I was just at the springs. Passed Jobe hiking out as I was hiking in and he let me know what seemed obvious - i would be the only one there. But with the rains and the desert still wet all around, the biggest thing I noticed...aside from the coyote carcass on the Bowen Ranch road as I drove in, or the spreading problem with urban graffiti even a swastika out there on a rock...was how ripped up the desert was by dirt bikes. Worst I've ever seen it. They rip right across the trails and up and down the hills making the rain erosion even more extreme than it would have been.
So just to say any bikes out there should stick only to roads and trails made for them.
The springs were incredible. I gathered a good bag of trash but it was of the small incidental kind, there were no big piles around. Still, I gathered cigs, tent poles, a frying pan, some towels (there are still some I couldn't pack out them all), some underwear, a sock, some tampons and applicators unfortunately, t.p. but it seemed of the clean unused variety, granola bar wrappers, plastic packaging of various kinds, bits and parts of abandoned camping equipment. A second thick bag for an Asian girl's lunch was requested by me - she gave it to me wondering what I might be on, it seemed - so I could bag up a whole bunch of glass shards. I really did find a lot of them. Right in the sand on the beach mostly. Anyway I gave the place a little cleaning.
Otherwise it was just me and the birds for hours in the morning. Arizona Pool was the place to be with the cold weather.