Life is short, but sweet for certain.

August 21st was the last day of freedom for the full-time residents of ASU. Throughout the week, the freshmen showed up and the campus started buzzing with new life, including cars, bikes, longboards, and clueless kids who compete for us grad students' space on the roads, sidewalks, labs, and sandwich shops. As I get older, the novelty of free food has worn off, and now that I am no longer coaching, the arrival of the new students just isn't as exciting as it used to be. I now understand why the grads at the Weizmann Institute loved their campus so much: with an undergraduate population of zero, it's summer break all year long there. Alas, not so much here. So as one last goodbye to the summer, some of us in the lab took one last trip to Sack's for a little bit of nutrition before we went into hibernation for the first few weeks of the fall semester. And then I crawled into my cave and settled in for a long winter's nap.

Unfortunately, it turns out that I need to do a bit more yoga in order for the cabinet to be more fun than dodging undergrads, so I decided to run away instead. After a nice evening with Martin and friends for his going away dinner, Hannah and I packed up the Jeep and headed up to Flagstaff. It was late when we started, and much later by the time we actually arrived at the site for the race that was to take place the next morning. There were a few RVs parked near the road, but we continued on the forest road to where we had seen some tents last year, and completely by chance found a few of the Missing Link guys camped out there. I was dog tired by that time, and we crashed soon after we got the tent set up.

After a surprisingly great night of sleep (cool weather will do that), we got up and started tinkering with the bikes in anticipation of the Absolute Bikes Old Fashioned Mountain Bike Race. The day got off to a bad start for the boys of ML, and after an unsuccessful bleed and refill of Brad's rear disk brake, he was out of the race before it even began and was relegated to the job of photographer. At 9 a.m., the rest of the ML boys and Scooby lined up for the start of the expert men's race, with Hannah and I following shortly in the women's sport race. We had raced the same course last year, with three of us in the class and Hannah coming #2 and me #3 after I flatted. This year there were still three in our class, but I had a new secret weapon: "five pound" (according to Hannah) thorn resistant tubes in my tires, and I felt very confident in my equipment. I also felt pretty good about how my training had improved since last year, and eagerly waited on the starting line to see just how much we had improved.

The race started well, and my lungs had become accustomed to the altitude as I spun up the beginning of the forest road. It didn't seem nearly as long as last year, and although I was well behind the leader in my class when I breached the top of it, I felt good as I took advantage of the descent. Unfortunately, Guy Bell was limping the wrong way when I zoomed past him, and our second ML racer was out of the race. The start of the singletrack was exactly how I remembered it, though. It started with a sharp curve and then a rocky incline as we all made our way up through the pines and meadows. I passed a few of the girls who had beat me to the trails and a few of the expert men passed me, but the women's leader was nowhere in sight. Soon enough, I came to the rock gardens that I walked my bike through the year before. I was happy to realize that I was much better at navigating them and picking a line through tricky stretches, but with the amount of bike traffic going through the area, I still found it hard to get into a good rhythm and was happy when I arrived at the pipeline forest service road for two steep ups and downs before returning to the singletrack and the best part of the race. The last few miles is entirely composed of fast, curving, descending hard packed singletrack. Aka, pure heaven. I consider this type of riding my forte (mostly because it is so much fun), so I was flying along having the time of my life until I found myself back at the beginning of the loop. Another woman and I were battling back and forth when we got back to the fire road, so when I found some new adrenaline after passing Brad, I passed her for good. I got some new adrenaline after pulling ahead of her, and before I knew it, I had reached the top, where I met up with Bill. He was obviously having some bike issues, because as I came up to him, he was in the process of kicking it. There wasn't anything I could do, though, so I started cruising down to the singletrack. I was a bit more tired this go around, so I didn't clear the rocks as well and had to walk some sections. Fortunately, I had the downhill section to end the race with, and it was just as fun on the second loop. After 2 hours and 33 minutes, I rolled across the finish line, the first for ML and almost an hour faster than last year. I was followed shortly by Scooby, who did well in the geared expert 30 miler, and then Bill, who ended up only completing 2 laps, and then Hannah at 2:52, and finally Jason who finished the 30 miles in the single-speed category just before the time cut-off.

