08 February 2009

The Gilbert Riparian Preserve

Sarah near a GINORMOUS palm tree!
Yesterday, as part of my get-out-more program and geocaching agenda, I decided to visit Gilbert, Arizona and geocache there for the day. After a good mile-long hike around one of the communities there, my sister and I grabbed a quick lunch before getting to the real focal point of the day, the Gilbert Riparian Preserve located at Greenfield and Guadalupe. This nature preserve is a natural wetland area, with lakes, ponds, a bird walk, and plenty of desrt plantlife. They even have an observatory there, which sometime I will have to go back and check out more thoroughly.
It was a nice place to visit for the day, and Sarah and I collected 23 geocaches in our hike, which was somewhere around 4 miles in total. About half of those were in the Preserve itself. Thank goodness it was such nice weather, too, which made all the difference. A few degrees hotter and I think I would have cut the day shorter.

4 comments:

  1. that sounds super fun! i was excited today, because i was able to take off 2 of my 3 torso layers running in the 38 degree sun. :) i had no idea there would be so many caches in the same area - sounds like a hobby i could get into too

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  2. We had nice weather too - 70 degrees. Perfect for a nice round of tennis.

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  3. That's a good concentration of caches for a 4 mile walk. Is there an observatory dome?

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  4. @BillnPegz: There are actually only 15 within the park itself - we got the other 8 on the way there. Yes, the Rotary Centennial Observatory is in the northern part of the park, along with a small piece of Mars!

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