Colorado Vacation, Part 3: Spruce Lake/Sourdough

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Moraine Park

This morning we pick up our first backcountry camping permit before driving into Estes Park for breakfast and to pick up our bear canister. We resolve a strange mixup about the container, buy Bryan a funny collapsible Chinese hiking hat thing, and hurry back to Moraine Park to pack up camp. At the Park and Ride lot, we disgorge the entire contents of the Subaru into the parking area. After packing for our first two-night loop, we catch the shuttle to the trailhead.

Our gear hauler

It’s a great day. The sky is blue with cheerful puffy clouds, the mountains are beautiful, and the temperature is perfect: slightly too warm when hiking but slightly chilly when we stop. There are lots and lots of people crowding the trails for the first two or three miles, though past Fern Falls the tourists thin out. I begin to think we won’t make it to camp before dark, but after the trail junction at Fern Lake our path to Spruce Lake goes mostly downhill and we make good time. The spruce trees here look silly, like pines with heavy bodies and short arms. We’ve walked about five miles in about five hours, which isn’t bad considering that we have heavy loads and we’ve walked uphill all day; we’re at nearly 10,000 feet now. We have the tents up and water boiling before night falls on our own private lake.

The privies at these campsites are well done; Mandy says “Haha! I peed in a can in the woods!” There are no structures at all, just a dugout hole below a plywood platform and a metal toilet with a cover, facing away from the trail into the woods. Mandy’s up first this morning, racing down to the lake with her camera before coming back to her tent to read a bat book. The lake is beautiful in the morning light: the trout swim in clear water under the glass-calm surface, rimmed with spruce, framed in mountains. We lie in the warm orange tent enjoying the stillness before a busy day.

Spruce Lake

A little later, we cook breakfast next to the lake and then lie on a big warm rock together at the edge of the water, dozing in the sunshine.

Breakfast at Spruce Lake

The hike out to Fern Lake is pleasant; the trail builders have laid half-timbers across the marshy spots where wildflowers still bloom. It’s a dry, breezy day, and there’s lots of traffic on the main trail here; we stop for a snack at the ranger patrol cabin before walking along the edge of the lake. Sitting next to her baby carrier, a mom rests on the shore of the lake nursing her baby. (She’s at least five miles from a trailhead: good for her!)

Odessa Lake

We stop at Odessa Lake for lunch and to pump water. The chipmunks here are convinced that we’re cooking just for them and we have to keep a close eye on our packs and lunches. We’ve been walking through postcards all day, quiet lakes reflecting green trees, with treeline not far above us, topped with layers of rock and snow and deep blue summer sky.

Chipmonk at Odessa Lake

I walk down a bit to find a better place to pump water and enjoy a little quiet. I can barely hear the murmur of Bryan’s and Mandy’s voices nearby. Mandy has started saying things like “In a few years, when you come here to visit me…” She’s decided to move here as soon as possible. Apparently this conclusion was reached somewhere between The Pool and Fern Falls, without the need for much discussion with us.

This week feels like a gift, some kind of grace, a few days stolen between the busyness of summer school and Tulsa trips and the beginning of fall classes and chores.

Pumping water

After Odessa Lake, the trail goes up. And then it goes up, and up, and up. These mountains are big in a way we didn’t understand from just looking; it’s something one realizes quite clearly when one has hiked uphill for two days straight. The views from this section of trail, from the big boulder fields we traverse, is stunning. We’re all still cheerful; even Mandy is happily slogging along in her big pack. Today we hike 4.3 miles in 5.5 hours, including the lunch stop, and we’ll sleep tonight at just over 10,000 feet.

Mandy faces

Just after arriving at Sourdough camp, a big mule deer comes to visit, and he returns several times during the evening. Bryan and Mandy go after water and I cook supper a distance from camp. Our packets of warm food are tucked inside my vest to cook, and I have time to sit and think: why do we backpack? I say it’s to get away from people, to have places like these all to ourselves, and that’s true. Crowded campgrounds are sad and irritating, too close to too many people. But there’s something else, too, something that isn’t so easy to explain. Backpacking, I think, reduces the day to its essential elements. We walk. We get water. We cook food. We set up shelters. We are a family. And that’s all. Life is so complicated, sometimes; backpacking reduces it to its essentials, if only for a few days.

Mule deer at Sourdough

After supper and a trip to the privy, we all sleep well. We’re up early to hike out, and easy hike downhill to the trailhead.

