Lizard's Mouth: Fun in the Fog

My last Humanist Society hike was to Lizard’s Mouth. Lizard’s Mouth is one of my favorite places to bring visitors who are not up for a full hike. Yet it is one of the most beautiful places to see locally! I led this a month ago when it was still cool and foggy.

Here are all my photos!

This outing was just for fun. For years I organized this hike as a cleanup. But there is not much trash to clean up these days. The big cave is where a lot of the trash is dumped and there was none at all there this time. There seem to be other cleanup fairies at work there! There is even this trash barrel there, but I am not sure who is hauling out the trash. That has to be a lot of work!

Unfortunately, there is a lot of horrible vandalism with paint. We have participated in cleanups of the paint, but it is a huge effort and the vandals see it as a chance to start over on a clean surface.

Most people start the Lizard’s Mouth hike near the Winchester Gun Club. But we started further back along the road. What I call “the back way”.

We climbed onto an overlook where we had a view along West Camino Cielo toward the Gun Club.

We also got our first view of the nose of the Lizard. Notice the soft haze effect of the fog.

Phil is a fellow hiker and unicyclist, but far beyond my level in both skills! Here he quickly made his way up into this rock that resembles a skull.

Tatiana peered through a narrow passage. Hiking is a chance for her to forget the horrors her family is facing back home in Ukraine.

She climbed up this big rock along with Phil and Martin.

Martin and Phil took turns sticking their heads through a hole in that rock. This was Martin.

Appropriately enough, there are always lizards at Lizard’s Mouth! This is a fence lizard, also called a “blue belly”. In this season there are many tiny babies running around. Be careful when hiking not to step on them!

Martha took this photo of us on top of this cool cave rock. Martha and I were the only non-Europeans on this hike!

Here Martha posed with Tatiana and me inside that same cave rock. Notice the eroded texture of the rock. The same as you will see later inside the mouth of the Lizard.

The area is full of beautifully sculpted rocks like this!

We found the marker where young Nicholas Markowitz was senselessly murdered in 2000. His half brother Benjamin Markowitz owed $1,200 to the drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood.

From Wikipedia:

“On August 6, 2000, Hollywood and his friends Jesse Rugge and William Skidmore decided to confront Ben. On their way to see him, they saw Nicholas walking on the side of the road and decided to abduct him and hold him for ransom.”

Hollywood later realized he would be in big trouble for the kidnapping. So he gave Ryan Hoyt a gun and ordered Hoyt to kill Nicholas. Hoyt also owed Hollywood money. The order was carried out by Hoyt and other accomplices. So many lives ruined so pointlessly. At least the bad guys were all eventually caught and prosecuted.

We then made our way to the big cave in the middle of Lizard’s Mouth. Here Martha and Tatiana posed. So sad to see the paint vandalism. At least there was no trash.