A nature trip in Arizona- part 1: Red Rock state park

Over the Memorial day long weekend, San myself and my SIL who visited from Melbourne, made a three day trip to Arizona. 

This trip had been planned months in advance to visit Antelope canyon. This was yet another "bucket list" trip. Our previous plans had all been cancelled or we could not get reservations to visit the canyon on usual long weekends. The tour is owned by an Indian reservation and they limit the number of people who can walk through it every day.

San tore her back muscle the previous week and was pretty much in bed rest when my SIL showed up. We were in two minds initially. Told her that it will be okay. It was a 3 hour flight and a 5+ hour drive from Phoenix to the hotel in Page, Arizona. If we took enough breaks and she sat with a waist belt and a pillow for the plane, car ride and rationed her painkillers.. it was doable. So the trip was on! 

Took the Friday off and flew into Phoenix. Got our rental car and started driving out of the airport at 10AM. Our plan was to stop by Red Rock state park for two hours and make it to Page by 6 PM for dinner.  Did not expect Friday morning traffic near Phoenix airport to be that intense. Everyone drives vehicles raised from the floor. Even cars seemed to be on some raised suspension! Folks follow some unwritten rule that larger the vehicle, less the obligation to follow driving rules. Felt like a rat running along the dinosaurs in a stampede of sorts.

Things got better once we were out of that area. We made a pit stop at Denny's. San and me both used to love Denny's. It was a go to place for us years ago. Could eat a pancake or waffle or engilish muffin anytime of the day! Their cheese sticks used to be amazing as well. Guess, Denny's is a shell of what it was before. The service and food quality was bad. Both me and my SIL had a queasy stomach after eating there. The worse thing was me telling my SIL about how good Denny's was and we ended up with that experience. Moral of the story : Don't live in the past. As a rule of thumb, food place quality goes only one way over time!

We made it to Red Rock state park a little after 1PM. They have a nice visitor center. It was a hot day and we decided to do the shortest trail to get a sample of the place. Walked a mile around a "cute" trail along the creem and took pictures from the vista point! 

The trail itself was nice and cool. We would have loved to walk around some more but San had to go through the paces slowly. The unanimous vote was to make a non stop dash to Page from there. 

We slowed down around Sedona and admired the cute shops and restaurants on the way. Had to make three stops. Readers please note that there are 40 mile stretches on the way from Sedona to Page where there are no restrooms! If you see one, stop. Don't think another one will come in 5 mins! You are welcome!

We made it to our hotel in Page by 7PM but our phones kept saying 8PM. I had panicked going "wait.. we drove an extra hour to get here?! How many stops did we do? I did drive reasonably fast". Apparently iPhones have a time issue in Page. They switch to Utah time. However Page follows Phoenix time which is same as CST.  Again, if you are a poor driver who is asked why it took an extra hour to get to Page, check the local clocks. You are welcome!

Decided to torture the two ladies by singing "Adi aathaadi" in a high pitch for a good hour in the hotel room and was eventually confined to the restroom. Think everyone in the hotel must have complained about some deranged lunatic screaming in the restroom. Eventually there was a knock on the door to tell me that "enough was enough" and "things are actually getting worse on every new try". They prefered driving with the sun in their faces for hours compared to being a forced audience for this singing etc... so called it a night. 

We were to spend the entire next day around Antelope canyon. We got plenty of rest to recover from the day of flying and driving. 

A few pictures from Day 1... 

just when we were asking ourselves "how do people live in this heat?" saw this.. 

apparently this is going to be a museum soon..

A gallery of photos of the park and other structures on our drive to Page.

A very different structure we saw right before we hit the town of Page.

A short video of the hike.. I provided humming bgm for the hike.. let us just say it was not a good idea.

If San was normal, and it was a cloudy day, we would have hiked the entire 5 mile trail to all the vista points. It was extremely hot and we were happy with the small hike.

This trip was being taken one step at a time.

The first step was to make it to Page without making San's back worse than where it was. That was done successfully!

Calero county park - Figueroa and Cottle loop trail

This weekend, our hike was an afternoon one. We decided to go post lunch and come down before sunset.

Drove to Calero County park (~30 min drive from our place) and started hiking shortly after 2. We did the 10 mile loop around Oak cove, Figueroa and Cottle loop trails in a little over 4 hours. 

Guess San is getting bored with the usual bench photo that she decided to add some love to it..

As usual, I was the straggler for the early part of the hike and after some time managed to catch up to the group.

This time there was no falling into creeks.. 

There were not many people on the trail today. It was pretty much left to us the entire way. 

We did have a 15 minute chai and bhajji break... It was pretty windy at places but for the most part the weather was cool and it was partly sunny. 

There are a couple of steep climbs that keep on coming, but those were all done on the earlier part of the hike. 

San has declared me unfit for future hikes unless I up my game and give up on rice eating. It is a tough ask.. I am currently saying dialogues like "Give me Rice or give me death!".. 

Right now the legs are saying "enough for the day!". This is a good trail to hike on a cloudy day! strongly recommend it.

A different hike to Mission peak

Last week's hiking did not go well.. 

My back is still recovering. That does not stop my wife from committing me to another hike this weekend. 

Our planning relies more on weather.com app than looking outside our window. 

