This weekend: an out-and-back from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, down the North Kaibab trail to the Manzanita Rest Area. 11.5 miles total and 3641 feet elevation loss / gain. While there’s nothing at all special about the Manzanita Rest Area, the North Kaibab is my favorite trail of all time, and in the top 3 for Paul. We were SO eager and excited to show it off to the kids. Giddiness was as high as it gets as we all quite literally bounded down the trail in the early wee hours of the morning. My memory did not disappoint, the terrain was as beautiful and wild as I remembered it.
And the kids…LOVED it. ❤️
After our morning hike we checked into a sweet little campsite at the North Rim Campground. We spent the rest of the day chillaxing, then decided to walk the rim over to the lodge for a cocktail, bringing our total daily mileage up to 15.5 miles. One would think the boys would be beat by then and ready to hit the sleeping bags early. Um, nope. Not these boys:
I scoured Tucson area trail maps Friday evening, looking for the next big banger. After summiting the Santa Ritas (south of Tucson), and then the Catalinas (north of Tucson), I sooo wanted to get to the top of something in the Rincons (east of Tucson). While the mileage and vertical gain stats of Rincon Peak looked very tempting, the trail is on the wrong side of the mountain for a summer time hike – the eastern slope. Douglas Springs is another option, a favorite we run often, but to summit any of Rincon’s three peaks from “Dougie” is waaay too much mileage to crank out and back in a morning before the heat. Dang.
Close the Rincons map, open the Catalinas map…. Eh. We’ve done all these trails!
Close the Catalinas map, open the Santa Ritas map… Hmmm. We’ve summited Mt. Wrightson a few times now, but via the same trail – the trail that EVERYBODY summits with, Old Baldy. Looking at the map though, there’s all kinds of stuff! I find a nice looking line up Florida Canyon (pronounced Flo ree’ da), with the option to connect to Baldy Saddle, and on up to Wrightson if one is feeling extra wild.
Florida Canyon it is! Not quite all the way to Baldy Saddle but good ‘nuff: 12.5 miles, 5k elevation gain and the entire trail all to our ourselves. With the overgrowth, single track, and pristine grassy and flowery saddles, it’s obvious that this is a trail less, if ever, traveled.
Just a wee bit overgrown. I will NOT be wearing a skirt to work anytime in the near future.
Today was a Mt. Lemmon day. We decided on a trail up high, on account of all this wonderful rain we got in the last 48 hours thanks to a very generous tropical storm in Mexico. Sure enough, all the canyons were gushing and water was coming out of everywhere on our drive up the mountain. We parked at the tippy top, hucked on our hydration packs, and scurried passed all the day-trippers. We headed west, down the ridge. Following the Mt. Lemmon trail we hooked south and started descending down toward the Wilderness of Rocks.
Oh the clouds! Remnants of the prior days’ storm, clouds and mist whisked passed us and over us. What would typically have been a very sunny, and thus very hot trail (too much rock for trees to grow in the Wilderness of Rocks!), was moist and shady and lovely. Today was the perfect day for this adventure.
And an adventure it was. Headed back east now on the Wilderness of Rocks Trail we crossed water maybe a dozen? Two dozen times? It was hard to keep track. Once we even had to wade, as there were no rocks to hop on. And another time we crossed a dead tree that was suspended a little to high for comfort over the water. The trail was overgrown and at times hard to follow with all the water. Our feet got soaked, our legs got ripped to shreds, and we lost the trail many times. It was a fantastic 10 mile day.
Summited Mt. Wrightson today, 11 miles and 4000 feet elevation gain. The monsoon rains have been good to us this summer in Arizona. And as a result, Wrightson was bursting with greenery, wildflowers and the most diverse display of mushrooms I have ever seen in my life! I got pictures of most, but not all. We saw a black mushroom only once and I neglected to snap a photo.
Durango, Colorado to be exact – with our long-time Pittsburgh climbing buddies!
The classic Sunday Stroll, v6 at Sailing Hawks
Hike to Potato Lake for a bath
Some other pretty little lake that I don’t remember the name of near the trailhead to Potato Lake
Jen headed up a fun v2ish on The Road Boulder, Turtle Lake
Ivan on The Penny Boulder, Turtle Lake
Silas on The Warmup Boulder, back at Sailing Hawks
Brian sends Petrified Prow, v5
Paul ticks off Skully, v5/6
Jen not able to resist a great looking v2 on The Legacy of the Kid Boulder at the end of the day
Does life get any better than this?
