We began today with breakfast with some old friends. We met Sandy and Chuck in Madison, Wisconsin at a rally for motorhome owners. They were the ones who, on August 14, as we were all departing the rally, had trouble getting one of their slides in. We had enjoyed their company and planned to meet them when we got to Apache Junction where they were going to spend the winter. We suggested breakfast and they agreed. Fun breakfast and we all talked about motor homing, places to visit and things to see.
The restaurant had some interesting doors on the stalls in the women’s room. Both Sandy and I had to take our pictures.
After we left them we hied ourselves over to Verizon to try to come to some resolution about our wi-fi gadget, the one we had taken in on the 14th to get fixed. It was still not working and we either needed a new one, to reinstall our old one or try something else. Because the history of our problems was on their computers under out account, the rep just offered to replace it and told us it would be shipped to arrive in about 5 days. Easy.
Meanwhile, I’ve learned a valuable lesson- never too old to learn a lesson. It’s no secret that Gary and I love ice cream - the hard kind not the Dairy Queen soft ice cream. However, caught in a pinch, we’ll eat a DQ Blizzard. It is often difficult to find a hard ice cream store and we thought we had found a gem in the local grocery store, Basha’s. There, next to the donuts was a freezer with 8 flavors of ice cream. Ah, we kept that in mind for the next time we craved ice cream.
And, today was the day. It was late enough that we were a bit hungry but early enough that it wouldn’t spoil our dinner. We pulled into the Basha’s parking lot, drooling, and rushed into the store. We stood at the ice cream freezer debating whether to get one or two scoop and which flavors to get. Patiently we waited for a clerk. The first clerk who saw us tried to ignore us but finally called someone else over, muttering something about the ice cream’s being too hard to scoop. Finally another clerk arrived, picked up the scoop which was as big as a baseball (good sign) and, muttering about the hardness of the ice cream, tried to scoop some out. And, tried. And tried. A teaspoonful later, she admitted defeat.
Well, it was obvious that the freezer was too cold and the ice cream too hard. But, here’s the lesson: in the freezer section of grocery stores are small personal size Blue Bunny ice cream containers with spoons attached to the lid. We’ll never go ice cream less again. And how old am I that I’ve learned this lesson? Like I said before - never too old to learn.
Then it was time to attack Silly Mountain. Silly Mountain? Yep, there is such a thing. You’re not going to find this on many maps and you’re to going to find it on hiking websites. It’s one of many ‘bumps’ interspersed throughout the Arizona landscape that is really a small hill but is great for a short aerobic workout, great for a family hike or great if you don’t have time for a long hike. It gets you out and about, off your duff, enjoying nature. It’s a bit challenging but not too difficult that kids and old duffers can’t do it. It’s a neighborhood hiking spot since it is surrounded by homes. You can tell by our shadows at the bottom of the picture that this hill isn’t a huge mountain.
It’s right off the highway into town and we’ve driven by it numerous times, always noting that there are lots of cars there. Must be fun, we said, we’ll have to stop. Today, it was too late for a long hike and we wanted something different than walking around the resort for our daily walk. Silly Mountain fills the bill. We parked, checked the posted map that the Apache Junction Parks and Rec had put up and chose our trail. Silly Mountain is actually a clump of about 3 or 4 small rocky, craggy hills and they have developed quite a few trails circling and climbing them. Many people have put a lot of work into making this a fun outdoor opportunity.
It was very rocky and craggy with lots of small flatter rocks that had sluffed off the bigger crags covering the trails. We wove around trying out several different trails. Now, I can race along the flats, can power up the hills but on the downs I’m every bit the 65-yr old duffer. I live in fear that I will slip on those flat rocks, fall down and hit my head on one of the larger rocks. And, believe me when I tell you - you may think my head is hard but it is no match for a rock. So, I move slowly down on a rocky surface and I use trekking poles. Today, I didn’t realize the trail surface and left my poles in the car. Could I have been any slower coming down? I doubt it.
We covered about 4 of the main trails, enjoyed climbing over and about Silly Mountain. we understand why there are so many cars in the parking lot every time we pass by. Great, shorter workout and we’ll return.
No comments:
Post a Comment