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Cellpic Sunday – FINS Hike

Fantasy Island North Singletrack (FINS) is a hiking and biking trail set surrounded by the Estrella Ranch Development near our place in Buckeye, Arizona. Though much of the trail is open to hikers, this branch has signage that says it’s Kimurel’s Hurl. Expert Bikers Only, No Hikers. The sign underneath the stuffed snakes in the tree says, “Helloo, Lunch.”

Lynn and I started hiking when we first started wintering in Buckeye in 2012. It was the Arizona Centennial that year, and one of the suggested activities was to hike 100 miles in the centennial year. That got us started, and we’ve hiked every year since then. In fact, for several years, I’ve been a hike leader for the Hiking Club of Verrado. We even increased the challenge to 100 miles in 100 days for several years. Though 2015 was the last year we hiked 100 miles in Arizona, I’ve been consistent at 50 to 65 miles per year since then, mostly due to my leading hikes.

This was my first hike at FINS, but it won’t be my last. This journey lasted four miles, but there are many more miles in the area to explore. For the first time since I started Cellpic Sunday, I’ve included a gallery of images that I captured on this hike. You can view the entire album of images here.

About the photo: I forgot to switch my Samsung S20U to 108 MP mode, so this image (and the others in the gallery) were originally approximately 4K in size depending upon the final crop. After the usual minimal cropping and straightening in Lightroom, I sent the images to Luminar AI for final processing.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

40 comments

    • Thanks, Sarah. I was really intrigued by the signage and would have loved to walk it… but it’s for bikers only. I suspect there are some jumps and other breaks in the trail that wouldn’t be appropriate for hikers.

      Reply

      • Oh gosh, yes! We could easily stay with my brother in Scottsdale this time of year but getting there proved to be difficult this time. Hopefully next year we can figure out staying in AZ in the winter for a couple of weeks!

  16. It looks like a marvelous place to explore, John, and interesting how the natural features were augmented by that snake – I bet many first-time riders on this trail get quite a fright!

    Reply

  25. One of our New Year’s goals is to go on one of these amazing hikes with you and Lynn. We are having snow and wind today. Snow this morning and dismal cold wind and gray skies tonight driving my hiking instincts right out the window for today. 🙂

    Reply

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