Tackling Trail 100

For those of you familiar with Phoenix, picture the area of Shea and Tatem. Got it?
Now, picture Peoria and 7th avenues. Got that, too?
We hiked from the first spot to the second spot on Sunday.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Phoenix area, this is the trail we did:



Only we didn't stop at 7th Street. No, no. We crossed under 7th Street and went another mile and a half to 7th Ave, for a total of 11 miles.
The Phoenix Mountain Preserve’s Christiansen Memorial Trail is not a loop trail, like all the other hikes Kelly and I have conquered. This one starts on one side of the city and winds through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and dumps you off on the other side of the city.
So I dropped my car off at 7th and Peoria avenues on Sunday morning and hopped into Kelly’s car to drive to the trailhead. About 15 minutes into the drive, Kelly sighed.
“Um,” she said. “This is a long drive.”
“Yeah, this does not bode well,” I sighed back.
We knew it was going to be a long one. But we didn’t know how much we were going to love it.
The first part of the trail was very green (an adjective rarely used to describe trails in the desert):

To cross major freeways and roads that cut through the preserve, we ventured through several tunnels like this:

We got to stop about 4 miles into the trek to eat lunch at this rest area, with actual picnic tables:

Plus, hiking past four mountains (Piestewa, Lookout, North and Shaw Butte) that we had already climbed during our training was just plain cool.
Oh, and neither of us was sore the next day. Victory!

Our secret weapon

When my alarm went off on Saturday morning at 6 a.m. I was not happy. In fact, I pushed snooze button so many times, I was barely dressed when Meghan arrived at my house to load up the rest of our items and head to the Little League field.
This was way too early for a weekend morning, but we pressed on, giant coffee mugs in hand. We were determined to bring in some cash to close in on our goal.
We arrived at the field and began to set up our concession table. After last weekend, we are now old pros, so it didn’t take long to get the purple tablecloth on and the Skittles in their position. Finally, we sat into our portable chairs and started to relax. As the balls clinked off the bats, we anxiously waited for customers.
For some reason, I turned my head to the left and look behind us. “Oh no,” I said to Meghan as I watched a huge tent soar into the air, boxes of candy unloading from a SUV and a grill rolling into position. “It’s another concession stand,” I almost screamed as my brain began to make sense of exactly what was unfolding in the distance.
How could it be? This professional group of “concession stand people” weren’t supposed to hit little league games until we were finished fundraising. But here they were and it didn’t look like they were leaving any time soon. And they had a GRILL and TONS of candy. (I’m talking every candy imaginable. It seriously looked like a Willy Wonka’s operation.)
Depression hit pretty quick as we looked over our small little concession stand table with way less options than our competition. We were sure we were doomed.
But that was before our secret weapon arrived – my 17-year-old cousin Connie.
Connie had come to the field to help us sell items. Her mom, Kathy Jo, was there too and she quickly worked out a deal with the competitors that would send customers our way for any items we had stocked. Our candy was melting in the sun, so Connie ran home and got us an umbrella.
Quickly, things were looking up.
But we were still worried about the sales. Would we even make $20?
Connie assured us we would be successful and then she got to work. She strapped a cooler around her neck, attached a Leukemia & Lymphoma sign to it and hit the stands. “I have ice cold beverages for sale. We have coke, diet coke, water and Gatorade,” she bellowed. “All proceeds go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma society.” This was a truly amazing sight.
Parent after parent ordered a drink from Connie and most told her to keep the change. Periodically she would run back to the table and dump off piles of quarters and ones. We were making a killing.
Sure, the other concession stand had almost every single item you could imagine, but they didn’t have Connie. And in the end, this Saturday turned out to be our most profitable yet.
Meghan and I walked away with $200 - just the boost we needed.
We begged Connie to hit the field with us again. She’s out of town this weekend, but we’re hoping she’ll be up for another Saturday.
She’s for sure our new top secret agent.
Since we forgot our camera, I’ll make sure to grab a picture of her next time she’s at the games. You have to see her in action to believe how much damage she can do.
Thanks Connie! We owe you big time.