After the main races, the kids race kept us quite entertained with ages 5-15 competing in an 1/8th mile loop. It was the cutest thing to see pint-sized kids in spandex and helmets bigger than themselves pedaling as hard as they could. One girl on a pedal-less training bike even finished a lap and shot her little fists into the air at the finish line. Too cute. I have an uncanny feeling that my future kids will be somewhat similar.

It started pouring and hailing soon after the finish of the kids races, so we raced back to the car and loaded up to head back into town for some grub and awards. After a quick bite at Altitudes and some free pizza at the Pay 'n' Take, they handed out awards and Hannah and I officially switched spots from last year, with me taking home the silver sprocket and Hannah taking the bronze. The girl that won should have been in the expert category, and I think I'm going to enter into it next year for the sheer fact that I like longer races and there is more competition, even if I'm not quite an "expert" yet.

We headed home after awards so I could get in a quick shower before heading out to west Phoenix to the Cricket Music Pavilion with Megan and another ulty player, Brian, for the Dave Matthews Band concert. It promised to be an emotional concert, as one of the founding members of the band, LeRoi Moore, passed away just a few days before the concert. Unfortunately for the crowd, just getting into the venue was emotional, as the Will Call machines were down, and it took 45 minutes for us just to get our tickets. It's not often that you see a crowd of angry hippies, but we managed to keep our cool as we got into the pavilion midway through the opening song. We spread a blanket at the top of the lawn and basked in the incredible music and atmosphere of the concert. The sax player from Bella Fleck filled in for the fallen band member, and as expected, it was a very emotional concert, made all the more incredible by the lightning storm that was playing off to the east and a sprinkle of rain that fell during the middle of the show. The incredible musical talent of the band has always held me captive, and so many of the songs were the soundtrack to my days at Purdue and will always hold a special place in my heart. Even though it was only my 3rd Dave concert, each one is magnificently unique, and this one was no exception. I had never heard Two Step as I heard it that night, and its lyrics really hit home for all of us in the crowd as I am positive it did for those on stage as well. By the last instrumentation, everyone in the venue was dancing. It was a beautiful thing, and I drove home through the night with a smile on my face.

It had been a long week, and though there were many grad student activities and mountain biking opportunities on Sunday, I slept solid until 10 a.m. It was absolutely refreshing. The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the pool and hanging out with Jack and some friends and gearing up for the start of the school year.

Citius, Altius, Fortius.

"It means stronger, higher, faster, and its been the motto for the Olympics for the last 2,500 years. But it doesn't mean faster, higher, and stronger than those you compete against, just faster, higher, stronger." -Bill Bowerman, Without Limits

After my family left at the beginning of the week, I hit the ground running with things going on in the lab and preparing for the start of the school year, but I made sure to get some quality time in to watch the Olympics.

At the end of the long week, we decided to give Martin one last Arizona adventure before he returned to Florida to finish up his PhD. Our adventure of choice was Christopher Creek, and though I was just there a few weeks ago, I was excited about going back. I know I seem to have many "favorite places," but Christopher Creek is definitely high on that list. Hannah and I had the pleasure of introducing both Emily Hadyon and Martin to the canyon. There were several people at the start of the canyon when we got up there, and the water was a little low, but it certainly didn't diminish our fun. We slid, jumped, and log rolled our way down the canyon to the first of the larger falls, where the bit of downclimbing required for continuing further filtered out the boys scouts and others less adventurous than ourselves. Rather than downclimbing, though, I opted for the even better alternative for getting down: jumping of course. I've jumped off of a lot of cliffs in my day, but if I were to name my favorites, the 35' jump there near the falls is one of them. Wth my new lack of fear (enhanced by the fact that I'd jumped that one before), I easily climbed up to the ledge, waited for the cameras, and leaped off into nothingness. I love it. Haydon followed suite, and we had another great jump together. And then Martin got the courage to do it as well, and we all agreed that it was an awesome jump. Hannah refrained for this go around due to her still healing knee, but she made a great photographer.

