A Hiking Vacation

Back in March, DH and I flew to Arizona for a week.  The plan was some R&R away from home, family, work.  R&R that wasn't quite sitting and vegging out.  Nope, this R&R called for lots and lots of HIKING!

The whole week before we arrived, Arizona had had unusual amounts of rain.  In fact, it rained the day we landed, and the first night we were there, and part of the first morning.  So we didn't go out hiking ASAP, but rather waited until about mid-morning until the forecast looked like the rain would let up.

Our first destination was South Mountain near Phoenix.  The trail we chose for that day was Mormon Trail to Hidden Valley. As you can see in the pictures below, the sky was cloudy, and all the recent rain had brought out the flowers.

On this section of the Mormon Trail is a feature called Fat Man's Pass.  It's some very large boulders with an extremely narrow separation between them.  Extremely narrow.  (Yes, it bears repeating.)

I was able to pass through sideways, barely.  My chest got a little squished and there was one spot I was afraid I might get stuck, but I made it!

DH, however, couldn't.  Not even sideways. Not even sucking in his belly and holding his breath. Not even two feet. So I had to squeeze back through to return to the part of the trail he was on, and we picked our way around and over the boulders to where the Pass came out.

I made it!  Looking back at DH through Fat Man's Pass.

We continued on to the Hidden Valley, where we stopped and had the lunch I'd packed in my backpack.

Looking across Hidden Valley

From there, we continued on the Mormon Trail through the Natural Tunnel and past some petroglyphs. 

DH looking like a strong man in the Natural Tunnel

It was about a 3.5 mile hike round trip.  Not bad for our first day.

The second day, which was to be our last in Phoenix until we came back to fly home, we decided to tackle Camelback Mountain.  And, because we don't know how to do moderate in anything, we chose to hike to the summit of Camelback via the Echo Canyon trail. 

Maybe if we'd seen this sign on the way to the trailhead from the parking lot, instead of on the way back, we wouldn't have attempted it.  But, we went in with the attitude that since it's and out and back trail, we could turn around at any time, no harm no foul.

Double black diamond!! Are we sadists?!?

Some of the early sections had stairs.

Some sections had railings to haul yourself up on, and small divots in the rock for footholds.

The arrow is our destination.

This photo was taken about 1/2 mile into the hike.

Honestly, this was the hardest hike I've ever done in my life.  And I loved it!  It was so much harder than the arduous hike on McCullough Gulch Trail we'd done on this trip to Colorado in 2020.  

Harder, and a whole new experience in rock scrambling.  It was so freaking steep for the vast majority of the trail.  Only about 2.5 miles out and back, but almost 1400 ft elevation change.  Agony and ecstasy.

this is the trail for a majority of the way

This hike was killer.  It took us over 5 hours to hike out, summit the mountain, and hike back.  2.5 miles.  Over five hours. We stopped a lot to catch our breath and get our heartrates down.  Why did we keep going all the way?  What happened to 'we can turn around at any point'?

Well, shortly into the hike, we were passed by a man with only one leg, using trekking poles (which all descriptions of this hike advised against poles because you would need both hands and knees on many sections), who flew by us on the first steep incline.  And we figured we could at least go as far as him, right?  If we saw him again and he was heading back down, we could legitimately call it quits.

We didn't see him again until we were on our way up the second to last hands and knees rock scramble section to the summit.  And he was on his way down from the very top.  Well then, we certainly needed to make it to the peak ourselves.  So we did.  I mean, if he could do it, we could do it, right?

view from the summit

Even though it was the most excruciating hike of our lives, DH and I are very glad we did it.  It served as a catalyst for other hikes later in the trip that probably would have been too daunting if we hadn't scaled Camelback Mountain.  And it gave us a new phrase of encouragement: "do it like a one-legged man hiking Camelback".  We're invincible now!

After that hike, we wisely or unwisely (will we be too stiff to stand up later??) got into our rental truck and drove to Flagstaff.  DH had booked us for a room up there, thinking we maybe could do a little hiking.  And if not, we could visit a few places of interest between there and Sedona, which was our main destination this trip.

On the way to Flagstaff, it poured rain and stormed. Some routes were closed due to flooding.

We saw a rainbow, something you wouldn't automatically associate with the word "Arizona".  It was cool, but my phone camera did a really crappy job of capturing it.

