The Mother of All Adventures

I was done with church, and I had bought my bracelet. Yet the day was still young.

Getting back to the B & B, I changed out of my Sunday-Go-To-Meeting clothes and put on something more appropriate for adventuring.

This time, I was going to take a drive out to the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area. It was about a 5 mile ride.

Having learned my lesson from previous hikes, I brought my boonie hat and, more importantly, packed my replenished water bottle.

Driving is easy in Arizona. The roads make sense. And people seem to respect the plentiful 4-way stop signs. Even when the pavement gives way to dirt the roads still have appeared easily navigable.

I drove up the occasionally twisty and turny Spur Cross Road, passing a couple of horse ranches, until I reached an area that looked like it had some heavy excavation going on.

Was I heading in the right direction?

Well, I had to be. There was no other way I could have gone.

Shortly after what appeared to be a giant gravel pit lay the parking lot.

I discovered a bit later on that the gravel pit area was the closed-down Phoenix Mine. So that's what a mine looked like.

When it came to mines, I had visions of mineral carts on rails that led down a dark maw into the pit of the earth and where miners wore helmets with lights on them.

This mine looked nothing like the mines I pictured in my imagination. This was just a whole bunch of huge piles of dirt.

There was one other car in the parking area. (I hate to call it a "parking lot" because it is not nicely paved with neatly painted lines. It was just an area that had been cleared out and had its surface leveled.)

Getting out of my car, I followed the signs that pointed towards the trails.

The information hut was about a quarter of a mile walk. However, I had to stop and take pictures of the beautiful panoramic view.

And what a view it was!

Breathtakingly gorgeous!

There were mountains all around

and as far as the eye could see.

See that VERY tiny light colored rectangular structure under the mountain on the right? That was the information hut and the starting point of the hiking and horse trails.

After having taken my panoramic shots, I started walking towards the trails.

Coming from the opposite direction were 2 young women wearing white pants and what looked like, to me, resort wear. One was carrying a small white and red umbrella, daintily holding it aloft like a parasol. The other was carrying what looked like an extra pair of shoes.

Strange.

What were they doing here? They looked like they just came back from sipping mojitos in Miami instead of hiking the hard-scrabble desert trails of Arizona.

Shortly after passing the odd couple, I came to a locked gate that had a small opening to the right to permit people and horses.

Just beyond the opening, there was an information kiosk ~ sort of like those "you-are-here" thingies.

I read the rules, observed the honor system by paying my $3.00 permit fee, grabbed my permit number and a trail map, and proceeded to the trails.

Just before the start of the trails was the information hut with a couple of ATVs parked to the side. At least somebody thought to make the building more interesting by painting a mural of desert life on its side.

Now, let the hike begin!

The trails were nice and wide. And I definitely made sure to stick to the middle of the trail.

There was desert scrub everywhere. In some spots, these areas were fenced off from the trail because they were private property. God! Imagine having all this beauty in your backyard!

Where the areas were not fenced off, I had to resist the temptation to go off-trail and explore. After all, I never knew where a rattlesnake would be hiding. At least with a wide trail I have more ground visibility than were I to go off and play in the scrub.

Along the trail I came to a dried out riverbed.

This is the ONLY water I saw in any of my desert hikes in Arizona.

This is the other side of the riverbed that I just crossed.

And this is looking down on the same riverbed further up the trail.

Further up the trail, the landscape gets more hilly.

I just can't get enough of those saguaro cacti.

Oh wow! I've entered a saguaro forest. Cool!

That poor fellow on the left looks rather tired and beat, doesn't he?

It gets awfully hot hoofing it uphill.

In addition to saguaro, there's prickly pear.

Here's a close-up so that you can see the fruit on the cactus. I was thinking of picking the fruit. But 2 things stopped me.

First of all, I did not want to get too close to annoy any sleeping rattlesnakes.

Secondly, the fruit itself is dotted with tiny spines that I did not feel like making the effort to remove them before taking a taste.

Both the leaves and fruit of the prickly pear cactus are edible. However, it does take some preparation before you can safely eat the cactus without running the risk of getting a mouthful of spines.

Look at all those hills and mountains. I'm sure glad I wasn't going to be climbing them.

God! I may be hot and exhausted from the unrelenting sun and practically non-existent shade, but I still cannot get enough of all this desert beauty!

I came across another dried out riverbed.

Can you imagine a river flowing through here? Or even a creek?

Look at all the cracks of this dried up river bottom.

I picked up one of those dried chunks to see how it would feel. I was curious to see if it crumbled in my hand.

It didn't!

That dried river cake was nearly hard as a rock. I could not break it in half. And it did not shatter into pieces when I dropped it.

I was contemplating in putting a piece of the dried river bed in my pack to bring back with me. However I decided against it. Even though it did not break with my rough handling, I felt that travelling all the way back to Massachusetts would reduce it to a powder.

Look at all the erosion! I wonder what could have caused it. A flash flood perhaps during monsoon season?

One would normally associate flooding with coastal communities because of the hurricanes and tropical storms that commonly occur in the ocean and then move towards land.

However, the danger of flooding is very real in desert communities. And there are very specific steps and precautions concerning emergency preparations in the event of flooding.