Fighting for a cure - together

Sometimes when you’re in the midst of an experience, it’s easy to feel like you’re suddenly on some far away island, working like mad with only a few other individuals.
You might start to believe that you’re the only one whose muscles are aching from training on a Sunday morning. That you’re the only one facing a fundraising goal or that it’s just you who is working hard to honor people who were lost.
But an e-mail from my cousin, who is also named Meghan and is pictured above running by her house in Philadelphia, reminded me that there are people all over fighting for the very same cause – to find a cure for cancer.
Meghan is training for the Broad Street Run, a 10-mile Race through Philadelphia, as an American Cancer Society Charity Runner. And she’s committed to raise $1,000 for her run, a goal she's very close to meeting.
Check out her site by clicking here.
She’s running in honor of my mom, her Uncle Burt and one of her best friend’s Libby Morris Remick.
Meghan and Libby went on a trip on the Alaskan Canadian Highway (Libby is pictured on that trip below) and shortly after she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. She passed away last summer.

In a recent e-mail as we were talking about our fundraising efforts and training, Meghan again reminded me again why our efforts are so important.
She said, “Your mom, Libby, my Uncle Burt were such powerful people in my life. I will always admire them. They each had that "magic" - they were the kind of people who brighten a room instantly upon entering…I'm enraged at cancer. It's such a crappy disease, lurking everywhere we are.”
As part of her fundraising efforts, Meghan is planning to hold two bake sales in Philadelphia and she's offered to donate some of her proceeds to Meghan and me to help us meet our goal. I was blown away by her generosity and it proved to me once again that people are more giving than you would have ever imagined.
This recent intersection of reminds me that out here in Arizona we are not alone at all on this quest. We are all in this fight together.
And if each one of us helps out just a little bit, the results will be powerful.
How could they not be?

A Wild West Weekend

We really got in touch with our inner cowgirl this weekend.
On Saturday night, after approximately 8 hours of selling sodas and red vines at the concession stand (and loading and unloading the car four times), we headed up to Buffalo Chip Saloon in Cave Creek for our group fundraiser.
Despite the fact that Cave Creek is only 15 miles north of Kelly's home (and not much farther from mine), we had never been there. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not prepared for the prevalence of cowboy hats, horses tied to posts outside of businesses, and that... smell... of the Old West.
There are houses tucked into the sides of mountains that my mom, who desperately wants to live in the shadow of a mountain, would drool over. It seems like all the buildings are made out of wood. And there's a place called the Silver Spur Saloon that I will be checking out one day.
It was so kitschy. I love kitsch.
At Buffalo Chip, peanut shells littered the floor on the inside, and employees built bonfires near picnic tables out back. (See the photo below, which I snagged off the saloon's website.)

It was a fun, relaxed kind of place, where cold beers are poured into mismatched glasses and jars.

On Sunday, Kelly and I headed out to hike through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, an 11-mile trek that took us past several mountains we've explored on previous hikes.
We're used to moving over to allow the occasional mountain biker to pass, and there were many on this trail. We sometimes stop and chat with other hikers, whenever we're lost or they're lost. But we're not used to seeing group after group of horseback riders in the distance, or horseshoe prints in the trail's dirt.

We decided that horses would have really sped up our 4-hour hike. Next time, we'll have to bring a couple along.

Yeehaw!

Fundraising bonanza

On Saturday, for 12 straight hours, Kelly and I will be fundraising our little hearts out.

We'll get up bright and early to set up our concession stand for the start of the 8:30 a.m. Little League games. (It might be a bit early for some of our snacks, so Kelly is going to pick up muffins and coffee drinks to add to our assortment of candy and Gatorade.)