Pond near Sourdough

The story continues…
Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Colorado Vacation, Part 2: Great Sand Dunes

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Up before sunrise, we leave the tents and bundle up to drive to Great Sand Dunes National Park. The outlines of the mountains and dunes are visible as we get there, and we walk out into the softly lit sand (and cold wind) to watch the sunrise. The Sangre de Cristo mountains look distant still, in misty dawn light, but the dunes glow warm and pink as morning comes.

Great Sand Dunes National Park
Click to see this panorama in a bigger size!

After some time spent taking photographs dunes around us, Mandy and I leave Bryan with his tripod and walk toward the nearest dunes. We reach the top of the first one just as the first rays appear.

First light

Mandy stands at the lip of the next dune, with her camera held up. She looks for all the world like a very short National Geographic photographer, working in some exotic and dangerous foreign assignment. It’s only for a moment, though; she holds her arms up, yells, and plunges down the side of the dune, suddenly a little kid again.

Happy

After a stop at the small but excellent visitors center, we fill out postcards and eat breakfast at the restaurant just outside the park. The food’s no good but the decor features a mounted head with an antler protruding from the stuffed thing’s forehead.

Weird Deer

We make a quick stop back at San Luis Lakes to pack up camp, and Bryan naps in the car until a stop in Blanca where a detour to the tiny post office leads us past a fence made entirely of cross country skis.

Ski fence

In Pueblo we stop at Chipotle for an excellent lunch, and I nap until Colorado Springs. The drive up the front range is pretty, made even more fun by Mandy’s excited amazement. “It’s so beautiful,” she says. “Wow, look at that one!”

The REI “Flagship Store” in Denver is huge, an old brick warehouse converted into a store, with exposed metal beams and a 45 foot indoor climbing wall. Arriving only an hour before closing time on Sunday afternoon, we practically jog through the store, stopping long enough to snag a few items on our list, including a new harness for Bryan and some purple climbing shoes for me. The store sits near the river, and there’s a little park on the grounds with boulders for kids to climb on, statues of animals, and aspen trees. It’s right on a walking and bike trail, next to Confluence Park‘s water play area. Even on a Sunday evening, the park is crowded with inner tubes and pool noodles and people splashing in the shallow water. The whole area is very busy, not with cars but with people on foot and on bikes.

In Boulder, we drive around until Bryan finds a place in memory: the Pearl Street Mall. It’s a great outdoor shopping area with interesting stores and street performers and the smells of good food. After stuffing ourselves silly on pasta and cheesecake, we walk back to the car and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park.

We arrive late but the Moraine Park Campground people helpfully list the names of the campers arriving after the kiosk is shut down; we quickly find our name and campsite number and set up tents, again, in the glare of the headlights. We’ve driven 1353 miles since leaving home, and we’ll sleep well tonight at over 8,000 feet.

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Colorado Vacation, Part 1: Home to San Luis Lakes

Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

We leave Benton at six and arrive late at Lake Eufala State Park. We get a nice, flat tent site far away from anybody else, and we set up camp in the headlights of the car. The bugs are terrible and it’s very hot; we’d packed sleeping bags expecting chilly temperatures at elevation, and didn’t really think about the night or two we’d spend in the muggy midwestern summer.

Lake Eufala State Park, OK

We wake up sticky and gross, but since we leave before seven, the campsite’s “free”. We stop in Okemah to see the first exciting roadside attraction of our trip: a row of three water towers helpfully labeled “HOT”, “COLD”, and “HOME OF WOODY GUTHRIE.” The hand dryers in the Valero gas station bathroom are incredibly powerful: we giggle as the skin on our hands and arms flaps loosely. We’re in a place we’ve never been before, and it feels like our trip has started.

Hot, Cold and Home of Woodie Guthrie

Bryan’s been inexplicably excited about seeing the Oklahoma panhandle, so I helpfully drive so that he won’t miss a minute of the tremendous excitingness of, um, not much. We play a game in which we have to find things starting with each letter of the alphabet. It takes nearly an hour and includes two minor arguments and such thrilling items as “C is for Cows” and “N is for Nothing.”

Panhandle of Oklahoma

I don’t mind driving on trips, I really don’t, and I try to explain this to Bryan. What I mind is that, when he’s the passenger, he’s bored. He sings. He pokes people. He makes stupid trumpet noises with his mouth. He starts arguments about dumb things just to entertain himself. Today he discovered “licking by proxy,” a technique in which he slobbers on his hand and then tries to wipe it on the driver. This is incredibly irritating and, more importantly, seems tremendously unsafe. I try to get him to drive as much as possible; licking by proxy is much more difficult if Bryan is the driver.

