Terry is an old friend and he and I have about the same adventure level. Although the Willow Creek hike he planned last fall was over the top. This week he wanted to go to Araviapa, a canyon that I'd been wanting to hike for years. It is difficult to get permits during the cool months but since it was June Terry didn't have any trouble. In fact we were the only ones there.
Terry loves to take his grand kids hiking but their mothers don't like them hiking alone with just their grandfather, so I'm the designated hiking partner that has to get them out if something happens to Terry. I've told him that I promise to get the kids out but that I'm not carrying him out - I will call for help for him though.
This day we had 10 year old Carson and 9 year old Hayden with us. It was a cool beautiful day which is very unusual for June in Arizona. If you can tell, there is one of us that isn't smiling quite as much as the rest. We would soon find out that he wasn't too excited to be there that day.
From the very start of the hike we had to walk in the water and that was agreeable with us all, in fact Hayden plunged in and couldn't wait to get really wet. The stream was mostly in the shade, the water was cool and we were ready for our 8 mile round trip hike.
We looked for wildlife, posed for pictures and played as we went but did notice that one of our group was lagging a bit from the very beginning. Terry said he liked to day dream a bit but that he was a good hiker so we let him fall behind a bit.
Once when we stopped to let him catch up with us we noticed that he was limping. He showed us that his shoe had fallen apart. Carson had questioned the big roll of duct tape that Terry made him carry but as his shoe was duct taped back together, he was very glad we had it. Now was he not only slow but his shoe was a mess.
It wasn't too much longer before the other shoe fell apart too and as you can see from our group picture at our lunch spot, Carson had matching Tin Man shoes. We didn't make it to our destination because we were going so slow, so we found a shady spot, had lunch and prepared to head back. At this point our poky hiker became excited and declared that he was going to run all the way back. That lasted about 15 minutes and he returned to his snail pace which was just driving Terry crazy.
Araviapa Canyon is absolutely beautiful and in many places the saguaro cactus come pretty close too the stream. Since we were going pretty slow we had lots of time to look at the scenery.
The rocks were amazing and I keep telling Terry that he needs to take a geology class so we know about all the rocks that we see when we hike. There were bright orange, green and blue ones and lots of layers of rocks as we got deeper into the canyon.
It had been partly cloudy most of the day but on our way back during the hottest part of the day the clouds left us. So what do you do when your walking in a stream and your hot? Find a deep spot and get soaking wet
and then have a little water fight!
On our way home we stopped for drinks and Carson wanted a Dr. Pepper. We questioned whether his mom let him drink Dr. Pepper and he assured us that she did. After drinking the whole thing, he was bouncing off the walls all the way home. Terry declared that next time he would have the Dr. Pepper before we started to hike. Originally Terry had told me that we would be home about 1 o'clock and I figured I would still have a good portion of the day to get things done. Well, we didn't get home until after 5 but that was okay. We had had a great day in a cool stream in the middle of the desert. Araviapa is a place I will definitely be going back to.
1 comment:
I have been waiting to hear how Jason is adjusting and to hear some great stories! This post is only adding to the suspense!
Looks like a fun hike! There is alot of hiking where we went this past weekend. You will have to take ME on a hike sometime. I would love to go and see some pretty scenery up close.
Post a Comment