Day 14: Saguaro National Park

Sunrise was beautiful, but those clouds looked ominous....

April 26: It didn't rain overnight, but the last weather forecast I looked at showed a 40% chance of rain today--especially in the afternoon--so I packed my gear as if it was going to rain. The two main pieces of equipment that I really needed to keep dry (my sleeping bag and camp clothes) went into trash bags. My journal, star charts, and other small incidentals that I wanted to keep dry went into fresh gallon-sized ZipLocks. The old ones were getting worn and had developed small holes.

By 6:00 AM, I was on the trail and hiking--my earliest start time yet. I was hoping to get in as many miles as possible before the rain started. I didn't think it was realistic to finish before the rain started, but I could at least get as much done as possible before it started.

By 7:00, I had crossed the southern boundary of Saguaro National Park. The boundary, to me, represented two things.

First, the trail was going to start climbing dramatically. It would climb over 5,000 feet upwards--a mile into the sky.

And second, until I hiked beyond the north boundary, everywhere on the trail would be illegal for me to camp since I had no permit. No permit, no camping. And it was, according to my databook, 17.6 miles from the south boundary to the north boundary. I needed to hike at least that far by sunset. I thought I could do that distance, but I wasn't going to lose sleep if I couldn't. If it was getting dark and I hadn't made it out of the park yet, I'd set up camp anyhow. What else could I do?

But I prefer to do things legally when I can, which meant I needed to hike over 5,000 feet over a mountain range and cover 17.6 miles. It was going to be one of my longest days on the trail, but I felt up to the challenge. Too bad one of my longest days on the trail was also my first day out of town and meant my pack was at its heaviest too.

As the trail climbed higher and higher, the views behind me got better and better. I could see way back, far beyond Colossal Cave and Interstate 10.

I took my first snack break about eight miles after I started, at the junction with Manning Camp Trail, and I wasn't there long before three southbound backpackers met up with me. (A fourth, they would tell me, wasn't far behind.) And we started chitchatting which is how I learned they had seen not one but two gila monsters on the trail a day or two before. They seemed pretty confident that I would see them too, and I hoped they were right. I didn't share their confidence, but I certainly hoped they were right!

I was a little disappointed that they were headed in the opposite direction as me because I knew that meant I wouldn't be seeing them again later. I was able to give them the most recent weather forecast--they apparently didn't have one but they weren't blind and saw the clouds building in the sky. They knew something was up! So I told them about the 40% chance of rain, which meant that it was definitely going to rain. For 40% of the day. Probably in the afternoon. =)

They asked where I would be camping for the night, and I told them somewhere north of the north boundary of the park. Probably the first decent place I could find to camp after the boundary, but I didn't have a permit so I had to shoot for the boundary. They told me a really nice campsite existed almost immediately north of the boundary--not more than a minute or two away. This cheered me immensely! My databook doesn't really describe every possible place to camp so I couldn't be certain how far past the boundary I would have to go to find an adequate spot. It was nice knowing about a useable place to camp so close to the boundary (and on the correct side of it).

Just as I was about to move on, the fourth person of their party arrived and we barely made introductions before I waved goodbye and continued north on the trail.

For the rest of the day, I saw absolutely nobody. Not a single soul. I thought maybe around Manning Camp I might see a hiker or camper or two, but there was nobody.

After Manning Camp, I had some trouble following the Arizona Trail because the blizzard of intersections weren't labeled with the AZT. They had other names like Manning Camp Trail, Mica Mountain Trail, Spud Rock Trail, North Slope Trail and Bonita Trail. I only had my notes, maps and an innate sense of direction to guess at which direction to turn most of the time.

Confirmation whether I chose correctly or not usually arrived at the next trail intersection when I intersected another trail with the next name on my list. If I intersected a trail with a name that wasn't in my notes, I might have gone astray.

There ought to be a few saguaros in Saguaro National Park!

Near the top, by Mica Mountain where the trail tops out at about 8,600 feet above sea level, the weather had turned downright cold. The park, named after the mighty saguaro, had absolutely no saguaros in this part of the park. The elevation was just too high and too cold for them to survive. It struck me as somewhat ironic that a huge swath of this park had absolutely no saguaros at all! At these elevations, the vegetation consisted mostly of tall pine trees. Quite a bit different than the cacti community 5,000 feet below.

