Dave, Fr. Charlie, and I went to Mingus Mountain on August 11, 2022. It’s a 2 hr drive from Fr. Charlie’s place, and we got there at about 8:30 AM. It was my first trip to Mingus Mountain. We wanted to find some cool weather, and we wanted Dave to finally see the Red-faced Warbler, so Mingus Mountain fit the bill. Mingus Mountain is just off Highway 89A, between Prescott Valley and Cottonwood.
We stopped at Butterfly Spring first. This is a hotspot on ebird.org. It’s a non-descript, unmarked spot off of FR 104, just about a mile from Mingus Lake. It was a nice place. We saw the Red-faced Warbler there. We also saw a Nashville Warbler, but I wasn’t able to get a good photo of it.
Next, we went to Mingus Lake. It’s also known as Elk Pond; it’s more of a pond than a lake. We ate lunch there, and walked around the lake.
I found a new website for identifying flowers at wildflowersearch.org. It’s my new favorite. I added it to the Links page on this site. There were quite a few mushrooms, so I attempted to identify them. Dave was using an app called ‘seek’ by iNaturalist to identify plants (flowers and mushrooms in this case). I tried it on my photos when I got home. It is helpful, but doesn’t always give the ‘final’ answer.
In the afternoon a storm rolled in, and we got some lightning, very loud thunder, and some rain, on the way out. We were home by dinner time.
Mingus Mountain is a nice spot, and it won’t be my last trip there.
