Cave Creek Regional Park
Now that was a day worth living!
After leaving Nicole’s yesterday morning, I was driving North out of Phoenix when I decided to drop in at the gym one last time before leaving the area. Another great workout and a second shower in one day (I’m splurging now) started the day just right.
I was ready to call it a day and stopped in at a Walmart that I visited last time I was passing through and picked up a few grocery items to tie me over for a few more days. This Walmart is surrounded by a massive shopping mall. If you can name it, and it is within a 1/2 mile of this Walmart. So, I spent my afternoon shopping and after a few hours of looking around I finally picked up the white button-up shirt I have been looking for, which prompted another trip into Walmart to buy a small iron and ironing board (and red-vines for my movie I was planning to watch that night).
In the morning I spotted Cave Creek Regional Park just a few miles off the Interstate. I must have overlooked it last month, but today I was going there to camp for the night and check out the trails. Firstly, the camping area was full but they offered dry-camping in the overflow area for $17 a night. A bit high for dry camping, but I really didn’t care to drive any more today as I had already logged 13 whole miles! I was done, so I paid the price and set out for the 6 mile long ‘Go John Trail’ on the mountain bike.
Having not ridden a mountain bike in two years, and never for 6+ miles, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Of course I had to ride a mile on asphalt to get to the trail head, but it was a good warmup. The trail is rated as ‘moderate to difficult’ and it lived up to that description. The first mile was all climbing, then a mile of gentle downhill twisting and turning through cactus an prickly plants. After two miles I thought I was doing great, so the park through in the next two miles of steep up and downs on extremely difficult, rocky terrain. It was just not ride-able I tell you! I had to walk most of it, and when I did jump back on the bike I ended up crashing… a few more minutes of walking then.
The trail gave up trying to kill me and gave me some nice riding trail again for the remaining two miles, half of which was a fast downhill which lifted my spirits. After another 1 mile on asphalt I returned to the van. Just over 1.5 hours of mountain biking and I traveled 8 miles with a top-speed of 33 MPH on the asphalt (I hit 22 coming downhill… scary) and averaged 5 miles per hour overall.
Again, I was able to shower (three in two days!) before starting my dinner. See, a week ago I picked up 6 chicken breasts for a steal. I had been keeping them frozen in the fridge, but I decided to turn the fridge off and go back to the ice-chest. This meant I needed to cook that chicken now that it was thawed, and where better to pull out the BBQ and cook these birds? Combined with some corn, the BBQ chicken was superb. I considered eating another, but stopped myself before a night of over-stuffed agony.
I’m not so sure I will be able to walk tomorrow, but the day was worth it. At the end of the day I spent some time trying for that infamous sunset-cactus photo, but I waited too long and lost my light. This is what I was able to come up with… even got the van in the background.