It was also near the top when I could smell the rain. You know that scent you can sometimes smell just before it starts raining? I've been told that scent is ozone, but I don't really know if that's true or not. I thought ozone was a lot higher in the atmosphere, but it has a distinct odor and I could smell it. Rain was in the air, and it could start at any minute.

But at this point, I was only about 3 miles away from the north border of the national park. If the rain would hold off for just another hour or so, I might be able to get into camp before it started! I didn't think that was possible when I woke up in the morning, but I didn't expect to make it this far without being rained on either. I was so close.... Please, let me get into camp before it started raining! Now that I had reached the top, it was all downhill the rest of the way. I could make really good time heading downhill!

Almost immediately, the vegetation on the trail changed again. The thick forest of pine trees turned into a drier habitat. Still not much cactus, but the trees seemed more stunted and dispersed. They didn't thrive as much here as they did on the other side of the slope.

During the next hour, I'd feel dots of water in the air--like walking through thick fog. Almost thick enough to be considered a sprinkle, but it wasn't. Not really. The particles of water in the air hung suspended, floating as mist. I was sure the rain would start any second, but remarkably, it continued holding off as I counted down the miles to the border.

As I reached the border, I felt the first few drops of actual rain. It was just the lightest of sprinkles, but I recognized it for what it was: rain was imminent. Perhaps seconds away. Argh! But I was so close now! I had actually reached the border with no rain! The campsite shouldn't be more than a few minutes away!

I all but ran down the trail at this point, hoping to beat the rain. The camp was a bit further away than I had hoped, but I made it within a few minutes, threw down my pack and pulled out my tarp.

Hope Camp, near the south boundary of Saguaro NP, appeared
long abandoned! That windmill wasn't catch much wind...

The sprinkling was still there, ever so slight but definitely there. Under the trees around the campsite I didn't feel it, but I knew it was there. I could hear it hitting the leaves. A soft pitter patter. And the air practically reeked of rain. The smell was overwhelming. And a strong wind picked up and blew through camp. It was going to rain soon!

I quickly strung up my tarp using a tree to prop up one end and my trekking pole and a bush to tie down the other end. I fumbled in my haste, quickly pushing small sticks through loops I made in the ropes at the corners to turn them into "deadman" anchors, cursing the lack of proper tent stakes. It seemed like a good idea at the time to send them home, but improvising this stuff to set up my tarp was taking too long!

Then I frantically disassembled the firepit using the heaviest rocks around it to weigh down the deadman anchors. I didn't bury the anchors--I didn't have time for that! I hoped the rocks would be heavy enough to hold them in place.

The wind was growing stronger, though, and I decided that I needed to weigh down the edges of the tarp as well as the corners, so I created more deadman anchors on which I piled on my increasingly smaller rocks since I had already used the larger ones for the tarp's corners.

As soon as the last anchor was placed, I dived under the tarp and spread out the groundsheet. Before I finished spreading out the groundsheet, the rain started in earnest--a pounding rain hitting the tarp trying to get in. The tarp strained in the wind, the sides flapping up and down for all it was worth in whatever slack they could get from my deadman anchors. I hoped those would hold! It was looking iffy....

But I was dry and under the tarp--and not a moment too soon! And my campsite was even legal! And I had covered 19.7 miles in total which was pretty darned good when you consider that it was only 3:00 in the afternoon making it my earliest stopping time so far on the trail.

However, I was absolutely exhausted. I changed into my warm camp clothes, put on my fleece jacket, and crawled into my sleeping bag. It was cold out there! Then I fell asleep. Despite the nose from the wind flapping my tarp and the rain beating down on it, I was too tired to do anything but fall asleep.

A couple of hours later, I woke up when the wind and rain let up. It was so eerily and suddenly quiet. And I was getting hungry. I hadn't even eaten a snack before falling asleep.

My tarp hung loosely, practically draped over me like a blanket rather than held up above my head, but its position held and all of my gear and myself stayed dry.

