A fun hike

A couple of weeks ago, I went with a friend to a local national park/monument that was so cool. It had it's own microclimate. We had to drive from the valley up a small mountain to get there. One the way, we passed a circus and could see the elephants. So cool! Anyway, we get up there and the microclimate is one of the desert. They had lots of lizards, snakes and even roadrunners. The best part is it has a few caves you can go through. The write up says "Flashlight required. Some scrambling." It was fun, here is a pic of me about to go into the cave.
At one point, as we were walking, my friend stopped me and said, "Is that what I think it is?" Sure enough, on the path in front of us was a snake, but I pointed out that it had no rattles and suggested that we go around it. It didn't move at all, wasn't interested in us. Just as well. We hiked about 9 miles or so, and the temperature ended up climbing to around 96 degrees, which was a nice change from the foggy 60 degrees we are used to. After the hike, we drove down the mountain and lost 20 degrees in temperature. It was crazy!