Our last day already! At the beginning it always seems like
there’s so much time, and then it is over too soon. Dave got up very early and
went out to look at a comet, which he liked but which was not worth waking
anyone else for, then went back to sleep. When we woke up for real it was time
for a cardio hike, and we wanted to try the bottoms up trail, which we’d seen
the end of when we did Girdner/Axis. Unfortunately
we misread the map, which had the trail name between two trails, and went the
wrong way. We had a nice hike which stayed up on the top of the hill, then
found the Bottoms Up trail and followed it for a short way – it’s along a
stream bed and looked fun, but we had another big day planned.
We’d moved the kitchen table from Lynn’s apartment into ours
(did I mention that like last year, we had two apartments that connected?) to
do the puzzle, and when we got back we moved it back into her apartment and
then moved Dave in there with his kindle and duolingo and astro-imaging, and
Lynn and I got to sit and knit and talk, which is actually the whole point of
the vacation but seems to get crowded out. We had a good talk and I wish we
could do it more often! Before we knew it it was time to go get Dave and try
for lunch at Shorebird once again, and the third time was the charm. My
potatoes were the best thing.
 |
This is a sunset photo, not a Mescal trail photo.
|
After lunch we drove out to the Mescal trailhead to do our
final hike, another recommendation from Karen at the chamber of commerce. I was
a little worried because we really wanted to do some red rock hiking, and this
trail seemed to be pretty far from anything but scenery. I was wrong. It went
right up onto the rocks and we had a great hike. It didn’t occur to us until
the next day that we might have been able to use the trailhead shuttle to do a
one way hike with more time on the red rocks, but this was a fantastic hike.
It was almost sunset when we got home, and Dave and Lynn
thought it would be fun to go see the sunset from the hottub near our apartment
from last year. We went and it was good but Dave and I wanted a little more, so
we walked over to the centennial trail and saw some amazing views. When we got
back it was already time to head out for our final dinner, which we had at
Javelina. Dave and Lynn had chili rellenos which they had been looking forward
to all week, and we all had margaritas. After dinner was packing, and then it
was pretty much bedtime. My fitbit showed a personal best 26,064 steps for the
day, a fitting end to our walking vacation.
Friday January 20
The wind howled and the snow fell during the night, so we
were up a little earlier than we’d planned. Dave went down and used our room
keys to scrape the windshield clean, and we checked out and headed carefully
out of town. The roads were kind of nasty, and we passed several accidents, but
we got to the Sky Harbor airport exactly when we’d hoped to. Lynn dropped us
off and went to have a couple of donor visits before her Saturday AM flight. We
went in and dropped off our suitcases (actually, we printed the tags at the kiosk
and then a baggage guy came to the kiosk and took them, which was nice but kind
of weird), and had a little lunch at PHX Beer Co. We got to the gate just as
they were starting the boarding process and had an uneventful trip home.
We had a great time and we’re glad to be home.
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