AJ, AZ - Hiking as a Competitive Sport

Another day, another hike. But then, that’s why we’re in Apache Junction. Last year, we had heard from another couple that the Apache Junction area, next to the Superstition Mts., had access to lots of trails and planned our winter to include this area. We actually got up early so we could return home early and were on the trail by 9:00. It was another gorgeous day and we were able to unzip the legs on our pants so we could hike in shorts. Not too much elevation to this trail but enough to keep us moving.

We started the trail right behind two young 26-yr old women but caught up with them at the first sign post.

They were in regular 26-yr old clothing with sneakers on their feet. Gary and I were all kitted out: hiking boots, hiking pants, hiking shirts, hiking hats, hiking poles and packs. Obviously we’re 65 and hiking ‘right.’ We chatted a while about trails, one woman’s 2-yr old who hiked, the restaurant at which the other worked but, we had started early for a reason and said our good-byes and took off.

Soon, after I had spent some time taking photos, we heard voices in back of us and realized they were getting close. Not in our lifetime. We quickened our pace and got ahead of the voices. We wound our way down a very rocky trail into a basin with hills all around. Beautiful but then we heard some voices. Shucks. We looked back up the trail into the basin and saw not only 2 young women but a whole army hiking onward.

We quickened our pace and began hiking up out of the basin but found a nice shady place with some big sitting rocks for lunch. Time to relax and enjoy being alone in the wilderness. Oops, there they are, wending their way up the trail.

Back on the trail. We really were enjoying this trail, especially being in the basin surrounded by hills and blue sky. We could see the Weaver’s Needle towering over the whole basin. (See Nov 3)

Shortly after we got back to the trailhead and while we were taking our packs and shoes off, the two young women arrived. We had beaten them back. Then, of course, they had to let drop that they had tarried a bit to let us have some solitude. Yeah, right.

Then the army arrived, a hiking club from one of the many retirement communities in AJ. (Look at AJ form the air on Google maps and see how many retirement communities of manufactured homes there are clustered here.)

AJ, AZ - Medicare, Verizon and The Hieroglyphics Trail

We began with administrative tasks, one of which was to get a Medicare Supplemental insurance for Gary. Can you believe he’s almost 65? What in the world am I doing with such an old guy? Oh, yeah, I’m even older - I got my supplemental in July. Actually, all I did was to call the company with which I had my supplemental insurance and got the same policy for Gary. No big deal.

Our second problem was to visit a Verizon store to see what we can do with the problematic wi-fi gadget we have in our RV. It’s a great gadget and we’ve used the Verizon 3G gadget for about 3 years with relatively few problems getting on line. THEN we switched to the faster 4G model this summer and can’t get on worth a darn. Or, if we get on, we get kicked off within a minute or so. We visited a Verizon store in Flagstaff and they ‘installed’ an update to cure the problem. We found out in the store today that the update was NOT installed in Flagstaff but that they could install it here and it would take only 30 minutes. Ok.

We then left to visit the Dunkin Donuts, right across the streets. Now, DD is a well known institution in New England where we lived for 15 or so years. I can even remember when Gary and I visited one in Boston right before we took our graduate exams. We had driven down from New Hampshire and arrived early so had a coffee and a donut before the test. We took the test in a room without windows and when we got out, there was about 4” of snow on the ground and more was coming down. We drove back in snow and we had to clear the 8” or so from our driveway before we could get into the garage. Obviously the best part of the day was the donut and coffee at DD.

Now, we hear the the current mayor of Des Moines and his son are going to open 12 DD franchises in the central Iowa region. It will be a terrible temptation. Normally, Gary and I do not eat many donuts but we’ve gotten into the habit of eating one before we hike. Bad habit.

On the way back from the DD, we strolled by a car wash where people were waiting outside in upholstered chairs for their car to come through the line. Outside? In Upholstered chairs? Obviously this is Arizona where it’s warm and it seldom rains.

Back at the RV, we decided to hike the Hieroglyphics Trail which is a short distance from the resort. It’s a short 1.5 mile trail in to some wonderful 800-yr old petroglyphs. But, before you get to the petroglyphs, there is a huge boulder with about 6 8” deep grinding holes, metates, in it. Corn was a staple of the Indian diet and the women and girls ground corn all day. But, imagine how much grinding was needed to make a hole 8” deep in stone.

Beautiful sunny day, challenging but short trail and a great payoff at the end. What could be better?

And, even though it is a popular trail, we were alone on it for most of the time. We did meet one couple heading back who had gotten to the grinding stone but hadn’t seen any petroglyphs. Shucks, that’s because they hadn’t gone far enough down the trail. They should have read a bit about the trail beforehand.

We also met a younger couple at the petroglyphs who had gone even further up the trail. He had bright orange hair in a stiff 5” high mohawk. Wow. And I thought wearing a coral shirt was a statement.

We retraced out steps and hiked out with this view of the trail in front of us.

As we were nearing the trailhead on the way back, we noticed this quintessential Western scene.