AJ, AZ - The Old Grey Mare

And, what’s your soundtrack for the day? Somehow, I seem to be caught on:

        The Old Grey Mare, she ain’t what she used to be

        Ain’t what she used to be

        Ain’t what she used to be

        The Old Grey Mare, she ain’t what she used to be

        Many long years ago.

Well, of, course, sometimes I will have to admit that I feel like the Old Grey Mare. And, guess what, we hiked today which gives me lots of chances for that feeling. Actually, it’s the only nice day in the surrounding five which have featured rain, cool temperatures and dampness and we have either stayed inside to work or have found other things to do, like museums. But today it is sunny and looks like a hiking day.

We arrived at the trailhead and noticed that there was no bathroom. Here’s the dichotomy: when you hike in Arizona you must drink lots of water. All hiking manuals say that, signs at the trailhead say that and every one carries water when they hike. BUT - they don’t put bathrooms at the trailhead so, when you return from your hike and you’ve drunk yourself silly on the hike as the signs tell you to do - don’t you think they might provide a bathroom? Sometimes there is but in this case, nope, nada, nil, zilch.

We started out and immediately noticed that we were walking into the wind. Not only that but we looked ahead, had to crane our necks to look up to find the pass that we had to climb over and saw people on the trail above us - hiking straight up. Oh, oh, there’s that Old Grey Mare feeling.

However, on we hiked, knowing that when we got to the top, the worst might be over. Wow, was the wind ever strong through the pass. This is not the place to stand to relax and congratulate yourself for reaching it. We quickly hiked down to the next trail intersection, where we found 4 people contemplating the trail marker. One was a biker who told us all that he was just waiting for everyone to get out of his way on the trail so he could continue. Well, so much for camaraderie and consideration on the trail. Where is Emily Post when you need her?

The other two were more interesting. The woman asked where we were going and we told her. She looked horrified and said:

        That’s a long way. You have to go down there a ways and take the next trail back.

        Yes, we know, it’s the Windmill Trail.

        I don’t know how much water yo have, but, it’s a long way back. We’ve hiked that.

        Yes, we know, about 10 miles.

        But, it’s steep at the end.

Well, we nod and tell her that we’ll be ok and head off down the trail.

She followed us about 3 feet down the trail, leaned towards us and said:

        But, you don’t understand, the ending trail is awfully steep. Just when you get really tired, you then have to go up to the top of the pass.

While we did appreciate her concern, we did know that the trail went up. We were ready for that.

Do I really look that old? Was my Old Grey Mare showing so much?

Her last words were:

        But that last bit is a real bugger.

Ah, that’s what we haven’t done: develop a bugger scale for the hikes we take.

We hiked on, really enjoying it now that the wind had died down and we were actually going down. Most people hiked just to the pass and turned around. Again, past the pass, we were relatively alone out in the wilderness and loving it. We did meet one biker but that was it until we got to the next trail intersection and turned back towards the trailhead. Here, as we headed back to the trailhead, we began to meet more people.

Wonderful territory to hike through and getting greener because we’ve had so much rain in December. We enjoyed one part of the trail called Inspiration Point and I took a picture of the ‘inspiration.’

Them we actually hit the ‘bugger’ part, which headed up and over the final pass. And, - not so bad. I wasn’t even huffing and puffing. And, from then on, it was all downhill. On our new ‘bugger’ scale, it was about a 2 out of 10.

Then we saw this - a special saguaro which they had replanted near the trail. This is a ‘crested’ saguaro and it occurs in only 1 in 200,000 saguaros.

In the evening we had a special unexpected treat. While we eat dinner, we watch the news on TV and sometimes we have more dinner that there is news. So we watch what ever is on next. Tonight, I was exercising the remote and wasn’t interested in the old TV version of ‘Batman’ nor in watching Bob Vila rehab a house so kept punching that button. Then - we found something interesting: a musical opera with a huge orchestra, chorus and 5 main characters with absolutely marvelous voices singing. We were intrigued and kept watching, enjoying it. Then one of the characters said that his name was Jean Valjean and I realized that this must be Les Miserables. Now, I’ve never seen this and Gary has seen it once maybe at his parent’s home.

We actually watched the whole thing. It was marvelous and we really enjoyed it. Lucky punch of the remote.

Then the Old Grey Mare had to hit the hay.