On the advice of a coworker, we eat at a ratty-ass motel diner in Raton, New Mexico called The Oasis Restaurant. The review I read had indicated that the food was good but that the carpet in the rooms was threadbare pink shag. (We chose this eatery over the one with the review that said “Bring a gun.”) We all order from the Mexican side of the menu: Damn. Yum.

Oasis Restuarant, Raton, NM

About bedtime, we arrive at San Luis Lakes State Park in Colorado at 7,500 feet. We add layers of fleece and down before setting up tents next to the corrugated-metal ramada. It’s the tallest thing here; all the trees and bushes are waist high. We don’t know what it looks like by day, but the nearly-full moon rising over the nearby mountains, over the lake, is beautiful.

San Luis Lakes State Park, CO

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2

Butterfield Trail

Mandy and I hadn’t been backpacking together, just the two of us, in quite awhile, so I planned a trip for the weekend after Mother’s Day. Mandy had been wanting a “real” pack of her own, and Bryan and I agreed that it would be nice for us to give her more of her own gear to carry, so this trip gave us a good excuse to get her one. Here’s a photo of a very happy Mandy the night she got her new Osprey Ace 48 pack. (Note the purple print fuzzy footy pajamas.)

Butterfield-1

I settled on the Butterfield Trail, a 15-mile loop starting in Devil’s Den State Park in northwest Arkansas and extending into the National Forest. On Thursday night, the weather forecast called for 100% chance of rain on Saturday, so I packed rain gear and extra clothes in case of a downpour. I wasn’t able to get a campsite at the state park for Friday night, but I called a friend near Devil’s Den and asked to pitch a tent in his yard.

Butterfield-2

Mandy and I left town at six o’clock on Friday night and headed to John’s house. When we arrived, I saw lightning in the distance and opted to leave the tent packed and sleep in the back of the car. About eleven, Bryan saved this radar image. I was glad for the solid roof during the night storm.

Saturday’s weather was a little damp but not unpleasant. We shared the trail with about thirty boyscouts and several interesting bugs. Here’s a photo of one of the weirder woolly worms we saw.

Butterfield-4

And here’s a short video of the world’s smallest inchworm.

[insert inchworm video here]

The tiny inchworm was pleasant company during a forced stop beside the trail. We’d passed all the boy scout groups and were enjoying having the woods to ourselves when Mandy got a nosebleed. We had to sit eating jellybeans and watching them troop by. “Do you need anything?” “No, we’re fine.” “Well, it’s a pretty place to have a nosebleed, I guess.”

Butterfield-6

This spring’s excessive rain has made everything muddy and gross. Since foot traffic shares a lot of this trail with horses, anyplace that’s the least bit damp becomes a deep, goopy mess. We had to bypass lots of fallen trees and big mudholes. All the drainages were running with water.

Butterfield-7

We passed the turnout for the boy scout camp about three in the afternoon. (We’d spent the day with thirty boys and wanted to spend the night away from them.) We somehow turned onto a high horse trail and away from the Butterfield, but the excellent map we’d bought for a buck at the visitors center indicated that if we continued on, we’d meet up with our loop again. The accidental bypass was one of the more pleasant stretches of the trail!

All the rain has caused some slumping between miles 11 and 12. There were cracks in the trail, some big enough to put a basketball in. At one point part of the trail has fallen two or three feet.

Butterfield-9

We hiked about nine miles on Saturday and decided to call it quits about 6 pm. We set up the tent while waiting for our supper to cook, and were in bed by dark. It had been overcast and damp all day but had never rained at all.

Butterfield-12

Sunday morning we slept in a bit, then cooked breakfast before packing up. As usual, we didn’t leave camp until about ten, and just as we got down to the trail, we met up with the first group of boy scouts. It was the same small group we’d started with the day before, and we’d hike near them for the rest of the trip. At the end, as we were putting our poles on our packs, they left the woods too.

We hiked to the visitor center to meet Harry Harnish, the “Bat Man of Devil’s Den.” He’s been an interpreter at the park for twenty-some years and has done eleventy hundred bat education programs for school kids and adults. Since he’ll be retiring this summer, we wanted to go on his guided hike of the crevice area in the park. We enjoyed it thoroughly and even got to see a pair of baby black vultures from just a few feet away, since he showed us their nest in the bottom of a crevice.