We'll hit about five different games throughout the morning and afternoon, and we should finish just in time to run home and change before our team's group fundraiser at the Buffalo Chip Saloon & Steakhouse in Cave Creek.

We'll be at Buffalo Chip from 5 to 8:30 p.m. with our teammates, running a silent auction and a 50/50 raffle, as well as mingling and collecting donations from the saloon's generous customers.

The place is known as one of the last truly western saloons in the area (horses are welcome!). Food is served all day, and dancing kicks off at 9 p.m.

If you're in the area of Cave Creek Road and the Carefree Highway, stop in and say hi!

The beauty of desert hiking

All this training and fundraising is a lot of work. If you read this blog, you get that by now. It's sort of like a second full-time job.
But it's also been a lot of fun, and one of the best parts of the experience so far has been re-discovering my love for Arizona.
AZ is a great state to live in. We have sun nearly every day of the year, we don't have to brush snow off our cars, we have professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey, and everyone bonds over the fact that we're all from someplace "back East."
I miss my family and friends back home, of course, but whenever I miss the seasons, I can drive up to Sedona to see the leaves changing or visit Flagstaff to see pine trees and snow.
And it's a beautiful state to hike in. You can drive 20 minutes from your front door and feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, with only the blue sky and the occasional lizard (like this little guy, who was chillin on a rock at Shaw Butte) to keep you company.

We're in the middle of wildflower season, which means Kelly and I will be wandering through a maze of green and brown for an hour and then suddenly come across a clump of bright orange flowers, or a newly bloomed cactus like this one:

We'll talk about how long we think some of the plants have been around, like this stoic saguaro at South Mountain that must be about 150 to 200 years old, judging by the length and number of his arms:

Sometimes I forget how beautiful the desert is. But then its beauty will make my jaw drop when I'm out on a trail, pause to take a sip of water, glance to my left and see this:

Wow.

The backwards approach

See how exhausted I am on South Mountain. Well, now that I've regained some of my strength, let me tell the story behind our recent hike on Sunday.
The details must be shared.
It was too much of an adventure to keep to ourselves.
We knew that after a long weekend, a hike that clocked in almost 8 miles would make for a rough morning. What we didn't realize is that we were about to make it even more difficult for ourselves.
How is this possible you wonder?
Well for starters a block on the main road to the trail head made it a challenge to find our starting point. So after a few minutes walking down a paved road, we saw a sign for the Alta Trail on the right and quickly jumped on the path.
Our guide book said it would be a rough one mile ascent.
But after at least 2.5 miles and still going up, we began to wonder if our trusted guide was dead wrong.
Here's how high up we were. Yep that's Phoenix in the distance.

The most difficult part of the hike was supposed to be behind us, but we were still going up and up, trying our best to get through a series of intense switchbacks.
Once we reached what looked like the summit, the intensity still wouldn't let up. We keep getting higher and our legs were burning.
So we stopped for lunch. And then Meghan began getting attacked by bugs. (See below) The bug attack made it even more exhausting, since she had to swat her arms around at them every few seconds.

I had almost emptied all the water in my camelback and there was still more than half of the hike left to go. We kept saying to ourselves that there must be an end to this upward trek soon.
Finally, after about 3 miles we started heading down the mountain. We soon reached a road, the road we had walked up to find the Alta trail in the beginning. Quickly after a scan of the guide book, we realized that we had actually tackled the hike backwards, which made it longer and more challenging.
To get back to our car, we had to walk more than 4 miles on this never ending road, one filled with inclines and twists.

When we finally spotted our car, it was not a second too soon. My shoulders were bright red with sunburn (I had wiped off all my sunblock at some point) and we are almost out of water.
It was intense. But we decided that by doing the hike backwards, it was actually better training preparation for when we hike out of the canyon.
Even if it was, it's Wednesday and we are both still tired and hurting.
At least there's a few more days left in the week to rest up for our next round of hikes this weekend. Our legs should be working again by then. (Hopefully!)