Recharging Batteries
~Wednesday, January 19, 2022~
Day 584
Hello muscles that have been awakened once again. Man, are we sore today as I feel the aches mostly in my quads, my calves and my upper chest (from all the pulling up on the rocks). Jeff feels it mostly in his arms and knees. But it’s a good kind of sore……the type after a long, first hard workout where you might have overdone it. The stretches I had done the night before helped (I think). And I have my handy dandy deep tissue massage gun to assist in my healing. It was a Christmas gift from my hubby and I absolutely love it! Now I just have to figure out what each of the 8 attachments do as I think there’s one for palms/heels, one for thighs, one for chest…..you get the picture. And it’s rechargeable which I have to remember to plug in when we’ve got the generator going if I’m going to continue helping these sore muscles. It’s kind of strange looking up at Flat Iron this morning, knowing we were at the top just yesterday looking down at our campsite. Everything looks so different today. And I can’t help but wonder how many will attempt the mountain today. Hopefully everyone comes prepared, especially with time.
It was a day of relaxing and laying low to rejuvenate our sore bodies. As we hung out at the campsite, we noticed all the exchanges of RV’s/travelers. Lance is certainly well represented here. We have never seen so many Lance trailers in one campground. At one point even, we thought maybe we missed the memo about a Lance Jamboree or something. The only reason we can think of as to why we’re seeing so many is that the factory is only 400 miles west in Lancaster, CA (a tour we hope to get on the books soon).
We enjoyed a nice evening walk through the campground loops, to the moderately-sized dog park with its one Saguaro cactus in the middle of it. Sadie enjoyed some good run time. Then we thought it would be fun to go back up the beginning of the Siphon Trail where we were yesterday. We saw a few hikers coming down after their long, exhausting day. Believe me, I felt their pain. Of course the trail had a completely different appearance than it did last night.
As we neared dinnertime, we couldn’t help but look up the mountain to see if there were any late stragglers like us. There were 2 headlamps we could see in the distance. Oh my goodness. And this was around 8:00 p.m. From their location, it was still a good hour to go for them to get to the campground. We arrived at 7:30, hiking for about 1-½ hours in the dark. I couldn’t imagine hiking an additional 1-1/2 hours in the dark like that. It’s actually pretty dangerous. Of course, the whole time I was praying their headlamps wouldn’t peeter out. With my piqued curiosity, I had to look up just how many rescues might occur off this trail. There have been several rescues, but the largest rescue was a 44-person group from Kansas who decided to hike the mountain in August. A few had to be helicoptered out due to heat stroke, and the rest guided down. Of course, they were advised not to hike the trail. Gotta heed those warnings! So that’s why there’s a helipad in our campground.