I got out of my sleeping bag and tightened up the ridgeline and reset my deadman anchors giving the tarp its proper A-frame shape again. Kind of like a facelift for tarps, I thought. Get all those wrinkles out! =)

I cooked dinner, wrote in my journal, then read The Poet by Michael Connelly until I flipped the very last page (or at least what counts as page flipping on a Kindle) around 10:00 PM when I went back to sleep again--this time, for the night.

Most saguaros looked majestic and amazing! This one...
This saguaro looked angry and lonely....

I've never seen one of these on the trail before, and I assume it's
some sort of camera. Perhaps to take photos/videos of wildlife
running across the trail. I'm absolutely certain that someone,
somewhere has a video of me taking photos of this camera. =)

Saguaro blooms

Those clouds kept looking worse and worse as the morning progressed!

The views looking back were amazing!

Saguaros are quite large, and they need a fairly sturdy "bone structure" to
support all that weight. This is the skeleton of a long-dead saguaro.
Despite its corpse-like look and broken arm, it seemed remarkably cheerful!

From left to right: Nathan, Jim, Ron and John. Jim did most of the talking. John was
the fourth guy who didn't arrive until just as I was about to leave (he hadn't
even sat down to rest yet!) I gave them the weather forecast. They gave me
a campsite to shoot for. =) And the hope I might see two gila monsters ahead!

Saguaro NP has some rather high areas--as Manning Camp at 8,000 feet
will attest to!

Yeah, I can do that....

Or maybe not! Where's the register?! (And no, I didn't take it!)

Which begs the question... what good is a water supply if you can't get to it? =)
(There was piped water to Manning Camp which, presumably, came from here.)

It wasn't raining yet, but moisture was thick in the air and, at times,
I could see rain in the distance.

I found this little friend under one of the large rocks that made up
the firepit. Despite the imminent threat of rain, I did take a few seconds
for this photo because when would I see something like this again?!
He didn't seem at all happy that I had disturbed his hiding place, though,
and quickly skittered away. (This guys skitter, they don't walk.)

Day 13: Desparados, Miners and the Old West

Amanda is all dressed up and ready to mine copper!

April 25: My progress on the Arizona Trail has, thus far, been considerably slower than I had hoped or expected. Considering my late start on the trail, I wanted to make up some time by hiking harder and longer and instead, I kept falling further and further behind with all the backtracking, walking in circles, then slowing down to meet Amanda at Colossal Cave. Consequently, I was anxious to get back on the trail and get more miles in.

But.... I had a problem with Saguaro National Park. There weren't any trailheads readily available for Amanda to pick me up at the end of the day. Looking at maps, we figured I'd have to hike about 27 miles for me to reach a road where she could pick me up at, and that was a little far for a day hike. I might be able to do it, but it would have been risky without a full pack if I got caught out overnight.

The logistics finally had me deciding not to do it. I'd spend the day with Amanda playing the tourist again. I didn't want to hike 27 miles in a day, even if I could. And spending the day with Amanda would be fun. It usually was. =)

Amanda really wanted to see Tombstone, a town she'd never made it to in all her years of travel. I had been there before and could take it or leave it, but it was a proverbial stone's throw from Bisbee, a town neither of us had been to before. Well, technically, I guess I was in the outskirts of Bisbee when my sister took me to Jimmy's Hot Dogs just before I started the trail, but it was certainly nowhere near the middle of town and certainly didn't include a stop at the Queen Mine--one of the more famous mine tours of the area. We toured an active, open-pit copper mine the day before. Today, we'd tour the underground tunnels of a long retired copper mine. And, I had it under good authority, it included a train ride. Perfect! =)

We headed for Bisbee first. We had to drive through Tombstone to reach Bisbee, but we could stop in Tombstone on our way back. We didn't know how full those Queen Mine tours would be with tourists and kids, and figured it was best to do that first thing. Anything in Tombstone could wait until later in the day.

The only hitch in the drive was where traffic slowed due to a wildfire on the west side of the road. The wildfire didn't appear to be burning anymore, but dozens of emergency vehicles were parked on the side and it looked like several dozen firefighters in their yellow jackets combed the hillside. The rubbernecking wasn't too bad, though, and we made it to Bisbee without any further trouble.

Fires seem to have a knack for following me around Arizona....
Now here's a second one that slightly affected my trip--this
time on the drive to Bisbee!