[insert Harry photo here if possible]

We ate excellent Mexican food in Alma and were home before bedtime. It was a good weekend for both of us.

Butterfield-13

Holiday Backpack

Over the weekend Mandy and I manged to help Aly build a compost bin (Happy Valentines Day honey!) and then go backpacking on the Ouachita Trail.

The three of us hiked from Flatside Pinnacle to Crystal Prong Creek and back again. We crossed several tributary’s to the main stream and they were all flowing pretty good due to the recent rains.

OT Hike-1 OT Hike-2

After returning to Flatside, we said goodbye to Aly and headed for Brown’s Creek Shelter. We hiked 7.3 miles today and were glad to see the shelter when we got there. We hoped no one else was around (and they weren’t) but one never knows on a holiday weekend.

OT Hike-3

That evening, after our freeze dried dinners, our applesauce and candy dessert and our roasted marshmallow dessert (roasted on the skewers the Lopez’s gave us two Christmases ago) we killed some time by drawing space aliens with an LED light and a long exposure time. BTW… Mountain House freeze dried dinners have proven to be pretty yummy. Tonight, I had Spaghetti and Meatsauce while Mandy had Beef Stroganoff; both were yummy.

OT Hike-5

We got up the next morning, moved slow because we had no where to be… no school & no work. We had some freeze dried scrambled eggs with ham and bell peppers, instant oatmeal and some hot chocolate. Afterwards we packed up and headed for our vehicle which we had parked 4.9 miles from here.

When we stopped to pump some water from Brown’s Creek, I heard some rustling in the leaves nearby. Upon inspection, it turns out the rustling was a lizard! The lizard actually ran on to the trail and up Mandy’s leg 🙂 When she tried to catch him he managed to run away and we thought he was gone but when we started hiking again, he showed up on top of her head!

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3263314&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

While hiking today, we noticed that many of the aluminum Forest Service mile markers had been supplemented with newer looking markers on a nearby tree. While these new markers were pretty, I don’t know how useful they are since they are above eye height (I tend to look down when hiking) and they are on the side of the tree facing the trail which makes them hard to spot from a distance.

OT Hike-4

We had a good hike… 12.2 miles over two days. Mandy carried a crappy schoolbag style backpack which hurt her shoulders a bit. We are looking for a decent backpack for her but we’re having trouble finding one that will last a couple of years and doesn’t cost more than our packs!

At the end of the day we were tired and ready to head home for a bath and to meet Mom for a Chinese Buffet dinner.

OT Hike-6

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 8

This is a multi-part trip report… if you haven’t already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Saguaro National Park (Juniper Basin)
End: Tucson, AZ

Daily Mileage: 14
Total Mileage: 1419

Miles Hiked Today: 7
Miles Hiked Total: 25

I wake early this morning, no doubt a result of our lion-induced super-early bedtime. We both slept better than we expected, I think, and the night passed without incident. It’s been raining for a couple of hours, and gusty. I listen to the iPod in the safe orange cocoon of our tent and wait for Bryan to stir.


Breakfast in bed, sort of.

The rain gives us a little break, so we get up and begin cooking breakfast. I move the packs inside the tent as it starts to rain again, and we finish cooking and eating our meal sitting in the doorway under the little awning. As we eat toasted bagels and oatmeal and bacon, we watch the light winter rain turn to sleet and then to snow.


Our faithful traveling gnome serves as a tent stake, replacing the one lost in the windstorm, while our tent collects snow.

We pump water and pack up camp in the falling snow, then head down the ridge. I like hiking in the snow, and Bryan begins by enjoying it but after several hours the novelty wears off; his feet hurt and he doesn’t like the falling snow in his eyes. The fact is, though, that the snow is beautiful stuff: puffy, Christmassy flakes covering the trail and softening the edges of the world. As we descend we see, again, ocotillo, then more and more yucca and cholla, and finally the first saguaros signaling our much lower elevation.


An uncommon photo opportunity

The lone hiker we’d encountered is gone by the time we get to the Javelina picnic area, and we have three miles of road hiking before getting to the truck. We could both walk the road with our packs, but since his feet are starting to hurt, Bryan volunteers to wait in the damp cold with my bag. I’m grateful to be rid of my heavy pack and enjoy the soggy walk on Cactus Forest Loop Drive. Not a single tourist offers me a ride, but I’m warm in spite of the rain. The far-off mountains are still shrouded in clouds, but the closer, lower peaks are snowy.