We continued on down the canyon, with all of us jumping down near the double falls and then stopping for lunch along the cool rock formations and having a ton of fun that only adventurers like us can have. Then, we finally got to the biggest of the falls. The slings that we put in last time were still there, but we didn't bring ropes, so at that point, we had two choices: hike around or jump. Since Tyler had jumped last time, I had been itching to try it as well. When I stepped to the edge, I got really excited. The water levels were lower, and there was no way to depth check, but since we didn't even get close to finding a bottom last time and there were no boulders at all, I felt fairly sure that it was completely safe. With slightly more trepidation than the first jumps of the day, I pushed off of the granite past the few rocks sticking over the edge and flew into space. I really can't get enough of this jumping thing. It was an excellent jump, even with the Camelback, and when I resurfaced I was all smiles. My friends who looked down at me from above didn't think the same way about the jump as I did and they climbed around. I swam through to the second falls where we had rapped through the waterfall the last time and enjoyed the ambiance of the scenery on the top of the falls while the others climbed down to meet me. Then all of us took great flying leaps into the deep pool below. It was beautiful in so many ways.

Since we aren't simply satisfied with easily hiking down the canyon, after we were done with the big jumps, Martin found a really nice log that we decided to turn into a bridge. The bridge didn't go anywhere, but it was fun to attempt to balance on, and we continued to drag it downstream to a tricky part of downclimbing made more difficult by the fact that we blocked the route with a log. But, as I said, we certainly do keep life interesting. Near the end of the canyon, we hiked on the opposite side of the canyon than we had the last times, and played on the log that made a real bridge across the creek.... and then we jumped in one last time. At the very end of the canyon, we got in once last ounce of fun as we made a game of "who can haul themselves out of the creek on the algae covered slickrock." I'm pretty sure that Hannah won, but we eventually all made it. After one final swim section, we hit the trail that led us back to the highway. Although I could spend days in amazing canyons like Christopher Creek, we were, to quote Hannah from another trip, "almost out of water, and by water, I mean food." So, we jogged back to the car under the guise that it was good for our adventure race training, but really, it just meant that we got to food faster. Martin fired up his limo and we raced back to Payson to Tiny's restaurant for a lot of cheap, homecooked food and some amazing bread pudding for desert.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly working on the American Fire, getting things done around the house, and escaping the late summer heat by watching the Olympics and Without Limits a few times (I really love the movie, and it captures everything that I love about sports and athletes).

The Kessans take over Arizona

It's been over a year since any of my family has visited Arizona, and I had the great pleasure of hosting my Dad, Emily, and Angela for a few days.

They arrived in Phoenix around lunchtime and made their way over to ASU, where I showed them around my lab, took them to Sack's for lunch, and gave them a tour of campus and Biodesign using my awesome powers as a golfcart driver. I took off of work early, gave them directions to the house, and then raced them home (I beat them by about 10 minutes!). After showing them around the house, we headed to Scottsdale for the evening, where we enjoyed pizza, gelato, and a stroll around Old Town. They were exhausted from the time difference and travel, so Emi and I left Dad and Ang at their hotel and headed back to Tempe to get some rest for the many adventures that I had planned for their stay in Arizona.