We arrived at the mine which was already bustling with tourists and paid our tickets for the next available tour. They gave us bright, orange vests, helmets, belts and lights and pointed us to the miniature train that would carry us into the tunnels.

Entering the Queen Mine on our miniature train.

And it was fun, but I don't really have any good stories to write about it either. It's not an active mine anymore so there were no explosions or mills grinding large rocks into smaller ones or chemicals separating the copper from the dirt. There were tunnels instead of a giant hole in the ground, and it was quite chilly inside of them.

Then the tour ended, they took back the helmets, vests, belts and lights, and Amanda and I were on our own again. We wandered around Bisbee a bit--a beautiful little town. But we still had Tombstone to visit, and soon headed back there.

Amanda and I are about to enter the mine! We put on our jackets even
though it was hot outside because in the mine it would be quite chilly!
Both of us, apparently, prefer going in with our eyes closed. =)

They gave us lights for the tunnels, and for kicks, I tried to spell a capital R
(for Ryan, of course!) with the slow shutter speeds the poorly lit tunnels provided.
It took me about half a dozen attempts before I could make it fast enough!

The one sight everyone in Tombstone had to see is the O.K. Corral where the infamous gunfight took place. The corral itself is fenced off and requires an admission to get into--something Amanda didn't want to pay, but she was content walking around the outside and trying to look into the cracks in the fence. A sign on the fence marked the corral and the historic gun battle, but Amanda forgot about the recreation of the gunfight which was scheduled to happen right as we stood next to the sign just a few feet from where the recreation takes place.

Gunfire shattered the otherwise quiet street and Amanda practically jumped out of her shoes in fright. I'm a bad person.... I laughed. Oh, how I laughed!

Amanda poses just outside of the O.K. Corral. Shortly after
this photo was taken, gunfire erupted just on the other side
of this wall scaring Amanda half to death!

We continued wandering the streets of Tombstone and eventually stopped for a late lunch (or early dinner) at the Longhorn Restaurant. I'd contacted my sister who, if you've forgotten, lives in nearby Sierra Vista, but she couldn't come out to visit until later in the afternoon after she got off work. So we mostly killed time reading our books at the restaurant until shortly before Tierra arrived.

There's tension building in the streets of Tombstone....

I sense a gunfight is about to break out soon....

Then the three of headed headed out to Boothill Cemetery. Even my sister who lived nearby hadn't visited the cemetery before so I was the only person familiar with it. We went in finding all of the more famous headstones. Of all the stops in Tombstone, the Boothill graveyard is my favorite. The text on the headstones are often quite amusing! Including such classics as:

• Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a 44, no les, no more
• John Heath taken from county jail and lynched by Bisbee mob
• Here lies George Johnson: Hanged by mistake. He was right, we was wrong, but we strung him up, and now he's gone.
• Cowboy Bill King: shot by best friend

Four slugs would do it. *nodding*

The headstones mapped an incredibly violent city and a hundred ways to die. Deaths by shootings, stabbings, hangings (legal and otherwise), drunks, sickness and disease. One headstone grabbed our attention because of the particularly unusual way this person died: natural causes. It didn't happen very often! Not in Tombstone, at least.

The beard is still growing! And poor George....

Another man was found in an abandoned mine. I did a little google searching
on this guy and apparently he was wearing "nice" clothes and therefore
couldn't have been a miner. In the background, Amanda is posing
with the graves of the three guys killed at the O.K. Corral gunfight.

We spent quite awhile roaming the graveyard not wanting to miss any of the headstones, but it's not a very large cemetery and eventually we finished and made our way back out.

Then Tierra and Amanda got the idea to go wine tasting. I'm not big on wine, but I was more than happy to tag along and photograph the shenanigans.

Amanda (L) and Tierra (R) were allegedly "tasting" wine, but it looked
to me like there was more drinking than tasting going on!

By dusk, though, it was time to head back. We parted ways with my sister who returned to Sierra Vista and we headed back to the Arizona Trail. Amanda had to fly out early, early the next morning and we decided that she'd just drop me off the trail where I'd set up camp. Amanda had flown into Phoenix and needed to drive back that night.

