This last weekend, Patrick the Tree-Top Ectomorph and I headed out for some trail miles in the Cave Creek Recreation Area:


                     

It was an adventure.

We just headed out along Slate Trail - I had some notions about going a certain number of miles, then coming back and taking the Go John Loop, which would give us a known route and a known distance. But we didn't do that.

The known route, that is - we did head out along Slate Trail, but we didn't come back that way - we left the recreation area behind at the boundary, and literally went off the map, out into the territory where it just says "Here Be Dragons". Once you leave the park boundary, there's no real map to show what trails head where, so we just sort of said "Let's go thataway!" until thataway started to seem ill-advised, at which point it was "Okay, now thisaway!"

This is an amazing amount of physical freedom; to be in good enough shape to simply head out into the wilderness with nothing but a GPS, a CamelBak, and a cell phone, with some reasonable expectation of being able to find one's way back - not just being able to FIND one's way back, but able to RUN back, just like you ran out there to start with.

Snakes were a small concern; they're usually not active this early in the year (at this elevation) but it's been a warm, wet spring. But heck-fire - that's what the cell phone is for, right? It's the modern-day snakebite kit.