Early the next morning, we packed up and headed to the Melrose Paradise Recreation Club for the 2nd Extreme Heat Adventure Race. I missed the first one for the Virostko Family Reunion, but ODP held strong with two teams entering and Angel and Laurie taking the top women's honors. Hannah and I were the only ones representing in this race, and we were determined to bring home the gold again. With a full paparazzi in the form of my family, we lined up with 35 other teams at 7 a.m. and started the sprint adventure race. After a quick mystery event of finding a golf ball with our number on it, we got our first map and headed out on the trekking leg. We ran about a mile out to the Phoenix Mountain Preserve and then found 5 orienteering points among the rocky hills before completing one more mystery event (throwing a hoop onto a cone) and running back to the TA. By 8:30, it was already boiling and we were almost out of water, so we were eager to jump into the pool for the next mystery event (collecting 15 pennies from the pool bottom). We were sitting mid-pack and were the third women's team to come through the TA, and as we hopped on our bikes for the last part of the race, we hoped that all of our training would pay off. Hannah and I made up ground quickly and had almost caught up to one of the women's teams by the first checkpoint at the edge of the preserve. We passed them at the second point and soon found ourselves on a very rocky, washed out Trail 100. This was completely to our advantage, as we were hoping that our biking skills would be better than the other women's teams, and we found the next two points easily, enjoying the challenging ride along the way. Our only navigational mistake was my fault, as we went around a mountain (including two grueling uphills) that we could have easily shortcutted, wasting about 10 minutes in the process (I think that hill is a curse for me, as I did this the opposite way last year). None-the-less, we hurried back through the suburban hills and finally got back to Shea, where we sprinted to the finish line. We were stoked to find out that we had come in 7th overall and were the first women's team across the line! We wasted no time getting cold drinks and snacks and hanging out with our fellow competitors in the pool while waiting for the rest of the teams to come in. Finally, the rest of the teams (including two other teams from VOTS) came in and we had awards, where ODP proudly accepted our gold dog tags. It's amazing to see how far the team has come in just one year, and I'm excited to see where we go in the future. Stay tuned for more races :).

Since it was almost noon by the time that everything was over, my family and I opted out of driving too far away and decided to instead head to Coon Bluff for a bit of relaxing and playing in the Salt River. They were all amazed to find such a large and fast flowing river in the middle of the desert, and Dad, Emi, and I had a blast swimming around while Ang lounged in the shade and was kept entertained by our crazy antics and the ground squirells. Emi and I took advantage of the fast current and floated downstream through the rapids and down towards the namesake bluff, where we spent some quality sister bonding time jumping off of the cliffs.

We had a very enjoyable afternoon, and then headed back to clean up in time for dinner at Rustler's Rooste in South Mountain. My dad used to go to the restaurant when he was visiting Phoenix as an executive for Digital, and Emi and Ang had never been to the place before, so we thought it fitting that we go. I love the place, though I had only been there once before when Dad was in town the last time. How can you not love a place that has a slide for the entrance and more homecooked western food than even I can eat? We had an excellent meal and got to watch the sun set over the Valley before resting up for another full day.

On Sunday, we woke early, had a nice breakfast at the hotel, and then headed north on I-17. Our final stop of the day was to be the Grand Canyon, but since neither Emily nor Angela had been up that way, we decided to stop a few other places beforehand. Our first side trip was through Sedona. I had only been to the land of red rock once before, and that was two years ago, so I was looking forward to it. The amount of people that flock to Sedona overwhelms me a bit, and I tend to look for less popular places, but you cannot deny the reason that people go there: it is absolutely gorgeous. As we dropped into the little valley, the tall red walls grew around us, surrounding us with monuments such as Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock. We all had our eyes glued to the scenery as we drove into town. We didn't stop downtown, but continued on to the one spot that I had been to before: Slide Rock State Park. We parked upstream of the actual slides and hiked along the road until we came to the naturally carved red rock waterpark. Even though it was still midmorning, throngs of people already filled the entire length of the park, and I remembered why my friends and I usually try to avoid popular places. Although the people may have spoiled the serenity of the beautiful natural spot, they couldn't spoil our fun, and Emi and I had a blast slipping and sliding down the smooth sandstone rapids and jumping off of the small cliffs that line the slickrock. Finally, we made it to the end of the slides and munched on a few of the late season blackberries and took the requisite leap from the taller cliffs underneath the bridge. Standing at the top of the cliffs with my sister, I had a very strange epiphany: I am losing my natural fear of heights. I've never been overly frightened of exposure or heights, but the normal bit of apprehension at standing on the edge of cliffs is now non-existant. I toed the edge of the cliff without the slightest hesitancy while others wouldn't even come close (Em did brilliantly though). It's probably not good for my survival rate, as fear can be a good thing when keeping me out of dangerous situations, but it is kind of cool. Nonetheless, Em and I both had good jumps and slid down the slides a few more times before we headed back up the trail and continued on to Flagstaff.