We arrived at the trail crossing on X-9 Ranch Road a little after sunset. It wasn't dark yet, but it would be soon. I walked for about 5 minutes down the trail to get away from the road and set up camp. Angry looking clouds started coming in and, according to the weather forecast, it was supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon. Maybe a chance in the morning hours. It showed nothing happening overnight, but the clouds looked mean enough that I decided to partially set up my tarp--just in case. I wasn't fully covered with the tarp, but if it did start raining, I could anchor down the tarp's corners in less than a minute. I was ready!

Then I went to sleep.

I partially set up my tarp just in case it started raining. I could pull
over the other half of the tarp into a proper A-frame and
had rocks ready to hold the corners down at a moment's notice!

Day 12: Missiles and Mines

The control room of the Titan Missile Museum. From
this room, the United States's most powerful nuclear missile
could have been launched. Fortunately, that never happened!

April 24: Today, I would take my first day off from the trail. A day to play a respectable tourist in (and around) Tuscon.

Amanda and I couldn't sleep in, though. No, we had places to go! I wanted to take her to the Titan Missile Museum, which is one of the most interesting places you'll ever find anywhere. I'd been there before, but Amanda hadn't and I figured she had to see the place herself!

And practically right next door was the Mission Mine, an open-pit copper mine that neither of us had visited before. I don't know how I missed it when I visited the Titan Missile Museum more than a decade earlier, but I wasn't going to miss it a second time.

However--we had no reservations for either of these places so we wanted to get there right when they opened to beat the crowds.

So we drove into Tuscon, then south passing a bad wreck that had northbound traffic nearly stopped. Hopefully that would be cleared up before it was time to head back into Tuscon!

Our first stop was Asarco's Mission Mine. The parking lot was completely empty which we took as a good sign. We went into the gift shop and visitors center where they informed us that all of the tour spaces were full until 12:30 that afternoon. Apparently, a lot of school kids were scheduled to take the tour throughout the morning. Not a problem! We signed up for the 12:30 tour then had several hours to kill....

We spent the better part of an hour looking through the visitor center and learning about copper mines, open-pit mines, and the Mission Mine complex but still had a couple of hours before our tour would begin. Near the end, the place was filling up with school kids.

Not a problem, though! I figured we might still have enough time to tour the Titan Missile Museum and still make it back in time for the copper mine tour. We got back into the car and drove one more exit down the highway, following signs for the Titan Missile Museum. The parking lot there was already crowded with cars, and we crossed our fingers that tour space would be available.

They had open positions for the next tour scheduled to start about 15 minutes later. The tours lasted for about an hour so we should finish and still have a half hour to get back for the copper mine tour. Perfect! I paid our tickets and we looked around the gift shop and visitors center while waiting for the tour to start.

The Titan II missile in the silo.

This facility was a military installation created to deter a nuclear attack. The facility became operational in 1963 and hosted a Titan II missile, the largest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ever used by the United States.

It was also a setting for Star Trek: First Contact in 1996. The missile itself was depicted as the Phoenix, the first warp prototype. Our docent said that nobody was supposed to touch the missile--the oils on our skin would eventually damage it but Patrick Stewart touched it during the movie. "He wasn't supposed to touch it!" the guy told us in a mock outrage. "But what the heck--it's Star Trek!"

The underground bunker was built to withstand a direct attack from missiles launched by the Soviet Union so the entire place is supported by giant springs to insulate the equipment from shock waves. They had all sorts of procedures in place to make sure no missiles were launched by accident or without permission, and they took us through the control room where the launches would have been activated.

The place is absolutely fascinating and you won't find anywhere else in the world quite like it. Fortunately for the world, the missile was never launched and the complex was decommissioned in 1982 and later turned into the museum that it is today. This was the front line of the Cold War.

The Titan II missile from the surface. It was probably aimed at
locations in the Soviet Union but the targets are still classified to the this day.

After the tour finished, Amanda and I headed back to the Mission Mine complex for our scheduled tour there.

We arrived with about 15 to 20 minutes to spare. Kids were everywhere! They multiplied like rabbits! But they were all being herded towards a few school buses and the quiet calm soon returned.

At the appointed time, everyone from our tour group was herded onto a small bus and we headed to the mine itself.

