A Christmas Quickie

How was Christmas everybody? It seems like a lot of you got a nasty ice storm for the holidays. I hope you were still able to get together with whomever you had hoped to celebrate with. The only gifts we were expecting didn't make it on time (they're going on 10 days in the mail now). Michael's and my gift to each other was, you guessed it, a hike. I won't go on and on about it, but we decided to tackle the brand new Escondido Trail in the McDowell Mountains. We were planning on doing a 9.2-mile loop, incorporating two different trails. Yep, that was the plan. Do you see a loop on the picture below? No, you don't.

The trail was easy enough, very meandering, and pretty flat.



There were a lot of animal tracks too, promising a wild-life sighting that never happened.

What the heck?

During the hike, we could hear shooting nearby and then every once in awhile, we'd here a huge boom. Like a cannon. What the? It started sounding like Independence Day in Key West, so we kept an eye out for biplanes tossing toilet paper at us.

Hallelujah! Our chariot awaits.

After 5.2 miles, we reached an intersection we didn't know what to do with. New trails aren't on the maps yet, and the signs around weren't helpful enough, so we ended up turning around and going back the way we came, which meant a 10.4 mile trek total (I discovered this write-up after the hike, and yeah, like we would have figured out that combo on our own - sheesh).

Inexplicably, this hike really pooped us out, and we were both whining by the last mile. Who was going to carry whom? Pretend you're hurt so that helicopter will pick us up. You think any mountain bikers will give us a lift? How 'bout we just lie down here? Whaaaa. It turned out we were very alone on the return trip, and it even got a little spooky, but we survived to tell the tale. And to take a couple of Advil.

Happy Boxing Day for those of you who still call it that.

Next up, New Year's.