I hold Bryan’s pack while he takes a few quick photos and then I snap a picture of his silly grin. Spirits were still high!

The truck is a welcome sight and I drive it slowly back to pick up Bryan, who reports that all the old picnic shelters leak. (Apparently, actual rain shelter is not an important design feature in the desert.) We hurry to the visitors center to check in with the rangers before they close at five; it isn’t a requirement but we want to log our encounter with the mountain lion. They are interested in our story and tell us that a lion had been reported by someone else not long ago, on that part of the ridge. We also fill out a complaint form indicating that the bathrooms should be more conspicuous.

h_saguaro snow pano_6 pics_41 copy
Click the photo to see a larger version since it is stitched together from six images to form a 41 megapixel image.

I come up with a plausible reason for another hotel stay: our gear is all soaked, and we need to be dry and organized before starting home. The hot shower and clean socks feel good, and so does the prospect of a big supper.


Marriott provides whole-room gear-drying services

I love the fact that we have a favorite restaurant in Tucson. We wait for our table in El Charro’s bar, and when we’re finally sitting in the warm dining room we enjoy our enchiladas and tamales and tres leches cake. We’re tired but not miserable, at least as long as we don’t touch our calves, which were fine earlier today but are now suddenly very sore.

Day 7 – Day 8 – Day 9

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 7

This is a multi-part trip report… if you haven’t already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Saguaro National Park (Douglas Spring)
End: Saguaro National Park (Juniper Basin)

Daily Mileage: 0
Total Mileage: 1405

Miles Hiked Today: 7
Miles Hiked Total: 18

We awake sometime after midnight to a blustery wind and a tent down around our faces. A gust has popped a guy line off a tent stake and part of our shelter has collapsed around us. After Bryan fixes it, the rain starts and it rains hard for awhile, the wind still pounding on the sides of our tent. Around dawn it lets up, giving us time to eat breakfast and pack up our things in a drizzle instead of a downpour.


Aly sleeps late at Douglas Spring

The trail from Douglas Spring to Cow Head Saddle goes up, up, up, with hardly a break. We look ponderous and heavy in our big packs, made even larger by their rain covers. We’ve left the desert plants behind; what’s here is a dense pack of short trees, almost like a miniature rain forest. We’ve had several creek crossings and even a little waterfall. We know that it rained an inch this week, after only eight inches in the past year. We can’t help but smile, thinking that our impression of the Sonoran desert is one of a rather lush and damp place.

The views are amazing from up here. The rugged purple mountains we’d been admiring from Tucson are all around us now. As we climb, we watch the clouds move in the peaks around us, intrigued by the patterns of rain and sunshine. We see two different rainbows today.

We turn right at Cow Head Saddle and head up Tanque Verde Ridge. Our thermometer reads 45 degrees but that’s hard to believe. The wind is vicious, sustained at probably 30 mph and gusting to 40 or so. There are a couple of times we’d each have fallen if we hadn’t been using poles, and once the wind shoved me into a big, prickly yucca.

Bryan finds a strange cluster of large rocks just off the ridge, and we use their shelter as a much-needed windbreak to eat our lunch. We can’t help but notice that the trail has a great deal of scat; apparently every large animal who makes it to the ridge poops on it. We note with some concern that a lot of what’s here is rather large, with a lot of berries. Will we hike with bears today?


On the ridge, we find a windbreak for our lunchtime stop

Finally, after a number of smaller “this must be it” peaks, we reach a sign for the REAL Tanque Verde Peak. We drop our packs and hike, much lighter, the few hundred yards up to the peak. It’s later than we thought but the view is amazing and the golden light near sunset makes for some lovely photos, and we don’t mind the prospect of hiking at night.


Finally, the sign for Tanque Verde Peak

We’ve been traveling through the low, damp woods, with little patches of untracked, old snow. Burned black skeletons of old pine trees rise above the heavy green foliage, for as far as we can see their separate shapes. By the time we reload our packs, it’s already dusky, with about two more miles to go before our backcountry campsite for tonight. The views from the ridge are amazing: eye level with the heavy, dark lower margins of the rainclouds, we look across at the dusky bulk of the next mountains. And, as hard as we’ve worked to get above the city, we still sometimes see the lights of Tucson spread out below us in the dusk.

After dark, our trail crosses several patches of bare rock, and is difficult to follow in spots. At each of these, I stop at the edge of the trail until Bryan finds the route off the rock; this keeps us from getting turned around in the dark and backtracking. We find that, while I like to hike in front for part of the day, I prefer that Bryan lead after dark, since he sees better at night.