Our first stop was the edge of the mine--a huge, open pit spanning 2.5 miles by 1.5 miles and about 1,500 feet at its deepest. The sheer size is truly staggering. These open pit mines must be, without a doubt, some of the largest man-made holes in the world. We could see giant dump trucks at the bottom which looked like ants. And these trucks were staggeringly large. These aren't highway vehicles that have to fit under bridges or stay within their lanes. These trucks tower several stories high and require climbing tall ladders for the drivers to get into the cabs. I've seen entire houses that could fit into the backs of these trucks! And they barely looked like toys from our vantage point on the edge.

Amanda poses with a tire for one of those enormous dump trucks.

We watched for a while, and I found the spectacle enthralling. We learned some interesting statistics about the mine as well--such as how many tons of copper it extracted each year which didn't really mean much to me. They were just very large numbers! The mine runs 24/7 and for all 365 days each year. Just one tire of one of those massive vehicles costs tens of thousands of dollars and lasts only 6 months. The entire vehicle costs four million dollars and lasts for about 20 years before it needs to be replaced.

Then we were all herded back into the bus and as we were driving to where they processed the ore, the driver told us that explosives were about to be detonated. He pulled over and turned off the bus. We strained to hear the radio at the front of the bus and heard "fire in the hole!" called out. Seconds later, we heard the giant explosion. It didn't sound like a giant explosion. In fact, we could barely hear it at all. The faintest of rumblings. Had we not been straining to hear it, we would have missed it completely. The ground didn't shake--at least not perceptibly--then our driver started up the bus again and continued driving.

Our second stop was where the giant dump trucks carried the broken rock to. We got off the bus again and headed into a large building. Inside, we were in a small, glass-enclosed room that allowed us to see all of the machinery around the rest of the building.

On one side were large rotating cylinders that broke down large boulders into particles as fine as sand. On the other side, the sand is run through an agitator with chemicals that will pull out the copper from the otherwise useless dirt and rock.

The Mission Mine complex is enormous. This is just a tiny part of the
enormous hole that was closest to us! Those black spots
near the right side are dump trucks that are several stories tall!

Another view of the Mission Mine complex. Here the dump trucks are so
small they barely show up as tiny dots in my photo!

It's hypnotic to watch. The copper bubbles flow over the side of the tank into a trough that catches it and moves it to a settling tank. Eventually, the copper becomes 28% pure. Which doesn't actually sound like much, I know, but itrepresents less than 1% of the material extracted from the mine. At this point, the copper needs to be smelted but that's not done at the mine. The material is hauled away to a smelter in Hayden 85 miles to the north. For our purposes, this was the end of our tour and we boarded the bus back to the visitor center.

From there, we didn't have any set plans for the rest of the day. The highway north back into Tucson had been cleared of the bad wreck we saw earlier so we made it back into Tucson without any hassle. We headed to REI for me to do a little shopping (I had a 20% off coupon for REI that was burning a hole in my wallet!) and ate lunch at a wonderful little place called Sir Versas. Amanda came back from the bathrooms gushing about how wonderful they were due to the unusual decorations, but she hadn't taken any photos. (Apparently, she felt weird about taking photos inside of a restroom!) I decided to make a point of checking out the restrooms before I left... then completely forgot to before we left. So... I've got no photos of the restrooms at Sir Vesas. We wandered around the shopping mall a bit before eventually heading back to the hotel. Our day was done!

These spinning drums grind boulders into a texture as fine as sand.

The material is then run through these agitators with chemicals that
pull out the copper from the useless dirt. Those bubbles on the
surface are filled with copper that spill over into a trough leading to....

These tanks that further concentrate the copper.

This dump truck was retired in 1975 because it's too small for
modern-day operations!

I ride an elephant at the mall by REI. =)

Day 11: Colossal Cave!

April 23: Amanda and I drove out to Colossal Cave. I planned to do a short section of the Arizona Trail--from where I got off the day before to the trailhead closest to Saguaro National Park that Amanda could drive to in a rental car. Saguaro NP was a bit of a problem for us since there were no trailheads Amanda could drive to anywhere in the park. There was a trailhead just south of the park boundary, and another one several miles north of the north boundary, but I'd have to hike over 25 miles between the two not to mention there was a giant mountain towering thousands of feet high between the two. I wasn't sure my body was strong enough to take that sort of abuse as a day hike. Not yet, at least. Theoretically, I could probably do it.... but what if I couldn't? What if it was too strenuous? Then I'd need my backpacking gear, but just carrying all of my gear would make my pack a lot heavier and make it all the more likely I wouldn't be able to make that distance in a day!

