onepinkfuzzy

While his dad honeymoons in Hawaii (I'm not jealous of the honeymoon, but quite jealous of the location :) ), Ash and I go on vacation for seven days.

How does one fill up seven days on the cheap?

With grandparents: we travel to Mesa to 1. attend a highway dedication as my last assignment before I'm officially set free for a week, and 2. stay at my parent's house for two nights, which includes lots of Papa/Ash time and tons of pool time (some with a multitude of cousins) and a run with my mama.

With camping: We wake up Friday morning at home and hit up Target to find a new cooler to replace Chris's broken one, but all the coolers at Target have wheels and that is just not acceptable. Then we try to pack my car. It's too small. Chris has a Suburu Outback, so we unpack my car and repack his car. We finally head out of town an hour after we wanted to.

Up US 191 we go, through Safford and up up up to the mining towns of Clifton and Morenci, where we find a taco shop on the side of the highway and eat lunch. Then we stop at an overlook to view the largest open-pit copper mine.

Continuing up up up this crazy winding highway, we start smelling gas in the car and start worrying. Pulling over at a rest stop, Ash and I check out a scary spider and Chris tries to figure out what's wrong with the car - nothing that we can tell.

A storm is approaching. We spend the next hour-and-a-half playing 20 Questions while Chris navigates the sharp curves in a storm and I jump at the loud thunder. We hit Hannagan Meadow and figure out that we want to go to the East Fork of the Black River, so we'll hop on a Forest Service dirt road and head on back.

We navigate our way to the camping areas and are amazing by both the beauty of the valley and the horrendous amount of RVs (and generators). It's raining and we can't find a camping spot. I don't want to continue on to Big Lake, because I'm worried that we'll spend yet another hour in the car (it's already been 7 hours, counting all the pit stops), and find just as many RVs there. Finally, we find a lone camping spot. Whew!

The rain lessons to a sprinkle, so we hop out to set up camp. Halfway through setting up my sister's tent (which we've never laid eyes on before), the rain intensifies. Yikes! But we manage to get the tent up and camp set. It's back to a sprinkle so we try to start a fire to roast marshmallows and hot dogs, but we don't have any kindling and everything's all wet. We roast our food over yellow pages (the only dry paper in the car), then pull out glow sticks before heading to bed.

The next morning is clear. Chris and Ash head out to explore the river and I get my coffee and relax at the campsite. After breakfast, we gather some kindling and lay it out on a tarp to dry during the day so we can have a REAL fire that night. Then we go for a hike and quickly realize that this is a fisherman's river. No one hikes. There are no trails. None!

Rain clouds are approaching, so we head back to camp to cover the kindling and pack up camp so we don't get wet. We spend the next four (four!) hours inside the tent and we first get rain, then hail (!), then more rain. We read, relax, play 20 Questions and Uno, and then try to sleep a little (yeah, doesn't work with a five-year-old). It finally lets up and we come out to try to start a fire and make dinner.

The Fire Queen (that'd be me) makes a kick-ass fire and we spend a few hours enjoying the starry sky, bright fire and our neighbor's generator. (Campground = never again. We'll do the dispersed camping thing along some random dirt road somewhere, thankyouverymuch.)

Sunday morning dawns bright and clear. We enjoy taking our time to take down camp. Ash plays air guitar while we disassemble and dry off everything. On our way out, we decide to take a "long cut" instead of a short cut and head to Alpine. On our way, we found a herd of elk! We quickly pulled over and did a spur-of-the-moment hike to sneak up on the herd to get a closer look.

Once we get to Alpine, we realize that lunch (lunchmeat, cheese, etc.) has fallen into the melted ice water in the cooler, thus rendering it unedible. Dammit!

Ash munches on peanut butter as we drive over to New Mexico. Once we make it to Glenwood, we find a little (really amazingly delicious) diner called the Blue Front. Our cheeseburgers and fries fortify us for our big expedition: hiking the Catwalk.

Surprise, surprise: it's raining!

Okay, I'm from the desert. In the desert, one does not go up canyons when it's raining. Flash floods, duh! (as Ash would say...) We sit in the car and debate what to do. A friend of Chris's has been here when it flash flooded, and due to the really cool construction of this trail (a metal walkway bolted into the canyon side), the flash flood rushed right under their feet while they stayed safe. We observe other folks heading up the canyon. We decide we will start hiking up the trail and if the trail stays too low down next to the water, we'll hightail it outta there.

But first, we must make raingear for Ash: a garbage bag :)

Up the canyon we go. The trail stays high and dry, then we hit the main attraction: the Catwalk. It's awesome fun. And the canyon is gorgeous. The water is remaining at the same level. The waterfalls are amazing. Folks are all over the canyon (some in the water, which just freaks me out). Ash hikes the entire 1.1 mile up and back. No flash floods at all, just amazingly beautiful scenery. The long cut was totally worth it.

It takes us four more hours (including a pit stop in Safford at Jerry's for breakfast-for-dinner and yet another rain storm) before we get home, 12 hours after we left our camp site.

It was exhausting and did I mention the rain? But it was a blast.

(the entire photo album)