We went through a rainstorm as we drove up and out of the canyon and came out of it just as we got to the outskirts of Flag. We had a tasty lunch at The Black Bean and enjoyed the ambience of one of my favorite Arizona towns before continuing up to the Grand Canyon. After another two hours, we finally reached our destination and Emi and Angela caught their first glimpse of the mighty Grand near Mather Point. I've been to the Grand Canyon several times now, and each time, I am taken aback with its beauty and just overwhelming massiveness. The effect was felt by all of us. Even Angela, who is a bit scared of heights, did a great job as we walked along the Rim Trail. Emily and I wasted no time crawling out to the edge of the boulders that line the rim, and made Dad and Angela nervous as we walked easily out to a ledge that dropped off quite a ways. Again, my fear of heights was completely absent, even without water or a safe outlet if I were to fall. Crazy, but I loved it.

We explored all along the south rim near Mather, and then took a shuttle over to the rim lodges to watch the sun set over the western horizon. Dad and I had had such a great time hiking down to the river last winter, and Emily was itching to hike down below the rim as well. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time for a good hike, but I know that the two of us have some adventures in the bowels in the earth in our future.

The last tints of orange were completely vanished by the time we took the shuttle back to the car, so Emily and I took advantage of walking along the darkened canyon before we all jumped back in the car and headed back down to the Valley.

We were all still a bit tired the next morning, and Angela opted to explore Scottsdale while Dad, Emi, and I had a quick breakfast at the hotel and headed north again, this time on 87 towards Payson. The drive has become fairly familiar to me, but I saw the landscape with new eyes as Dad and Emi commented on the diversity that Arizona offers. After a few hours, we finally found ourselves on the dirt road that led to Fossil Creek. It's only six miles, and again, I have become used to it, but Dad wasn't and it seemed like much longer as we wound our way down the canyon to the creek below. When we reached the bottom and hiked down the trail to the water, they were absolutely amazed at the crystal clear blue-green travertine waters. My sister exclaimed that it was the coolest pool she had ever been to... and that was just at the first area we visited. We played all day up and down the creek in between the first pool and the big falls, swimming in the deep pools, jumping off of the rock shelfs, hiding behind the waterfalls, and letting the strong current massage our shoulders as we relaxed and enjoyed the beauty of the riparian area and each other's company. It was incredible to be able to share one of my favorite spots with my family, and we all had a great time. We ended the afternoon with a lunch of bread, cheese, and plums and jumping off of the big waterfall. As the breeze became cooler and thunderheads covered the sun, we started back on the trail, with the rumbling of an impending storm in the distance. We made it back to the car as the storm clouds passed innocently above us and we headed back up the road, with all of us admiring the commanding views of the red and green canyon with a rainbow streaking down through the center of it as we came to the top. Driving back to the Valley, we watched the cloudbursts pummel the landscapes below and were treated to one of the most magnificent rainbows I have ever seen (on land at least). We pulled off the highway (as did several other cars) to witness the incredible size and color of the double rainbow that bridged the entire valley near Gisela. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

After a dinner at Oregano's and one more night chillin' with my sister, their trip came to an end. On Tuesday morning, they packed up and we said our goodbyes after several days of adventure and exploration, a taste of what my life is like out here in this great, hot playground. I know I had an incredible time while they were here, and I'm pretty sure that they went home with some great memories, and some plans for new adventures for when they come out here again.

Exploring Arizona

Sometimes life gets the best of me, and weekends don't seem to come soon enough. It was a bit like that for me over the past week, and by Friday afternoon, I was certainly ready for the weekend. I started it off with a bit of training/scouting with ODP. We took to the northern part of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, the site of our next adventure race that was to take place the following weekend. For about two hours, Hannah, Angel, and I explored Trail 100 and every shortcut and alleyway that we could before it got too dark for us to see. Then we headed over to Haydon's for Tess's first doggy birthday party before I came home and crashed in anticipation of a weekend of exploration.