But camping wasn't really much of an option either because camping in Saguaro NP is by permit only, and I didn't have a permit. I could have gotten one--with Amanda around, it would have been relatively easy to drive to the ranger station to get one. But it was still something of a hassle since the ranger station wasn't anywhere near the trail itself.

So I hadn't decided what to do about the "Saguaro problem," but I figured at the very least, I could hike as close to the south boundary as I could where Amanda could still pick me up in a rental car. We drove up X-9 Ranch Road--a gravel road a few miles south of the south boundary that the trail crosses to scout things out. I'd walk from Colossal Cave to this road crossing if the road wasn't so bad that a rental car could navigate it. And to make sure Amanda could find the trail okay--the trail isn't always well marked for vehicles when it's not an official trailhead, and this road crossing wasn't an official trailhead.

This lamp is hanging from an old, decayed saguaro. The
saguaro has a very strong, internal structure to support its massive size!
It's a skeleton of sorts--the skeleton of a saguaro.

We did, in fact, miss where the trail crossed the first time we drove by. We knew close to where it should have crossed from my topo maps, but we missed it anyhow. We turned around and picked up the trail on our way back, though. The gravel road appeared well-maintained and the rental car had no trouble with it. My 5.3-mile day hike was a go!

Then we drove back to Colossal Cave. Amanda dropped me off where I had gotten off the trail, then I walked off trail about a mile to the entrance for Colossal Cave. Since we were in the area already, stopping for a tour of the cave was a no brainer. I walked from the trail to the cave, though, even though it wasn't part of the Arizona Trail for continuity when I later assembled the photos together for Walking 4 Fun. When I arrived at the cave, Amanda had already looked through the gift shop and exhibits and was just waiting for me to arrive.

We paid for tickets then waited near the entrance for the tour to start in another 20 minutes.

The cave is a beautiful one, and the driest cave I'd ever been in. The dank atmosphere and dripping water was nowhere to be seen. The formations in the cave weren't growing anymore since the cave was dry, but formations had formed in years past when the cave was wet. It's well worth a visit if you're ever in the area.

The cave was also the warmest I'd ever been in--temperatures stay at about 70 degrees year-round. (That's 21 degrees for you celsius types!) No jacket was necessary for this cave, but despite its warmth, it was still quite a bit cooler than the outside temperatures. It was going to be a warm day today!

Sand art in the waiting area just in front of the cave.

After the tour was over, it was time to continue my hike of the Arizona Trail. It wasn't even noon yet, but temperatures were soaring. It was time to knock out the miles before it got any warmer!

I stopped at the La Selvilla picnic area for a quick lunch break. It had covered picnic tables and I took full advantage of them to get away from the searing sun. I also kept my eyes open for gila monsters--the two German mountain bikers I met a couple of days ago had seen their gila monster at this picnic area. Maybe it was still around. Lurking. Watching me eat lunch.

But I never saw the gila monster and after finishing lunch, continued onward.

The rest of the day's hike was uneventful and I met Amanda where the trail crossed X-9 Ranch Road a couple of hours later.

We stopped at Hotrods for lunch. I wouldn't have minded a different place to eat--I had eaten here just the day before, after all! But the place was too cool not to share it with Amanda. =)

I'm not sure what we did after that. My journal notes ended with Amanda picking me up from the trail. I didn't even write down that we ate lunch at Hotrods (it's just something I remembered without prompting). We might have just headed back into town where I caught up with more of my online activities and watched some TV to beat the heat of the day indoors.

I wait for our cave tour to start. (That's the cave entrance on the
far left of the photo.)

Cave formations!

Amanda navigates the cave like a pro!

Back on the Arizona Trail!

Covered area at the La Selvilla picnic area. I looked for gila monsters
around this area in particular, but they were nowhere to be seen. =(

Those mountains in the distance are part of Saguaro National Park.
And I'm on a collision course with them!

The cacti were still flowering like crazy! These blooms are
from the prickly pear cactus.

 

Bloom from a hedgehog cactus.

Blooms on a cholla.