Tinker Pond; walking the river north

It was a busy day for me hiking.  I took the pack on a sunrise (5:43am) walk for two miles, then hiked to Tinker Pond for another four miles, then did four more miles with the pack again later in the afternoon.  This will be our last pleasant week for hiking, as triple digits are due by this coming weekend.

The sunrises lately have been clear and rather boring, but it's been in the mid-to-upper 40s and great for the dogs.  I don't have to worry about rattlesnakes when it's that cold.  But it warmed up fast by 8am when I met HollyW's group in Garden Canyon on post, only the canyon was gated shut because an EOD team was looking for a missing explosive.  Now that would have been a blast, ha!  Since we were already in the area, the other option was to hike the Tinker Pond route, except I wasn't wearing the best shoes for the decomposed granite and it got rather warm.  To my surprise there's still water trickling in the creek for the dogs.

I was distracted by a phone call to Erin, who had wanted to know about my history with  cervical cancer, my paternal grandmother's death from ovarian cancer, and her paternal grandfather's death from colon cancer a week before she was born in 1986.  She was diagnosed with Lynch Syndrome, which makes her more susceptible to colo-rectal cancers.  I was talking to her until I lost reception behind the first big hill, not noticing that the two Steves took a wrong turn and never made it to the pond.

Trace, however, stayed with me and the rest of the group, then jumped into the algae-covered pond to retrieve a stick I threw him.  The pond dried up quite a bit since my last visit to this place two weeks ago and the surface now as a greenish-grey mass floating on it.  He came out smelling like rotten fish, then squirmed around in the leaves to dry off, prompting some in the group to yell out "Crazy dog!"

The walk in the heat tired me out and I just wanted to get back home once we all got back to our cars, where I stayed on the porch and played with Hans, intermittently also tidying up my side of the porch.


The big walk turned out to be a river wade at 5pm with Susan going north from the Casa.  We stayed in the water until we reached the southern part of the old beaver dam, then walked back via the official trail.  Water is now slowly receding, but there still are portions of the river deep enough for Minnie to swim in. We met a lone man camping here with his two dogs, a rather unusual sight since he looked rather dirty.  Was he homeless or just not very good at personal hygiene?  We greeted each other but continued walking in the river.

Starting tomorrow, all campfires in all six of Arizona's national forests are banned until June 30, or unless rescinded beforehand due to monsoonal rains.