Arabia Mountain: Climb to the Top

After having such a nice day in the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area the day before, we decided to return and do the mountain top trail this time. It's not a very far hike and consists of an interesting granite terrain marked by these rock cairns that lead you along the trail.

One of the more interesting features of Arabia Mountain are the little water pools along the way. Apparently in the late winter to early spring these bloom red with an endangered diamorpha plant that eats away at the rock, making the pools larger with time.

 The really striking part about the landscape of Arabia Mountain is that even though you are surrounded by a mostly stark landscape and rock there are still theses patches of beautiful little wildflower fauna growing like little islands of happy daisies on the side of the mountain.

Not too far up the trail we hit the part where you actually had to do a little climbing, but it's really not too difficult of an incline and the rewards are tenfold as the higher you climb the more beautiful the view gets.

In fact it was so beautiful that had to stop part of the way up to the top to admire the view and snap a few pictures.

The closer we got to the top the more frequent and larger the pools were, and the more they began to resemble magical little fairy pools, or what I imagine the pools in the forest in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew looked like (bonus points if you've read the book and get the reference).

Of course, it's also important to mention that my little nugget Max tagged along again for the hike, making this the first mountain he has ever climbed his short little legs to the top of.  However, I'm not quite sure if he was feeling more accomplished or regretful for making the journey when the sun started to warm us up while making our ascent up the rocks.

Adventure Pup and crew, finally made to the very top of the mountain (if you can't tell that last picture is the marker that tells you it's the top of the mountain) and when we got there we were rewarded with a completely unobstructed 360 degree panoramic view of the surrounding area. I read about people making the hike to watch the sunrise from this spot and standing there I could understand why someone might voluntarily brave the pre-dawn hours as I'm guessing the sight would be unimaginably beautiful and certainly a possibility as an adventure for another time.