About a half mile before camp, Bryan sees two eyes in the woods to our left. They hop hurriedly away and he’s excited to have seen another jackrabbit. Another pair of eyes peers out at him from a bush right near the trail, and he walks forward, turning his headlamp on high to get a better look. He stops, still in the path, with one arm out to block me: “Aly, it’s a cat.” We both take a step backward.

After a moment to collect our wits, we do all the right things: we wave our arms and yell, we throw rocks, and we don’t panic. One of Bryan’s rocks causes the lion to retreat enough that we can continue down the trail past where it was sitting, but after moving off just a few feet, it stops and watches us. Another rock makes little difference: the big cat is just watching.

Bryan walks slowly and I walk backward, just behind him, yelling “We are PEOPLE! We are BIG AND SCARY! Also, we are NOT AT ALL TASTY!” As silly as our words sound, we’re terrified. I move my headlamp from my neck to my forehead, in case appearing just a little taller might help. Bryan walks faster forward than I can walk backward, and I stumble and nearly fall. He slows down, then, and I pay a little more attention to the trail, but still, each time we look back, there are eyes behind us, following.

Sometimes the cat moves off to our left a bit, and sometimes it drops behind us, but always its wide-set eyes are the same distance away, not more than a hundred feet from us. Fortunately, the trail is crossing a rather flat area and we can see some distance. We continue our awkward retreat, still yelling, still moving slowly but moving away. But we don’t lose the cat. We realize, with alarm, that we’re being stalked.

We cross a little stream and the trail dips; we can still see behind and to our right, but the trail runs next to a cut to the left. We lose the lion; he could have stopped following us but he could just as well have climbed up the little hill to our left; he could be fifteen feet from us before we see him again. We hold our flimsy hiking poles and we yell and we know that, if the lion wants to catch up with us here, he can.

We want so badly to walk into the Juniper Basin backcountry site. We start to worry that in our preoccupation with being hunted, we’ve actually walked past it in the dark. But after a few more minutes of loud conversation and awkward backward lurching in the dark, we find a sign that says “Juniper Basin – Campsite and Comfort Station” and we follow its arrow.

The backcountry sites at Saguaro National Park have prefab toilet structures, and we’d used one just this morning at Douglas Spring. We’ve been talking about that bathroom for quite awhile, discussing how nice it will be to have a door to shut behind us, trying to figure out whether or not we can actually cook and eat supper in a pit toilet, puzzling over whether we could both somehow sleep on its floor with the door shut behind us. I’m not sure I’ve ever looked forward to seeing a bathroom quite as much as I was looking forward to seeing the bathroom at Juniper Basin.

We follow the arrow, and we find the first, and second, and third tent sites tucked into the folds of the wooded basin. But we can’t find the bathroom anywhere. We retrace our steps in the windy dark, still watching for eyes, still talking loudly, and still can’t find the structure.

Neither of us is hungry, so we opt to skip cooking supper tonight. We get out our plastic-coated guide and Bryan looks at the animal pictures: yes, he says, the face of the mountain lion on the page is the face he’d seen in the woods. We still feel vulnerable and worried, but we decide that we look less like food if we’re in a big orange tent. We set up camp, looking around us all the time, and we are very careful to put everything else in the metal bear box. We crawl inside the tent eat a “supper” of dried fruit, chocolate and water, and after a time, we fall asleep.

A selection of additional photos appears below, for more photos from the trip checkout our Flickr page.


There’s a bug in Aly’s peanut butter. You can’t see it, but it’s there


Near sunset, near the peak


Photos of both of us are rare, with no one to hold the camera; the peak logbook stands in

Day 6 – Day 7 – Day 8

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 6

This is a multi-part trip report… if you haven’t already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Tucson, AZ
End: Saguaro National Park (Douglas Spring)

Daily Mileage: 14
Total Mileage: 1405

Miles Hiked Today: 11
Miles Hiked Total: 11

Finally, we’re walking! It’s in the mid-seventies today and the weather is beautiful. It’s lovely, though not at all what we packed for. SmartWool socks are wonderful: my feet are dry but my legs are wet from the moisture that’s wicking up through the fabric. We’ve brought our cold weather gear, which makes our packs comically overstuffed, but we’ll probably need coats and gloves up on the ridge.


