This Little Place Here: 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.