Paul, Silas, Ivan and I headed up Engineer Mountain
Where the kids and I decided to stop and Paul continuing on to the summit
Yikes!
On the summit
Climbing, hiking….and biking too!
Rippin’ it
And of course plenty of chillin’. Oren serenaded us the entire trip. 🤩
The climbing is still my most favorite part though
Most especially when I’m doing it with my strong lady friend! (Jen and I battling to pull off a send of Something Wicked This Way Comes, v6 despite the oppressive heat and sweaty fingers. We didn’t succeed. But it was still darn fun).
It wasn’t until I was a young adult in college, chatting with classmates in lab about where we were from and what our childhood was like, that I realized my dad was not like most other dads. My dad, a city boy-turned-country-man working professionally as a Mechanical Engineer was not what I considered all that unusual. But as I started to share my story and got into the details of how my father had logged and milled his own lumber to build the home that he raised his family in, I remember distinctly the look of disbelief on the faces of those I was sharing my story with. When I got to the part about how my father had two ponds dug on our property for fishing and swimming my audience grimaced. “Ew! You swim in PONDS? That’s disgusting!” I stopped my story, half-convinced they thought I was telling a tall-tale. We all went back to work. I remember trying very hard to focus on the lab assignment at hand, being distracted by a deep satisfaction in telling my tale. This was a big deal – a pivotal moment in my life. It was that day when I realized a uniqueness in myself, in my siblings and our childhood, and especially in my dad.
Paul was born in Niagara Falls, New York on March 5th 1951. He got his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. His first engineering job at Monarch is what brought Paul to the central New York area, where he met his wife, Vicki.
Together Paul and Vicki drove the Lapeer countryside looking for an undeveloped plot of land to start their home and family on. The plot they liked the best turned out to be owned by the couple whose door they knocked upon first to inquire – Lawson and Silvia. Lawson and Silvia not only sold them the property on the spot, but became very close friends and mentors of Paul and Vicki. Lawson had a sawmill of his own, and Silvia was a treasure-trove of good old-fashioned baking and quilting knowledge.
Paul and Vicki had five children: April, Michelle, Joel, Holly and Katie. In addition to building himself a sawmill and the family home, Paul also built a playhouse, treehouse, green house and sugar shack, quite literally with his own bare hands. He built his own tractor and was capable of fixing anything, including automobiles, appliances, and the perpetually broken lawnmower. Paul managed all of this while working professionally full-time as a Mechanical Engineer, being the breadwinner of the family while Vicki raised all the children. The weekday evenings and weekends spent with a hammer or tools in Paul’s hands are countless.
With the same relentless ambition Paul exhibited in working so hard, he relaxed just as hard. Paul was an avid fisherman, and hauling his wife and five small children up into the boondocks of nowhere in the Canadian wilderness where the fish were plentiful and the campsite was “three hours from the nearest hospital, so don’t get hurt!” was a regular outing, even if school was in session. If Paul had only a week’s vacation and wanted to go to Florida, he would maximize the trip by driving the family station wagon straight through the night, windows down and the “good tunes” blaring. At home (when he wasn’t working on the house or the broken lawnmower), Paul loved to fish in his ponds, sit by the campfire and make maple syrup and wine. Paul also enjoyed hunting, camping, skiing and backpacking and was both enthusiastic and purposeful in sharing all of his favorite pastimes with his children and his seven grandchildren.
Paul is a man that all of us will be reminded by repeatedly as life moves on. Whether we’re working hard past dinner time to get something done, cracking a beer after a hard day of manual labor, tinkering with a broken something-or-other, taking a break from the day-to-day to be out in nature, blasting our good tunes, or just sitting amidst the noise and chaos of loved ones with a cheeky grin, these will be the reminders of how Paul has left his imprint on each of us.
We did a little jaunt with Joe and Holly yesterday: a loop up and around Grandeur Peak above Salt Lake City. Only about 10 miles and 4000+ feet elevation gain. 😉
How lucky are these kiddos? An Aunt and Uncle that live in Park City, an invite to stay with them for a whole week, and new mountain bikes!
Loading up. Uncle Joe and Aunt Holly are sitting on a goldmine of used kids mountain bikes in Park City. They not only scored sweet bikes for both boys, but totally cleaned them up and tricked them out.