A bit further up the road, the rain turned into snow.  At one point it was nearly a white out.  Slushy wet snow accumulated on the road, making driving hazardous.  In fact, we drove past a recent wreck where there was an SUV on it's side in the median.

Are you sure we're in Arizona?

Looks like northern Michigan!

By the time we made it to Flagstaff the snow squall had ended.  

But, due to weather and still having an accumulation of snow on the ground from winter, there was no hiking for us.  Instead, we had a delicious dinner at the Lumberyard Brewing Company where I had a BBQ tri-tip sandwich and some yummy garlic parmesan fries. And, amazingly, neither DH nor I were too stiff or sore after our several hour drive post-Camelback.

The third morning found us on the road again, heading toward Sedona. On the way we stopped at Montezuma's Castle, Montezuma's Well, and Tuzigoot National Monument.  None of which really had hiking because there was so much flooding.  But they were cool to look at and explore up close.

super swollen river at Montezuma's Castle, trails closed

Montezuma's Castle

Montezuma's Well

(from top)

Montezuma's Well

(from bottom)

flooded out trail at Tuzigoot

ancient dwellings at Tuzigoot

From Tuzigoot, we drove to Sedona for the second half of our vacation.

To Be Continued. . . .

K2

 It's a long, long story, and maybe some day I'll write more parts of it.  But for now, there's this.

Maybe it was a subconscious thing, a Freudian slip, when I named DS1's wife as K2 on my blog.  I'd meant it as Kris #2, since my name is Kris and hers also was spelled with a K and our legal names contained almost the exact same letters.  What I didn't know at that time, or until years later, was that K2 was the street name of a drug that is fake marijuana.  

Maybe it was foreshadowing, then, to give her that name at this little place here.  As time went by, after we'd moved her and DS1 and kids up to MI from SC, after they'd lived with us for nearly a year and a half, after they'd moved to their own place about 8 miles away, I learned that K2 used drugs.  Apparently it had been an off and on thing for years, stretching back into her teen years.  She'd use, she'd clean up for a while, then something would send her back into it again.

She had anxiety, she'd get prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs, she'd start over using them.  She'd then also use other types of drugs, some prescription that she'd get from a different doctor and a different pharmacy than the anti-anxiety prescription had been provided by, some that were just openly available if you knew the right person.  The first few years she lived in MI, she worked at a local bar where she met some of those 'right' people.

Like I said, it's a long story.  Years went by, and she had what our family would call 'episodes' where she'd either be combative and convinced that DH and I and most members of our family were against her, or she'd take to her bed, claiming a headache, and stay there in a stupor for days.  There was a suicide threat, which CPS got involved in and took the children from the home in 2017 and they lived with DH and I for several weeks while DS1 worked and K2 was in a treatment facility.  That's when DH and I learned about her history with substance abuse. 

A month or so later, there was what we thought (and she denied) was a suicide attempt that DS1 caught her in and took her to the emergency room--and DH and I again had the children for a week. She went home, seemingly okay.  Things were calm.

Until about six months later, when DS1 and the kids came home from church on a Sunday noon (she hadn't wanted to go with them) and found her passed out, blue in the lips.  DS1 sent the kids to the neighbor's house and called 911, then called me to come get the kids.  K2 was in ICU for days and days.  She had been given Narcan in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but remained unconscious for at least 24 hours.  Tests were run to determine if there had been any brain or organ damage.  After stabilizing, and being on round the clock watch in the hospital, she was released to a treatment facility for a week's stay.  Again, the grandchildren lived with DH and I during that time period.

That was in 2018.  Over the next four years, her mood and behavior would swing unpredictably.  Sometimes she was happy and outgoing and willing to do family gathering type activities.  Sometimes she stayed in bed, not even getting the kids to school (DS1 works first shift and has to leave home at 5:30 a.m.) or taking care of them.  Our attempts, in those darker times, to help out were met with aggression and even cutting us off from the grandkids for weeks at a time. DS1 took to locking her medications up, and only giving her one pill at a time, in the spacing the prescribing doctor dictated.  Even so, she found ways to get her hands on drugs. There were a couple more instances of overdoses, most not as severe, but one last Fall that did have her in the hospital again for a handful of days as tests were run.

