Well I found a website with short paragraph long descriptions of five family friendly hikes in the area. One of them was Papago Park, been there, done that. Another one was the Wind Cave Trail in the Usery Mountains just outside of Mesa. According to the website it's all paved and you can take a stroller to a cave that has daisies growing on the ceiling. Funny, completely inaccurate. There is one trail in the park where you can walk with a stroller but it goes nowhere near the cave. I didn't realize it until I was almost there but this park is right across the street from the range where my dad, my nephews, and I went shooting after hiking at The Lost Dutchman a few months back. When I got off the freeway I noticed a desert home on top of one of the hills and realized where I was.
Well needless to say I didn't prepare for this hike. Luckily I brought my hiking boots but I only brought one bottle of water. When we got to the gate the guy working there told me it's it's 3.2 miles round trip and 850+ feet elevation gain to the cave, you can't take a stroller, and he doesn't recommend me hiking up carrying a toddler and then went rambling on about how some clumsy lady fell on the trail and hit her head on a rock (no surprise looking at some of the people that attempt to hike these trails). Yeah, I've heard all these warnings before. So we got to the trailhead and took a look at the cave we would be hiking to. A family coming back said it would probably take us an hour and a half to get up there with Adri. Then I looked at my one water bottle and decided this wasn't a good idea (it was at or above 90 degrees and very little shade). Actually it was probably a very bad idea. I didn't want to turn back but I kept thinking of everything that could go wrong by not having enough water. Having my daughter with me I had to use my better judgement. Why was I not prepared? I got in the car and drove to the visitors center where I bought a couple bottles of Gatorade and a few bottles of water. Luckily they had what I needed because otherwise it would have been a nice drive to get what I needed. Now I was ready.
With the exception that it was a little on the warm side it turned out to be a perfect day to hit this trail. Spring is here and all the cacti are in bloom. It took us just under the hour and a half that we were told it would take us to get to the top and that was with me carrying Adri the entire time. Without Adri this would have been an easy hike. I could have run up this hill in under a half hour. With Adri, I have to say, it was a little bit of a workout. Towards the end I had to stop a few times and hang out under the shade from the few bushes on the trail. The whole way up Adri kept saying "What's that sound? It sounds like my gun". She was talking about the gun fire across the street but I don't think it sounds anything like her cap gun.
When we got to the top I realized that it wasn't really so much of a cave. It was similar to the caves where I go camping in Joshua Tree, by the Coxcomb mountains. Adri had been saying all morning that she didn't want to go in the cave because it's dark and scary. She's been watching too much Aladdin and she's still a little scared from the mine ride at Knott's Berry Farm. She kept bringing up Jafar and the people in the mine ride. Well lucky for her it wasn't a dark cave. Just a shady area where the wind had wore out the rock over millions of years. The daisies up top weren't too impressive, half were dead, the ones that were alive had tiny white flowers, and there were lots of bees. So the cave wasn't all that impressive but there was a pretty decent view.
The hike down took about half the time it took us to get up. The sun was lower, it wasn't as hot, and of course I wasn't climbing. Adri almost fell asleep on me a couple times going down the hill. Funny that on both the way up and the way down she kept telling me that she's hot, she's tired, and her legs hurt. It must be hard having someone carry you up a mountain!
So that was our hike. Hopefully we'll get in one more before the heat kicks in. I want to take Mormon Trail next, in the South Mountains. I think if I could carry Adri up this one I could carry her up Mormon Trail no problem. This next week's adventure is going to be camping at The Lost Dutchman. I got a spot with water hookups so now I just have to buy a kiddie pool and we're set for a redneck weekend :)
At the beginning of the trail. One of the cactus blooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment