DCHS 10-24 / Photos

I did a hike to DCHS today and the weather was perfect. The Deep Creek canyon is full of fall colors, reds, yellows, oranges, etc. I noticed while hiking in that there is lots of signs of a really big thunderstorm hitting the area sometime earlier this summer. When I arrived at DCHS I noticed right away a brand new beach area right next to the Arizona Pool. The big thunderstorm had caused heavy runoff down a canyon east of the Arizona Pool area which flows onto DCHS Del Mar and down into Deep Creek. DCHS Del Mar is quite changed from all of the runoff having significant ruts it it from the water flows. I also noticed that some new cement work has been done on the dam of the Arizona Pool. A guy said that this work was done last week. The Cottonwood forest is really getting big which is now providing great shade for those hot summertime afternoons. The Aniversary pool was in good shape and mostly clean of algae. I got my pool hose and mask and spent a couple of hours cleaning algae and debris from the bottom of the Womb and the Serenity Pools. There was alot of algae debris, sand, leaves, twigs in the bottom of the Womb. I was only able to clean a bit over half of the stuff out since my time was limited. Got the algae and some sand out of the Serenity Pool but it goes real slow with that one since the suction is limited because its level is so close to that of the stream. It was a real nice day with a mellow and quiet crowd. Just the way I like it :-) A couple hit the creek and could be heard making alot of noises after hitting the chilly waters :-) Had a nice chat at the end of the day with a man named Carson who is a member of DCV. I latter realized that I had seen him back in May when I was down there with Ron Mercer and a large group of Naturist that he had come with. There are quite alot of Fire pits around, and the usual trashy stuff in places back in the bushes. Overall the place was looking fairly clean. Carson told me a number of stories about stupid stuff happening down there on his earlier visits in the spring and early summer. Typical for some of the summertime crowd behavior. Carson used to use the Bowen Ranch for access, then he said that he had a dispute with Mike Castro about his pricing and ended up the next week deciding to use public access roads ( as he said he had told Mike he was planning on doing ) to park and hike by a route other than utilizing the bowen Ranch. When he got back to his car after his visit to DCHS he found a window of his car broke out. Are any of ya feeling some De Ja Vu about this story. Anyway it was a good day and it was nice to get in a good soak at DCHS again. I put six photos taken today during my hike ( 5 of DCHS / 1 Deep Creek Canyon ) at my Flickr photo site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotspringswizard/?saved=1

and they are the first six, dated 10-24