We all hoped she would get better.  We all hoped she would go to and stay in the assigned therapy programs after each release from her medical facility stays.  We all, in the good spells, found ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This month, that shoe dropped.  I can't say it's over, because we are still hot in the aftermath.  But K2 isn't here anymore.  No one can say if she was higher than a kite, or deep in a depressive pit at the time, but she took her own life. DS1 came home from his shift at work, found Rascal left alone in the house (K3 and Toad were still at school), and K2 deceased in the shed.

My heart is broken.  Not just for DS1 and his children.  Not just for K2's parents and brother.  Not just for my own family.  But for K2.  I feel such pain that she had a hole in her so big that it lead her to struggling with mental health and drugs.  I feel such immense sadness that she felt there was no joy, no hope, in living.

Reader, if you struggle with your thoughts, please seek out help.  Please stay in therapy if your doctor advises it.  If you struggle with substance use, please, please, know that there are people who love you anyway, and please let them help you find a program to assist you in your desire to overcome that dependency.

Lots of Riding, April Horse Update

The weather has turned from "maybe it's still Winter?" to "it is most definitely Spring" in the past few weeks.  We had rain, and rain, and rain.  Which meant mud, mud, mud.  The horses didn't seem to mind, although there was at least one day they had to stay inside because it was just such a deluge outside all day long.

Unfortunately, due to flooding in pastures, the outdoor arena has had to be put to use as turnout space, so Camaro and I haven't done any riding outside yet this year.

We've done lots of riding indoors though.  We got through our prescribed walk rehab, added in rides multiple days in a row (no soreness!) plus a few steps of leg yield multiple times per ride and then moved on to the next phase, which incorporated short stints of trotting.  Long sides of the arena only, no circles or corners.  I'm very happy to say that while he found it confusing at first to only trot until just before the corner, Camaro felt 100% sound at the trot.  HOORAY!

He quickly got used to our long-side-only trot bursts, and I looked at them as not just a way to get in some 'low impact' trot work without irritating his knee, but also a great opportunity to work on transitions from walk to trot and back to walk.  

Last week we threw in a day of walking over a random ground pole here and there around the arena, and he was a rock star on those, no rubbing, no stumbling.  That was followed up by such enthused trot sets that I was tempted to ask for a canter just to see what would happen.

But I didn't, because, well, we've been carefully recuperating since February.  Instead, when I got home that day I pulled out my notes from the most recent vet visit and was happy to realize that exact day had been the ride that had fulfilled our required number of walk and trot only sessions before we were to move on to the next phase where we add in long-side-only canter sets.

This week, we began that canter phase.  After a good warm up at walk, and half our prescribed trot sets for the session, I asked for one canter up a long side in each direction.  Camaro was a little surprised by the request, but gamely departed willingly into a nice canter and then (not so willingly) came down to a trot and then walk right before reaching the corner.  We finished out that session with the rest of our trot sets even though he wanted to canter more.  

Also this month Camaro got his teeth floated, which took out a couple spots that were causing some bitting trouble.  His contact in the reins was noticeably better after having his dental work done. 

I think this Spring is going to be a time of great progress for us.  We should be pretty much through rehab limitations and back to normal circles and all the other work at all gaits by the time Summer gets here.  And all the slow work has really strengthened our basics, where Camaro's response to small/light aids has gotten much better.

 Onward!

Camaro, post ride, hamming it up for the camera on a muddy day

October Building Progress

Our massive building project, Part Three.

Progress on DH's shop continued by leaps and bounds in October.  DH and I ran the water and electric lines from my barn to his, installed the hydrant and drain, and then he added lots and lots of sand to the floor of the building in preparation for the cement work we were hiring done.

We also installed the skirt boards as he was building up the floor.

While waiting for our turn on the cement contractor's schedule, we put the purlins on all the walls but the 'front' (south wall), probably not always adhering to OSHA safety standards.  Sort of a combination of "I know how to do it; I did this with my Dad as a kid" and Amish barn raising. . . A ladder here, some climbing there. . .

No one lost their balance or fell, so all was well.  I did, however, refuse to use the air nailer unless I was on the ground or a ladder; it kicks a bit too much for me to feel comfortable operating it while balancing on the narrow edge of a two by four.

The Saturday after the purlins were finished, DS1 and DS2 came over and helped DH hang siding on the North and East sides of the shop.  He planned to put siding on the other two sides after the concrete floor had been poured, to make it easier for the delivery of the cement to all parts of the shop.