I had bought a post card with a picture of an Arizona flash flood. The back of the postcard has this to say:

"During the rainy season in Arizona, rain water does not absorb into the dry ground like it should. This often causes many flash floods to occur. Flash flooding is a major danger in Arizona as these waves of flood water move at incredible speeds and can roll boulders, tear out trees, or destroy bridges."

Wow! That's intense!

In all likelihood, that eroded cliff could have very easily been carved out by a flash flood.

This saguaro looks as though it went to a party and had one too many margaritas.

Here's a saguaro skeleton. Bet that could made made into something really cool.

Wish I had that in my backyard!

Anyhow, I had my hike all planned out and was moving right along.

As with the other hikes, this one was grueling. I could not help but think that had I been home, walking this same distance would have hardly been a problem.

As much as I relished the high heat and low humidity, I was not used to physical exertion in this kind of climate. I could shovel snow for 2 hours and hardly have to stop to catch my breath. Here, just a 15-minute trail walk was asking a lot.

But I could not go home without having experienced the desert environment and hiked the desert trails.

My hiking plan had been to do a 2.5 mile loop and then return to my car, making it just a little bit over 3 miles total.

I started on the the main trail and hiked 0.2 miles to the Metate Trail junction. Seeing that the main trail was a total of 5.3 miles, I decided to take the much shorter Metate Trail which measured a mere 0.8 miles.

Along the Metate Trail was the short Towhee Trail that started at one point of the Metate Trail and bowed along for 0.2 miles before it came further out along the Metate Trail.

Seeing that I was already hot and feeling the effects of physical exertion, I decided to skip the Towhee Trail and continue along the Metate before it linked up with the main trail.

From there I was planning on hopping onto the main trail and completing the loop back to the information hut.

I had long passed the end junction of the Towhee Trail. The elevation was getting higher, and the going was more strenuous. All along I passed several times to take pictures, drink some water, and once to pee.

I was perhaps 0.1 to 0.2 miles from the junction with the main trail that I happened to glance at my wrist and notice that I forgot to take off my new bracelet before going on the hike.

And, as I turned my wrist to glimpse at that gorgeous green turquoise stone, I noticed that it was missing!

SHIT!

I was shocked, pissed, and heart-broken all rolled into one.

There was nothing I could do but turn around and backtrack, even if that meant adding more distance and time to my hike.

I didn't want to turn around, not only for the fact that it would have taken me longer to get back to the car, but also for the fact that I did not want to see what I had already seen.

Sure, all those cacti, mountains, and desert scrub may look the same after awhile. Still, I wanted to see what else was up the trail. And now I couldn't because I had to turn around and look for that damn stone.

In backtracking, I had a very vague recollection of hearing something drop. But I figured that it was my lens cap, which has a tendency to fall off if it's not snapped on securely.

I was just praying that I would not have to travel far until I came to the spot where I thought I heard something fall.

My hiking now took on a different focus. Instead of looking up and all around me, I was scanning the ground while slowly walking.

And forget about taking any more pictures. My eyes had to be focused on the ground and not through a view-finder.

In some places, the bare earth made it easy to see that there weren't any stones out of the ordinary. (I even stopped to pick up a couple of interesting local rocks.) That, however, was more difficult in sections where the path was covered with stones for several feet along the trail.

It would have taken me hours just to carefully go through all the rocks and stones in that patch of trail.

In the meantime, I was getting even more hot. While I had started this hike right after lunch time, the sun had been climbing high and warming up the air even more.

I had to stop more often to take more drinks of water. I still had about half a mile to go to where the main trail starts. After that, there was another 0.3 mile hike back to the car.

In my desperation about over-heating, I even scooped some water from a puddle at the dried-up riverbed to splash on the back of my neck, all along praying there was no unfriendly fauna in it just waiting to do me harm.

All the while, my water bottle was getting concerningly low.

As I travelled another quarter of a mile, I started getting alarmed when I realized that I had to start rationing my water. That was one concept I never had to deal with before. And it was a tad bit scary.

These trails are not as heavily populated as those back in New England. What if I had succomb to the elements? How long would it have taken before someone discovered that I was missing and organized a rescue party?

And for that matter, did I even tell Carolyn where I was planning to go before I headed out to hike the trails at the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area?

Let's hope to God I did.

And what if I had an encounter with one of those ornery rattlesnakes?

I would have been dead meat.

Fortunatety the angels were with me all the way, with every slow and difficult step.

Unfortunately, in keeping me safe from harm, they too missed the errant stone.

The stone was nowhere to be found along the trails. It also eluded me when I went to the area where I took the mountain panorama shots.

The only thing left was to walk back to the car and hope that it was there when I circled around it.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

I had even hoped that perhaps there was some chance that the stone could have fallen into my backpack when I went to withdraw the water bottle. Or perhaps fallen somewhere in the car.

No such luck.

At this point, hot and dehydrated, all I cared about was that now-familiar ritual of getting into my car and cranking the AC for several minutes while my body recovered from the heat and exertion.

I could not help but think that someone will someday stumble upon the stone and get excited over such an amazing find.

But until then, it'll be a pretty bauble for the desert devas to enjoy and play with.