Mesquite Canyon Trail - White Tank Mountains

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - Several people in the RV Park (Pueblo, El Mirage, AZ) had recommended taking a hike at the nearby White Tank mountains. The drive over the visitors center was about 7 miles.

We didn't get to the trailhead until after 10:30 a.m. so we decided we probably won't do the entire Mesquite Canyon hike as it is 5 miles - one way.

We left the Area 7 parking area at 10:45 and it took us just over an hour to get hike the 1.8 miles to the beginning of the trail loop. That was pretty good as the trail gains 1000 feet in the first mile of the trail.

We elected to go counterclockwise at the beginning of the loop. We hiked for another 30 minutes or so which took us to the 1 mile mark of the loop. At that point, we decided we really didn't have enough water with us to complete the loop, so we retraced our steps back to the parking area.

Just a few pictures of the different types of vegetation along the way.

Look at the layer of smog you can see over the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Hiking Camelback Mountain

We chose the Summit Trail from Echo Canyon which is listed as 1.2 miles one way. The elevation gain is 1,264 feet with the summit at 2,704 feet. It is described as strenuous and difficult. We saw many people who take this hike as part of their daily fitness routine several with their dogs. There was one man who was on his third trip up for that day! Made me feel old.


Click on any of the pictures to see an enlarged view.



Dave on the trail - that's the top behind him!

We're about 1/3 of the way up here.

This was an interesting section of the trail - don't let go of the bar!

Dave with our new friends and guides, Barbara & Richard.

Beautiful views of Phoenix from about two-thirds of the way to the summit.

Where is the trail?

This was the hardest part for me. See Dave and Barbara patiently waiting for Richard and me?

You can see the top from here. If you enlarge this picture, you can see some people further up the trail.

Finally the summit - Barbara giving a few hiking tips to a nice young couple.

I made it!

Driving into Phoenix, AZ

February 12, 2009 – We have been up to a lot of things since our last email but I have to say that most of the excitement happened in the last two days. We arrived in El Mirage, AZ, which is on the northwest corner of Phoenix, from Aguanga, CA. Some of you may have already heard Dave’s version of events yesterday but as Paul Harvey would say, I’m here to tell you the rest of the story and I have pictures!

We’re FINALLY on the road again after being in ONE place for nearly 3 ½ months with only a one week side trip to watch Brennan Webb play in the PGA Q school tournament. Dave had spent nearly 3 weeks in Baltimore in January with the Karyn & the grandkids while I played golf, knitted, and tried to find something that the cats would eat. By the time he returned I was itching to explore some new places so we decided (i.e. I convinced Dave) to pop over (354 miles) to check out the Phoenix area RV parks. We found one on the internet called Pueblo El Mirage which is a Roberts Resort with an 18-hole full length golf course. It is located about 2 miles north of Luke Air Force Base, plus I have an old friend Trish Callura who lives in Mesa that I’d been wanting to see.

Just to give you a little of the back story on this one, I need to let you know that we had been having some intermittent problems with our supplemental braking system for towing the van that we hadn’t been able to pin down. With that in mind, we decided to hook up the van to the motor home a day early on Tuesday and just try to locate the cause of the problem. Ended up figuring out that the cable that runs from the actuator under the van hood to the brake pedal in the van had frayed and broken so basically the actuator was activating but the brakes in the van were NOT being applied. Not really a problem that absolutely had to be fixed right away so we decided to have the part shipped to us in Phoenix and we would deal with it when we got there. Important point in that decision – that meant that if in the rare event that the van broke away from the motor home while we were towing it, that the supplemental braking system would not work to stop the van.

I was driving as we headed out of Aguanga around 7:30 on Wednesday morning. I drove about 80 miles and then Dave drove about 130 miles to the Flying J at exit 1 on I-10 in Arizona. We were less than 140 miles from our destination when I drove out of the Flying J after filling up with diesel ($2.039 per gallon!!!!) and propane. It was a really boring flat, straight drive through the desert. It least it was boring until we were less than 2 miles from our exit off of I-10 and then it happened…..

We’re still not sure what happened. It didn’t sound like we hit anything obvious in the road. Just as I was checking my mirrors to move over from the center lane to the right hand lane a semi truck pulled up beside me on my left and blew his air horn which I can tell you definitely gets your attention. Another guy in a 4x4 pickup truck was also blowing his horn at the same time, so I put on my right turn signal and pulled over to the shoulder right away.

First thing I did then was look at the screen for the camera view and couldn’t see the van!!!!! When the horns were blowing and I was trying to get over, I had seen a big hunk of tire in the air behind us and cars moving to avoid it so I knew something had happened but wasn’t sure what. Add to that, that I couldn’t see our car in the camera shot and I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack right then! It only took me about 3 seconds to realize that I had the right hand camera view instead of the rear camera view (right side view comes on when you turn on your right turn signal) but those 3 seconds gave me a lot of time to think about where that minivan might be?!?!! Dave jumped out to see talk to the guy in the 4 x 4 who had pulled over with us. The driver’s side rear tire on the minivan was still smoking when Dave got to it but the tire was basically gone. (See attached photos)

Luckily we got stopped in time to save the rim. We are the proud owners of 4 brand new tires purchased this morning from Discount Tire. The old tires were original on Odyssey which only had 52,000 miles on it. What we failed to consider was, we had also towed the van behind the motorhome for another 13,000 miles, so really the tires were 6 years old with 65,000 miles on them. Dave always checks the air pressure in all the tires of the van and motorhome the day before every trip so we’re pretty comfortable that it wasn’t low tire pressure. FYI for anyone who doesn’t know how to read the manufacture date of tires, there is a four digit number on your tire. The first two digits are the week of manufacture and the last two digits are the year of manufacture. The guys at Discount Tire said we had definitely gotten our money’s worth out of the tires because once they had the tires off of the vehicle it was pretty obvious that there were cracks between the treads.

4x4 guy (never did get his name) said that we went less than 1/8 to ¼ of a mile from the tire starting to go until I pulled over. He was pretty sure that the tire had bounced into a couple cars but no one else pulled over. Great thing was he had a jack handy that Dave was able to use to put the spare on in about 10 minutes. It would have taken us at least 20 minutes just to get to our jack what with having to take the bikes off, golf clubs out, etc. We unhooked the car and Dave drove it in separately the rest of the way to RV park which was only about 15 miles more.