Bryan hikes into the desert

The desert is strange, with the saguaros standing tall amid the spiky alien ocotillos, and the cloud shapes on the mountains and desert add another layer to the weird geometry of this place. I put a hole in my boot when I accidentally wander into an Engelmann’s prickly pear. We disturb a jackrabbit, a surprisingly tall and gangly creature with a rabbit body and long, long legs that make it walk more than it hops.


Mister Jackrabbit, with his amazing legs.

It’s a beautiful day. We take a break near a stock tank by a spring, sitting barefoot on the trail with our opened packs beside us, amidst an odd assortment of drying socks, maps, doodads, and platypus bottles. It’s chilly in the shade. We hear a noise on the other side of a palo verde; Bryan grabs the camera hoping for another jackrabbit. I’m hoping it isn’t a lion or bear, since I have no shoes on. We’re both wrong: it’s an old man, coming down a side trail. He doesn’t hear well enough to understand the joke, and we watch him quietly feed the fish in the tank before moving on.


Lunchtime at the Rock Spring stock tank.

We can sometimes see Tucson below us, a flat grid of streets with tiny mica sparkles of windshields, ringed by the rugged Rincons. The closer mountains are dark purple-brown, the higher peaks sharper and snow-covered. We see lechuguilla for the first time today, and think about how proud Carter would be to see us faithfully consulting our new plastic-covered plant and animal identification book.


Santa Bryan stops to enjoy the golden hour and the view of Tucson

A desert oasis: Bridal Wreath Falls are running, and the excited tanktopped dayhikers tell us we must take the spur trail to see them. Grateful for a break from the weight, we drop our packs near the trail intersection and hike up to see a pretty double waterfall behind the saguaros. The stream crossing below the falls is home to an ancient, gnarled oak overgrown in an enormous cholla, with tiny baby shoots of green grass around its base.


Bridal Wreath Falls, running the day after an inch of rain

Finally, after dark, we arrive at the Douglas Spring backcountry campsite. We join a group of about a dozen teenagers; their leader describes their group as “youth in a program for those with family issues.” We had expected a group of inner city thugs but what we find seem to be spoiled rich kids in Marmot jackets, discussing their addictions, their snowboards, and their architect fathers. There are alarms on their tents and they don’t seem very comfortable in the woods or with us.


Near Douglas Spring: The bleach blond desert grass glows at sunset

It’s Christmas eve, and after we set up our tent, eat our beef stew, and stash our things in a bear box, Bryan takes off the Santa hat he’s been wearing all day. I string up a spare bootlace inside the tent and decorate it with some miniature ornaments I’ve brought along. We exchange small presents and lie awake for awhile, listening to podcasts in our tiny room. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.


Christmas Eve in a backpacking tent

A selection of additional photos appears below, for more photos from the trip checkout our Flickr page.


We hope we don’t run into one of these!


Saguaros are much taller than we’d imagined


Internal ribs support the saguaro’s height and bulk


A cholla cactus


Aly’s favorite desert plant, the teddy bear cholla


Young saguaros; they don’t typically start growing arms until about 75 years old.


An ancient sun-worshipper.


The only down side to trekking poles: it’s hard to eat and walk


Englemann’s Prickly Pear grows up and out; Spreading Prickly Pear grows along the ground


A “grandfather” saguaro


On a warm day, Aly is grateful for a tshirt but more than willing to carry fleece in her pack


Santa Bryan checks a confusing trail marker


Palo verde trees have photosynthetic bark and tiny leaves


The nearby ranch keeps the tank stocked with goldfish, and the park pretends not to notice


We startled a deer in the higher country, near sunset


Aly on the trail just before sunset


One of the Rincons at sunset

Day 5 – Day 6 – Day 7

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 5

This is a multi-part trip report… if you haven’t already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Colossal Cave Mountain Park (AZ)
End: Tucson, AZ

Daily Mileage: 22
Total Mileage: 1391

I hate getting up. Dawn’s my favorite part of a backpacking day, when the light starts to filter through the fabric of the tent and the hazy outline of the day begins to form inside the warm padding of my down-filled sleeping-bag brain.

It begins to rain during breakfast and we enjoy the luxury of a stone picnic shelter. We each have our own old concrete table to spread out our gear and organize and pack our bags, well out of the wet. We should have left by nine, but the continuing rain and another headache made us move slowly. By early afternoon neither the headache nor the rain have abated, and with both getting worse and daylight wasting we decide not to hike the 14-mile day we’d planned.