Kohl came over and we packed the Jeep with camping gear and an adventurous spirit, and took off to northern climes. We drove up to Flagstaff and just kept going. Our first stop on the weekend of adventure was the Lava River Cave, about 20 miles north of Flagstaff. We drove through a few miles of dirt roads past cool pine forests and open meadows filled with tall grass and wildflowers. When we arrived at the trailhead for the cave, we were both surprised at the number of vehicles parked there. Dozens of off-roaders packed the place as we packed our day bags and headed up the short trail to the cave. The Lava River Cave, or Lava Tube, was formed when the volcanoes of the San Francisco Peaks erupted, with the molten lava flowing underground through a long tunnel until it finally hardened and left a 3/4 mile long cave in the middle of the forest. The entrance to the cave is basically a big bouldery hole in the ground, and as soon as we approached it, the temperature dropped at least 10 degrees. We broke out some long sleeves and our headlamps and headed off into the unknown... Well, it wasn't really the unknown, as there were dozens of people in and around the entrance as we descended into the dark tunnel flecked with the bobbing of varying intensities of fluorescents and LEDs. The beginning of the cave was slick with condensation, making the scramble over the sharp volcanic boulders a bit of an adventure, but within a few hundred meters, the floor of the tunnel evened out to reveal a smoother floor of frozen lava. The further we hiked in, the beams of our headlamps flashing over every inch of the unique topography, the fewer our companions became. We soon came to a Y in the tube, and we chose the path less traveled (or at least the one that didn't have any headlights in it). We walked along on our own for a bit until we found ourselves completely alone in the cave, so we turned off our lights and marveled in the beauty of absolute darkness and total silence. The feeling was completely surreal, and we were frozen to the spot of ground on which we stood. The imagination plays interesting tricks on the mind, and I couldn't help but feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff even though I knew that I was perfectly safe. It almost became too much, and after a few minutes we turned our lights back on to reveal our breath condensing once again in front of our faces and continued on. The ceiling rose and fell as we walked along until we came to a section where we had to crawl on our hands and knees with our packs scraping the roof. In the floor, you could see the flow of the lava and odd rocks forever immortalized in the frozen river and cracks that criss-crossed the floor formed from the cooling of the rock. Since our lights only illuminated a dozen feet ahead of us, we came upon the end of the tunnel very abruptly. There was no warning, just a narrowing of the cave until it dead-ended like a half-built railroad tunnel. We stopped for a quick break before turning around and heading out, taking the opposite side of the Y on the return trip and letting the darkness really seep into our beings. Although we had only been in the cave for less than two hours, the literal light at the end of the tunnel seemed strange and we crawled up out of the cave blinking and shedding our outer layers in the sudden heat. We soon adjusted and headed back to the Jeep and down the dirt roads. The flower-filled meadows beckoned us to frolic in them like little kids, so that's exactly what we did. The diversity and beauty of Arizona always amazes me, and it felt so good and so free to be running through the tall grass with a sweet pine breeze on the air. Afterwards we returned to Flagstaff for an early dinner at the Brewery before heading south on Lake Mary Road, where we resumed our explorations. Our search for the perfect camping spot sent us up the road towards Marshall Lake. Neither of us had been up there before, and the views from the top were incredible. We decided almost immediately that we would camp up there, but since we had a few hours of daylight left, we went back down to check out the southern part of Upper Lake Mary. The sunflowers and thistle growing among the driftwood made a spectacular foreground to the sun setting over the water and we sat down on a log and just watched the water for quite awhile, mesmerized by the lapping of the waves as if we were back on the ocean. With a little bit of daylight left, we gathered up some wood for a fire and returned to Marshall Lake. We found a secluded spot on the edge of the marshy lake and set up the tent and started a fire just as the last rays of sunlight slipped behind the San Franciscos. Our driftwood held out for longer than we thought it would, and our eyes soon grew heavy staring into the flames. I woke up to sounds of