The cement contractor and his crew showed up that week and did the final prep work for the flooring in the shop, and also for the aisle and tack room in my barn.  Oh hallelujah, concrete in my barn!  (DH and I had had a conversation about the work in my barn; he'd wanted to put it off until Spring and I had pointed out it could have been done the previous Spring but he'd wanted to do it all at once to save costs on having a contractor out twice. . .)

tack room prepped for concrete

Then came the morning I was woke up at 6:30 to the sound of a cement truck. It was still dark outside, but they were pouring concrete.  The picture below was taken about a half-hour later, from the upstairs bedroom, about the time that the third truck was unloading.  Really, it was amazing how quickly they poured a 40' x 60' floor that is 4" thick in most places, and 6" thick where DH plans to add a car hoist some day.

It's happening!  Concrete delivery.

shop floor poured

tack room floor poured

barn aisle the next day, mostly cured

Boy oh boy, was I happy to see a cement aisle in my barn, and a floor in my tack room area.  Now things were happening!  I might actually have horses living at my own farm someday soon!

East end, lots of fill needed outside

DH and I put the purlins on the front (south) wall of the shop after the cement contractor had finished his work. Then, DH put up most of the steel siding on that wall, with me helping on the bottom portion, where we'd decided to go with a dark green steel as an accent.

And that was where our project took a break while DH went out west elk hunting, as mentioned in this post.

Sewing and Stitching, April update

I had been wanting, for a few years now, to make some table runners and table toppers. They weren't high priority, so of course have not gotten made.

Until March, when I saw a free pattern for what was called a Spring Table Topper.  All pink and green and early Spring/Easter-like. Made with mostly half-square triangles, it looked quick and easy.  And that is what talked me into finally making a seasonal something to dress up my dining room table with.

I pulled fabrics from my stash, mostly fat quarters, and it didn't take long at all to cut pieces and then sew them up.  The colors are much better in person; my phone camera just seems to be blah lately for pretty much anything that isn't scenery.

pieced

quilted and bound 

In addition to my Spring table topper, I finished the backstitching on the fox counted cross stitch I started at the beginning of the year.  It was a lot of backstitching, but really adds depth to the fox.  It is now done and waiting for me to decide if I'm going to frame it or use some other method of displaying it. 

Of course I couldn't be without a portable stitching project, so I pulled out one of the Mill Hill Santa kits I bought back in 2021 (when I first discovered them) and got that one started.  I took it on vacation with DH and I in late March, and worked on it a few evenings in Arizona.  I think I will probably make an ornament out of it and give it to my Mom as a Christmas gift; she collects different types of Santas.

April Knitting Update

 In the past month, I finished the Fairy Maidens socks I was making for my Mom.  The picture I took of them blocking isn't the greatest, but they turned out well.

Pretty quickly after finishing those, I started a pair of socks for myself, using some red tonal yarn I'd had in my stash for several years.  I'd decided almost a year ago that I needed a pair of red socks (I don't have any) and had finally worked my way through my To Knit list to those red socks.  I'm using the Quadrille pattern by verybusymonkey.  It's a pattern I've had my eye on for quite some time, and I decided to treat myself by finally purchasing it.

I'd say I'm about halfway through the foot on sock #1.  Like all of this designer's patterns, the knitting just seems to fly off my needles.  

Reading-wise, I had two large books I'd requested from my local library come in at once.  I'd been on long waiting lists for both of them, and hadn't expected them to both become available the same day.  Oh my!  It was a challenge to read them both before their due date, but I did it!

• Spare by Prince Harry, this one took me two full weeks to read.  There was so much to digest, and while I was vaguely familiar with much of the story (as an American who'd seen some of the highlights on TV as a child, then a young adult, then an older adult), it was interesting to hear the telling of those events and how they'd affected his growth and mental health.  Lots of behavior I can't say I agree with, but was nonetheless a book I'm glad I took the time to read.
• Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.  LOVED it!  Devoured it!  Hoping that the author please, please, will write more!  

Currently I am most of the way through reading At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen.  Mixed feelings about this book.  Parts I like, parts I don't, but overall not a bad story.  I wasn't sure when I saw it, if I would finish it; her first two novels I read all the way through and liked, but the third one I stopped reading at about chapter four because I wasn't liking the tone or the storyline, and I hadn't tried anything from her since.  I guess I would give this one a thumb's up, as I do intend to read it all.