When I woke up at 5AM to get ready for the hike, I nudged her and said "it is pouring outside! are we still going?" and she says "yes we are" and goes back to doze off.

Comes out after 30 minutes and says "it is not supposed to rain today. so we should go".. I have never seen anyone who thinks the sky should obey the weather app. That kind of faith in anything is hard to see these days.

So off we went. The trail was not hikeable for the first mile. It was pure slush.. and a few people who tried to go ahead of us just came back as they were not in right shoes and were skidding down. We being us... just went ahead and crossed this area. Even though it was still drizzling, foggy and windy, we made it to the top and back. On the way back we probably saw 10 people total making their way up, when we were almost back down. By then the sun also came out, but the trail was still very slippery and muddy.

The "lone cow"

a hilarious video snippet of our morning..

Chai never tasted this good...

Just happy to have made it back without any accident like last week. Usually we do this in 2 1/2 hours. Took us close to 4 1/2 hours today because of the weather and the muddy and slippery path!

Now for some much needed rest!

A fall at a waterfall : Mt. Diablo

Last weekend saw us resume hiking on a serious note.. not the jujube local hikes but a solid long hike in Mt. Diablo to see the waterfalls.  We had already hiked to the top as part of covering the bay area hiking grandslam three years ago and this time we wanted to cover the waterfalls. 

It was all great till I decided to go to the center of the creek to get pictures of the falls.. and fell into the creek. My head missed hitting the rocks, thanks to the backpack. I am very lucky to be writing this post now. Did bruise my elbows and palms badly and there were a few blood clots that showed up within a few minutes. 

San and my friends cheered me up, told me all is well and thanks to adrenalin and waterproof shoes, made it through the rest of the hike. We did slow down a lot because of my fall but made it back in one piece.

Always, always go easy when trying to go over slippery rocks!  There was a discussion on how I am not the same young guy anymore who can deftly go over rocks like a mountain goat, and how I should be more careful etc.. Will be more careful, but hopefully will stay carefree. 

We did get great pictures.. and as San says, even some cheesy ones. 

There is a visitor center where the trail head starts. There is a 6$ parking fee. If you have the app, you can pay from your phone.

We started on the Mitchell canyon road trail head and decided to go counter clockwise to do the hard part of the hike first. 

This was the place where I fell into the creek.. 

After recovering, had to take a picture on the creek side.. 

There are a lot of small and large waterfalls on this trail. They were all beautiful

we covereted Bruce Lee road, Back creek Trail, Meridian point, Donner Trail and Muricho Road as part of the hike.

The sun made the falls light up!

We got to sit and have tea on a rock with a view of the falls.. 

The ladies did some dancing here (which I thought was as risky as me clambering on top of rocks to get a photo).. sadly there is no permission for that masterpiece to be shared in this blog!

the long expsoure mode in iPhone comes in handy, given I did not take the SLR with me on this trip. Usually I do when waterfalls are involved.. given I was taking 2 1/2 liters of water and change of clothes, decided to keep SLR at home. The change of clothes was there in case I sweat too much.. luckily it helped after falling into the creek! In case you are wondering "I don't see different clothes?"... I switched one Bikram Yoga shirt for another.. when your wardrobe is full of the same T-shirt.. changes will not be obvious!

we were talking about seeing god in nature and we saw this "black dog" on the mountain side

Zooming in, saw it was a shadow of a rock outcrop that looks just like a god.. sorry.. dog!

Guess it takes ~ 25 years of marriage before the wife decides some PDA is okay. This seems to be a trend among desi women I see in bay area.. either they turn 50 or have a 25th anniversary party and suddenly they decide enough is enough and start wearing tank tops for their jogs and bikinis to the beach and even start holding hands with their husbands in public! If the stats are any indication of what is to come.. I need to mentally prepare myself. You cannot suddenly ask a domesticated dog to go run wild in the forest.. 

This photo was Photoshopped with two versions of the same photo.. one with Long exposure for the falls and one regular to capture us..

all said and done I am a happy camper..

talking of seeing god everywhere.. there was a "govindaa goooovindaa" moment..

Pay before you start hiking.. or you get a ticket!

A video of all of us crossing the creek 20 times over the hike..

It would have been even better if I had not fallen... but it is what it is. Next time we will go when there is more water and I will be safer walking on rocks!

Back to the bench, after a week

We decided to go to India on a last minute decision. We covered a lot of ground in 11 days. Also it has been some time since we went to India and jet lag hit us hard. After 6 days we finally got over jet lag, thanks to Maha Shivrathri. 

This weekend we decided to start hiking up hills again.. baby hikes.. 5 miles on Saturday and 8+ miles today.. 

Some pictures to commemorate our getting back to the usual. Our sincere thanks to the hiking group leader, who is becoming an expert at taking our bench photos.... At this point our "bench photo" collection from local parks has crossed a 100..

The weather was amazing this weekend and that also helped! 

we also saw some deer, coyote, turkeys and jack rabbits ..not everything made it to the photos..

There are a lot more benches in bay area trails that we are yet to visit.. 

Wife is already getting tired of this tradition! 

The india trip was interesting. Hopefully I get to blog a small piece of it everyday and will be done before Christmas!