We thought we would be traveling about 7 miles per day. We made our seven miles the first day. The second day we fished, swam, and played a lot. The GPS calculated that we hit our 7 miles, but a cross check with the map said different. Our third day ended up being about 12 miles, and the fourth day was about 9 miles. It was a little intimidating to be taking our kids on such a long remote trip. I am so excited to say that Kyleigh is our super trooper. She hiked every bit of the hike. When we got back to the stables at the end of the trip Rusty had to walk about a mile to let James and Vicki know where we were. Kyleigh wanted to go with him so she finished strong with an extra mile on the road. Kyleigh enjoyed hiking with her Nama all four days. They played dog, taking turns being the hunting dog and the hunter. They played princess when everything was royal, including the horse poop. They also taught each other songs and told stories. Katelyn and Naiya were so great in their backpacks. They complained only at nap time. Then they would fall asleep and wake up happy again. Katelyn got out of her pack and hiked 1/2 to 1 mile a day. They were a little crazy in camp at night, so excited to be able to move and play literally bouncing off the walls of the tent.
We were blessed to see a plethera of animals, including rabbits, horny toads, frogs, caterpillars, a whitetail deer, a rattlesnake, squirrels, fish, a crawdad, and a black bear. The trail included about 100+ Gila river crossings. We came across one beaver pond where the water was really deep. Kyleigh would be quick to tell you that it was up to her armpits. Kyleigh's favorite part of the trip was catching the baby frogs at the river crossings and carrying them to the next river crossing, where she would let them go. At one point in the trail Rusty and Kyleigh were skipping and singing skippity ehh and heidi ho. Katelyn was on Rusty's back. All of the sudden Rusty started yelling at Kyleigh to get back. I was right behind them and saw the coiled rattlesnake just to the right of the trail. I started yelling at Kyleigh and she jerked to a stop, confused as to why we were yelling. Rusty and Merrill proceeded to try and kill the rattlesnake with large rocks, but they kept missing it. It uncoiled so Merrill grabbed a big stick and flung it off the trail and we went on our merry way. Kyleigh had no idea what it was when it started rattling. She said she just thought that a sprinkler was turning on. Indeed, that is what it sounds like. Katelyn's favorite parts of the trip were seeing the rattlesnake, playing with snake grass (which she called rattlesnake grass after seeing the rattlesnake), eating clover, and seeing the bear. Katelyn is obsessed with hearing bear stories from Rusty, and now she has her very own bear story to tell. Mike spotted the bear just through some brush and yelled for us to come see it. Sure enough there it was about 50 yards away. It started walking away, but turned around to watch us as we watched it. How exciting.
The Gila Wilderness was beautiful. The landscape change was amazing. We went from a typical dry, desert landscape to the river bottom where rocks and redwood trees towered above us on each side. We hiked through large meadows and around tight cliffs. We ended up the way we started, in the dry desert landscape. We hiked through an unreal amount of poison ivy combined with poison oak and stinging nettle. We all had quick dry pants on and the only poison ivy we came home with was a tiny bit on one of Merrill's feet. We were really concerned about mosquitos because of Katelyn's sensitivity to them. I was relieved that the mosquitos were almost nonexsistant, even near stagnant water.
One highlight of the trip was Jordon hot springs. We stopped on our last day and soaked our feet/bodies in the nice warm water. We were the only people there, although it is a fairly popular destination and only 7 miles from the cliff dwellings. Another highlight was Mike's brownies on our first night. Mike managed to make us a pan of brownies over the fire. He was very proud of himself and we were all happy with the results. We enjoyed all of the food we ate and we ate good. We had gourmet tin foil dinners, hungry man burritos, s'mores and a wide array of snacks.
At the end of the trip our feet looked like hamburger, the kids looked like orphans, and it was hard to stand up after we sat down momentarily and stiffened up. More important, though, is that we all felt a sense of accomplishment. None of us would hesitate to do it again... just give us a few days.
The group at the start.
Petting a horny toad.
Russ and Katelyn fishing.
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