Been a while since I've been out and about and hiking. I've been recovering from really badly overdoing it and my body has been complaining, but my soul and mental health are complaining that I'm not outside as much as I should be. What do you even do at that point...? Ugh. So, it was a gorgeous day here in Phoenix, sunny and cool(er), and eventually I hopped in the car and drove down to South Mountain Preserve, one of the areas I hadn't been before. We started at the five tables(?) trailhead and took the Ranger trail up to the ridgeline, where we met the National Trail. We travelled westbound on the ridgeline to Goat Hill and took an old use trail that was near some mines - I stepped on a shed teddy bear cholla and had to deal with THAT issue - and then scrambled up the ridgeline to the summit. After basking in the view, we took the very well established and easy current use trail back down (whoops), and headed eastbound. We decided that for the first time out in a while, we'd just head down the wash on the Kiwanis trail past Telegraph point (very cool structure/lookout) and then meet up with the Las Lomitas trail to take us back over to the Ranger Trail and back down to my vehicle. A good day! We met a paraglider who was hiking up to the ridgeline, and got to see him paraglide down and he landed fairly close to us. Super cool! A great day and a nice hike. I look forward to getting back to South Mountain and hiking some of the other trails and summits.