Everything's Coming Up Roses! Part 3

Did you read Part 2 yet?  You should!

Scenery!

We woke up on our final morning at the Rose Canyon Lake campground as the sun peeked over the horizon, having slept quite well after going to bed relatively early the night before.  After repeating our chai/coffee and fancy breakfast sandwich successes from the day before, we once again changed into workout clothes and loaded up the truck for another hiking adventure.  

Chef Chris, busting the grill out of the bear box.

We love Arlene, our little travel trailer, but like most things, there are a few features we'll be looking to upgrade whenever it comes time to purchase our next rig.  One of our number one items is that we'd love to have a trailer with a slightly bigger fresh water tank capacity - right now, Arlene has a 20 gallon tank, and if we're dry camping, we can only make it about 2-3 days before we're running on empty.  That means we have to be really careful about how much water we use, and once you factor in dishes, flushing the toilet, and whatnot (we bring our drinking water in gallon bottles), it's often a shower that ends up being the thing that gets axed.  For this trip, since we knew we'd want to smell nice to see Bryan and Jen on Saturday, we purposefully scheduled our shorter, easier, calmer hike on Saturday morning, leaving the longer, hotter, more difficult one for Sunday.  While we probably wouldn't have enough water for full showers afterward, at least we were heading home with just the two of us in the truck, and at least we'd smell gross together.  #marriagegoals

Mt Lemmon has tons of hiking all over the place, and we picked the Oracle Ridge Trail; its trailhead was just a bit up the mountain from our campground, and it looked to be a moderate hike with the potential for interesting scenery.  It's also part of the Arizona Trail, which runs the length of our state, and often has through-hikers.

The Oracle Ridge Trail runs a good 11-12 miles.

We initially planned to do around 4 miles total,

but the high elevation, exposure, and warmer temps

had us logging only half that.

Just as well - we enjoyed it anyway.

As you can see, the scenery was incredible - 

in some areas, we could see the 10

heading north toward Phoenix - 

but you could also clearly see the devastation

caused by the fires a few years back.

Most larger trees, if there were any, were the size of this guy,

and they were almost all black and dead.

We also saw trees like this - dead, but hadn't fully collapsed yet.

See the chunk of burnt wood that's gone on the left side?

All of the new growth was just a foot or two high - 

we saw lots of new manzanitas and other desert flora.

It'll be back eventually, but not soon enough.

Like always, the yuccas are doing fine.

These shoots were the tallest living things we saw.

I mean, look at that.

After we finished our hike, we headed up the hill just a bit more, to visit the town of Summerhaven, a cute little spot with a few permanent residents and a good selection of cabins and other lodging for travelers to rent.  We made a quick stop at the general store to buy local honey and a sticker for Arlene, then it was back down the hill to our campground once again.

The fudge looked good, too, but we passed this time.

As I mentioned above, there wasn't enough water for real showers, so we made do with baby wipes and a change of clothes, and after the first round of packing up, we sat in the shade and enjoyed one more meal - a lunch of chicken salad wraps - before we returned to the heat.

Chris and me and my 40 of tea!

He said, "you're not planning on drinking that all now, right?"

I mean, what's the point of towing a bathroom around

with you, if you don't stop to use it every 15 minutes?

I think it took me like three days to drink all of this tea.

We'd stalled as long as we could, and finally, it was time to get Arlene hitched to the truck and say goodbye to Rose Canyon Lake.  The exit from our campsite went far smoother than the entrance (thank goodness), and we were back on the road, heading down Mt Lemmon before too long.  

Leaving the forest and entering the desert once more

The trip home took just a few hours, and we stopped at the same Pilot station again, this time to dump off all the water - and other things - we'd accumulated in the tanks on our adventure.  As it turned out, there was no need for us to shower after our hike, since unpacking the camper at home in the 112 mid-afternoon heat would have made another shower mandatory regardless.  After cleaning up, we relaxed in the AC for the evening, reclaiming the pups the next day and reuniting the pack once more!

Later!

Amy