Oh, Scott, so sorry for you. I cringe at the thought of all those spines in you, not to mention your sprained toe.

Touché!

Mr. Cholla has a story with a simple plot.
He sits by a trail and sees hikers a lot,
Most of them are kind
So he doesn't mind,
Until the day he got attacked by a Scott.

Thanks for the obviously wise advice, Suzanne. Inconvenience, as lame (heh, heh) as that sounds, is the main reason. Bisbee and Ajo are both small, remote places with limited services, and if we stopped in a city on the long drive between them we might have run out of daylight.

One more day later it continues to look and feel better, so I’m optimistic. Borrego Springs, where we’ll be staying next for five days, does have a clinic though, so I might stop in when we get there.

I hope it's not broken. I broke a toe once but thought it was just sprained and decided walking would be ok for it. Wrong. It took much longer to heal. Why not have an x-ray?

Hope you're quickly on the mend, Scott. I hope the big toe is not broken.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. So happy it isn’t broken, but ouch!

Keith and I hike with two poles, always. Our oldest son and his wife, both just 36, who are heavily into adventure sports and are climbers...I mean the kind of climbing that is mind blowing (and worrying to the parental unit) hike with poles at all times. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me. The poles have saved me more times than I care to count. I highly recommend it for those of us who don’t bounce as well as we used to.

Chuckle! The leaves are key. Heavy leaves are agave. Both have species with recurved spines on the leaves, but yuccas are smaller & thinner.

You do much better than most on your nature IDs and better than I do on many trees. Keep up the good work!

I have two, but one really seems sufficient at this point and I much prefer to keep a hand free. I just need to work on my technique a bit, or maybe wear armor.

Yes, I’ve got a list of catastrophes stored up to enact to add spice to the journal. I try to space them out for use at a suitable time.

I’m sure I’ve got some embedded in me, especially around my waist where I brushed them off at first and probably broke some tops off. At least they’re straight spined though and not so difficult to extract like the jumping cholla that attacked me years ago.

Actually I thought it was an agave too. But I was sure if I said so you’d say it was just another soap yucca.

I think it is an oak. There are quite a few similar looking species in that area.

Hard to tell for sure. Possibly sand sagebrush?

https://cals.arizona.edu/yavapaiplants/SpeciesDetailForb.php?genus=Artemisia&species=filifolia