A mandatory $5.00 fee per vehicle funds maintenance of campgrounds, picnic areas, and trails the pay station is self-serve, so be sure to have small bills. The parking area and turnaround at the end of the road, moved closer to the main road following major flooding in 2014, is narrow and often crowded with cars large RVs or vehicles with trailers may not be able to negotiate it. The bridge is often a particularly productive stop. The entrance road offers excellent birding which is all too often missed by those hurrying on to the trailhead. This day-use-only area is closed to collecting year round and to use of recording equipment or playback of taped calls during nesting season to protect trogons, owls, and other birds. The road to the famous South Fork Zoological and Botanical Area takes off to the left near the Sunny Flat Campground. Wildfires are an essential part of the ecology of southeastern Arizona’s mountain woodlands and forests, recycling nutrients trapped in dead leaves, stimulating seed germination, and creating sunny openings where wildflowers, shrubs, and young trees can thrive Forest Service ranger station and winds along Cave Creek watch for Elegant Trogons all along this stretch, particularly where Arizona Sycamores grow close to the road. Some residents in the Portal area welcome visitors to their backyard feeding stations for information on current opportunities, inquire at the Portal Store in town or the ranger station up the road. As you cruise up Portal Road west from Hwy 80, grasses give way first to thorn scrub then to a variety of evergreen oaks. Traveling on Hwy 80 toward Portal from Douglas you will pass through rolling grasslands punctuated by the cones of extinct volcanoes watch for Burrowing Owls and Pronghorns along the highway. The town of Portal is the gateway to world-famous Cave Creek Canyon. The largest of the “sky island” mountain ranges in the Coronado National Forest, the Chiricahuas are home to animals and plants found nowhere else in the U.S. Towering formations of lichen-crusted rhyolite frame the entrance to Cave Creek Canyon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |