Alligator Juniper Trees

I like to explore the wilderness and I particularly love the shape and form of trees, rocks, and boulders. Today I would like to share with you one of my favorite trees, the alligator juniper. I hope you enjoy these alligator juniper photos and that they help you to appreciate their character as much as I do.

These trees are fairly common here in Prescott. They take an incredibly long time to grow because they live in such an arid landscape. When I walk in their shade, down nearby hiking trails, I take note that some are hundreds of years old.

This is a nice specimen with a full canopy. I took this photo on Prescott trail 62, near The Ranch at Prescott. This tree could be a couple of hundred years old. Not many of the trees that I've seen are this symmetrical or this full.

I'm not sure why some of the alligator juniper branches die and break off, but this seems to be pretty common also - at least around here. I took this photo on Prescott trail 301 (near the Lynx Creek Pueblo ruins). It was sheltering a nearby, hollowed out alligator juniper tree tunk (below).

I just had to stop and take several photos of this hollowed out, dead, alligator juniper tree tunk. It reminds me of a crazy, pointed crown. The colors are lovely, and the branch near it is covered with green moss.

Alligator junipers have a very distinctive bark with a scaley appearance (thus the name). The scale colors range from gray to brown.

As the trees form branches, the scales grow around them. When the branches die and fall, they leave a distinct "hole" around what is left of the dead branch.

While the trunks have a scaley pattern, the branches have the look of shaved chocolate - brown and peeling away (yum).

On Prescott trail 62 in January, I came upon an alligator juniper that had dropped most of its berries. This is a close up of just a few of the thousands of berries that blended with the carpet of juniper needles.

A Trip to Grand Falls AZ

Robert and I went on a trip to Grand Falls, Arizona, which is on the Navajo Indian Reservation. We first heard about the falls on a local show called Arizona Highways (yes, like the magazine). They mentioned that the falls were seasonal and typically ran only after a large snow melt (in the spring) or after hard rains during the Arizona monsoon season (in late summer).

I figured we would never see them run, as I usually have bad timing about such things. However, a friend of Robert's took him to see the Grand Falls the week before our trip. The snow was just beginning to melt into the Little Colorado Springs river and the falls were running pretty nicely. So Robert and I planned a trip so we could see it together.

The snows had begun to melt in earnest, so when we got there, the water was higher and the speed of the water over the falls was stronger. When we first got there, we stopped at the river's edge before proceeding to the falls themselves. I zoomed in so that I could get a good photo of the snow capped San Francisco Peaks in the backgound.

Notice the rapidly moving water in the foreground. The color of the muddy water is a chocolate brown. This gave the falls the nick name of the Chocolate Falls.

I was told that the falls were created when a lava flow redirected the water. The whole area was volcanic at one point in time. Notice the black, lava dirt and rock formations on the left and the natural terrain on the right.

Here is another shot from a different direction. I think this shot from the top edge gives you a pretty good perspective of the falls and gives you a close up of some of the lava rock.

When Robert went with his friends, they did not have a chance to walk down to the bottom of the falls. And, of course, I just had to go. It is like getting up close and personal with the falls. In some places the mist was so heavy it felt like rain (muddy rain). We ended up with a lot of mud on our shoes.

Robert and I are hoping to get to take more day trips in the future. We live so close to so many wonderful places and just can't wait to head out on our next trip.