We stop by the Visitors Center, amend our backcountry permit, and then head out to explore Tucson. The city looks scruffy, and I know why: no one has lawns. The plants that grow in front of fancy houses are the same as the plants in the bad neighborhoods, and those are the same things that grow on the roadsides and in the ditches: prickly pear, ocotillo, barrel cactus, and cholla. This gives even the most expensive neighborhoods the scroungy ambiance of a seedy trailer park.

Tonight’s plans have changed from a backcountry camping permit to a nice hotel room (Fairfield Inn by Marriott), a hot shower, and an old Mexican restaurant. Bryan does a brief internet search and finds “El Charro”, the oldest continuously operated family Mexican restaurant in the US. The directions provided by Google Maps are almost but not quite exactly wrong, but we find the restaurant anyway, tucked into an odd corner of old downtown Tucson. It’s cheerful and interesting and every bit as good as the reviews: the service is excellent, the red salsa is the best I’ve ever eaten, the chicken and tomatillo tamales are amazing, and the chimichanga we share is as big as a stick of firewood.

In fact, according to their menu, El Charro was the place where the chimichanga was invented. It was first opened in the twenties by a French woman who’d moved to Arizona with her stone-cutter father. It was a family restaurant and her little nieces were often in the kitchen. So one day when she accidentally dropped a burrito into hot oil she stopped herself from cursing by saying “shi……michanga!” The fried burrito was found to be delicious, and the name stuck.


The picnic shelter at El Sevillo camping area, in the Colossal Cave Mountain Park

Day 4 – Day 5 – Day 6

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 4

This is a multi-part trip report… if you haven’t already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Truth or Consequences, NM
End: Colossal Cave Mountain Park (AZ)

Daily Mileage: 288
Total Mileage: 1369

Bryan wakes up feeling much better this morning. The weather channel reports that it’s 14 degrees in Benton and -6 in Brookfield. Even New Orleans is chilly, with a wind chill of 25. There are winter storm systems scattered across the country and a lot of people will get a white Christmas this year. We imagine the newspaper headlines:

Nation Shudders Under Winter Cold,
Snowfall Heavy Everywhere,
Civilization Sinks Into Carnage,
and the Signorellis Go Backpacking

We’re glad we decided against Grand Canyon; the forecast lows for the rim this week are around zero.

The day begins with a shopping trip in Truth or Consequences. Bryan says this is the most beautiful view from a Walmart parking lot he’s ever seen; I just wanted to get a high school t-shirt. I was disappointed to learn that when the town was renamed, the high school wasn’t, so the only thing available was a “Hot Springs Tigers” shirt. (I’d been hoping for something like “Truth or Consequences Badgers”.) On the way through town we discovered that the elementary school’s name had changed, and their mascot is hilarious; I should mail a check to the PTO and ask for a “Truth or Consequences Kittens” shirt.

The drive to Tucson is interesting. We visit Hatch, the Chili Pepper Capital of the World. A dozen little stands are set up along the road selling wreaths and ropes made from dried chilies. We enjoy the break from four-lane travel for awhile. Small mountain ranges dot the landscape, each different from the next. The Sierra de las Uvas to the south are smooth, like giant, soft hills of dirt. The Greg Mountains are a series of short, rocky mesa hills to the north. As we continue west the ranges get bigger and rockier and more imposing.

Near Tucson we stop for a terrible lunch at Jack in the Box, which serves something called a “Teriyaki Bowl” apparently made from leftover rice and cat food. I swear I will never eat there again. We turn north off the interstate and head toward the park and suddenly, saguaros start appearing in the desert near the road, huge human shapes out in distance. We’ve finally arrived!

The elderly volunteer ladies at the visitors center are less than confidence inspiring when they answer our questions. “Backpacking? You mean camping? Out THERE?” Fortunately, a ranger named Jeff arrives in time to answer our questions and give good advice. We’ll camp on adjoining private park land tonight, but we have some good ideas and backcountry permits for the three nights after that.

We spend the night at Colossal Cave Mountain Park, in the La Sevilla group campsite. It’s old but sprawling and clean and we have it to ourselves. After a supper of pasta primavera and a very pretty little campfire, we’re in bed early. We’ll sleep tonight under the friendly mesquite trees, with the saguaros standing sentinel.

3151736553_b6cb0e3eb9_b
Entrance to Saguaro National Park (East side)
Our campfire at La Sevilla group site at Colossal Cave Mountain Park

Day 3 – Day 4 – Day 5