Vegas my aim was to visit the cave creek trail in Tonto National Forest. After considering the traveling distance and that one has to drive on a gravel road for 12 miles I decided to settle for this nice regional park and I was not disappointed. It offers a nice quite escape from the city life into well maintained and marked trail system. As of Nov 21, 2017 the entry fee was 6$ per vehicle and less for day usage by bicycle. Although it has plenty of benches spread throughout the park shades are hard to come by. The weather was perfect for hiking with the highs around 79 degrees reported in phoenix. Even in that perfect weather by 2 PM out in the desert floor I was feeling it out on the Go John trail in one particular section near the Gunsight pass where there was absolutely no shade for a while. I can only imagine how tough it would be out in hot days which seems to be most days of the year in this area. 

Nature center is located a short distance from the pay station and has coffee from Kurig coffee machine at $1.50 a cup and energy bars and water are for sale as well. The staff were extremely friendly and patient. They answered all my questions on their trail system along with recommendations.  They even had couple of rattlesnakes in the showcase and one of them was extremely big. I am afraid of snakes and an encounter with a big one like that in the wild I would want to turn around and run. But then if it is overweight and sluggish it may not be the worst to encounter as well. I was bit tentative watching out for the rattlers constantly when I started my hike but when I saw how well maintained the trails were with no overgrowth of the shrubs or grass onto the trail I relaxed. 

I started out on the Overton Trail with the intention of taking Maricopa Trail back to the nature center a 3 mile loop in time for a good lunch. When I reached the junction of Maricopa Trail I was feeling good although hungry and I couldnot resist but go along the Go John trail and complete the 6 mile loop. Overton Trail starts off with views of nearby town as it climbs and it stinks a bit of the horse dung. I guess the horses relieve themselves near the begining of the trail and I didn't see the dung droppings that much after a mile or so. The only wild life I encountered was some birds trying to peck away insects out of the horse dung.  I wanted to take some photographs of birds but waiting for a photo opp near that smell or the photo opp itself was not that apealing so I climbed on. Plenty of Saguaros spread throughout the park. 

Once the trail meets the maricopa trail it starts climbing down to the desert floor and I believe at its lowest point or so it reaches the park boundary. At this point there is a park bench where one can relax and enjoy the view. But the solitude was not so quite since there is a road construction going on with plenty of banging. That noise soon got engulfed in the silence of the desert floor after traversing half a mile. This stretch I believe would be real tiresome in the sun since there is absolutely no shade till it starts climbing back again.  Between the bench near park boundary and the Quartz trail it meets with a spur trail that has no name and it hard to get lost even if one tries. The trail starts climbing back again near the Gunsight pass and then starts climbing down near the Quartz trail.

 Even though the saguaros were sprinkled throughout the park there is one stretch I didn't see much of them but it was interesting to see one lone Saguaro on top of a hill. Before the Go John trail ends there is a sprinkling of variety of Saguaros new and old. Most them don't have branches or siblings as I like to think. The largest saguaro is supposed to be 10 feet in girth, that is simply amazing unless they count the width of the limbs. The largest saguaro recorded was in cave creek region (not sure here or in cave creek part of tonto national forest) but the height recorded was 78 feet (almost double what we see around here) before it was toppled in a storm. The one most limbs in this area is located closer to the end of Go John trail and I call it grand father saguaro. You get to to see some young not so tall but with many short limbs.  Go John trail ends pretty close to picnic area next to a huge parking area where you pick up the overton trail to continue on to nature center. It starts following the main road for a bit before forking off into a trail crossing a wash with a hop skip and jump to the nature center.

It took me close to 3.5 to 4 hours but i took plenty of breaks and I believe one can finish the trail within three hours.