Flower hunting along Newell Open Space Loop

Before we stepped foot on the trail we started off our day with an unexpected wildlife encounter.  While preparing our backpacks at the car I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye and found a rabbit scurrying a few feet away from us.  It took a quick look around and then sought shelter between the port-o-potty and some brush at the trailhead.

We had planned our trip to Newell on this day in hopes of finding a lot of Lupine on trails we had hiked in previous years.  Measured on that criteria alone the trip would have been something of a letdown.  Several segments where we saw an abundance of Lupine in the past we found no sign of them this year.  Instead, tall grass had already enveloped the sides of the trails.  We did finally spot some Lupine on later trail segments when we had given up all hope.  Our wildflower haul increased dramatically towards the end of our hike where we spotted some on our sought out Lupine but also plenty of Poppies, Blue Dicks, Yarrow, Blue-eyes grass, Hog Fennel and Mustard.

As always, we still enjoyed hiking at Newell a great deal and the views can hardly be beat.  We did our preferred loop that touches all of the high points in the park  for us and totaled about 6 miles.  This included the Creekseid and Valley Trails, the Loop Trail and the highly recommended Prairie Ridge Trail.  It's debatable whether the Prairie Ridge Trail is in Newell or the adjacent Lynch Canyon Open Space Park since it straddles the boundary between each.  Regardless, it's typically the highlight of our hikes here.