shrill water birds and got out of the tent to a bright, beautiful high altitude morning. After Kohl got up, we explored the shoreline and watched the outdoor version of Sunday morning cartoons as two guys attempted to float kayaks into the shallow reed-choked muck. Although the lake had its own beauty in the form of flora and waterfowl, it wasn't the first place that I would choose to kayak, and we got quite the show before we packed up camp to continue our exploration of the great state. With no agenda and a full tank of gas, we got to the intersection of Lake Mary Road and turned south. Just south of Lake Mary, we turned off to see what Ashurst Lake had to offer. The few miles along the high prairie gravel road were fairly interesting. Although the land is publicly owned, it is leased out to cattle farmers and as a result, cows were dotted all along the route. At one point, a big momma cow with even bigger longhorns charged across the road towards the Jeep and we both braced for impact before she decided that we weren't a threat to her calf and continued along her way. At the end of the road, we reached Ashurst Lake, a fair sized shallow lake with lots of rocks (and some potential jumping cliffs we think on the other side) surrounding it. There was lots of camping all over, but with the flat prairie surrounding the lake, it was kind of out in the open and not the most interesting place in the world. So, we turned around and decided to check out some of the trails. The Arizona Trail is a 790 mile trail that traverses the entire length of the state from Utah to Mexico, and took off from the Horse Lake trailhead (no, there is no lake, as we sadly found out) through the sparse pine forest towards Mormon Mountain. We went several miles and started to formulate new adventures for the American Fire team. Tentatively, we're going to try the trail in its entirety in the future. We figure it'll take a little bit less than 51 days and the budget won't be a fraction of an ocean row. We would have gone further down the trail, but we didn't want to spoil our future plans, so we took off again to find something new. A few more miles down the road, we came to the *almost* dry lake bed of Mormon Lake. It amounted to a large-scale version of Marshall Lake with marshy wetlands surrounding a good sized chunk of water in the middle. We drove around the entire lake until we came to a little village just in time for lunch, so we stopped at the Mormon Lake Lodge. The lodge was part museum, part restaurant, and they served a great lunch and had some incredible history of the area (everything from memorabilia of cattle ranchers and wild west feuds to stuffed mountain lions) hanging up on the walls. After lunch, we headed back around the lake, stopping at an overlook where bald eagles were supposed to be nesting. We didn't spot any of the birds, but a man who had set up a telescope set up let us watch a herd of several hundred elk grazing in the marshy area below. Our journey continued south through a high country thunderstorm on Lake Mary Road. Although I've only lived in Arizona for two years, I feel like I have explored quite a bit of it. Driving past dozens and dozens of brown signs pointing towards interesting parts of the national forests that line the road, I realized that it would take a lifetime to explore all of the amazing things that this state has to offer.

It was getting later in the day, so we opted not to explore any of the sites that claimed to be 10 miles or more from the highway, but after we met up with Highway 260 and finally through to 87, we pulled off to see what the Tonto Natural Bridge was all about. One of the great things about Arizona is how many amazing natural places you see absolutely free, and the $3 per person fee for the Natural Bridge had kept me away for awhile, but it was something that both of us wanted to see, so we paid the fee and went into the park. Even before we got to the namesake bridge, we got our money's worth by eating at least $6 worth of plums and blackberries from the grounds. After we got our fill, we walked over to the top of the bridge. Similar to the arches up in Utah, the unique geology of the land in combination with the forces of erosion had created a massive tunnel through the rock, creating a bridge over a creek below. We hiked down the trail to admire the view, play in the creek (unfortunately, the rangers wouldn't let us swim or cliff jump), and walk under the bridge. It was a good time, but we had gotten there near closing time, so we headed back up the trail, ate a few green apples that grew near the parking lot, and headed for home.

We returned to the 100 degree heat of Phoenix, but it had been a great weekend full of new adventures so we didn't mind too much and we look forward to many more great adventures in the future.