We really wanted to do Table Top Mountain again.  It had been nearly ten years since we had last done it and we were long overdue to return.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to find the right time to do it; the trail was seven miles long (roundtrip), which was just too much for Mary at eight years old.  It was something that we just kept having to put off.

That didn't mean that we couldn't hike in the Table Top Mountain Wilderness Area, though.  Table Top was only one of two trails in the area; the other was the Lava Flow Trail.  We had hiked a portion of the trail before, back in January of 2003; it is a relatively easy, 7.4 mile long trail (one-way) that can be access by one of three trailheads.  Last time, we had access the trail by way of the North Trailhead and had hiked about 2.5 miles of the trail (five miles round trip); there was also a West Trailhead and a South Trailhead, both of which could be found along Vekol Road.

One beautiful Saturday in January, we decided to hike the Lava Flow Trail, starting from the South Trailhead.  We also decided to invite Erika to come along with us; after all that she had been through since October (with Bill's multiple knee surgeries), we figured that she could use a nice day out on the trail.  At first she said no, that she had too much to do, but she quickly changed her mind.

So, on Saturday morning - January 10 - we picked Erika up at her house, and the four of us went hiking.

To get to the Lava Flow Trail, we took I-10 south towards Maricopa Road (SR 347).  We drove south on SR 347, through the town of Maricopa and past all of the farmland, until we came to SR 84.  From there, we followed SR 84 southwest to I-8 West.  Along the way, we  stopped to look for a geocache. This cache put us onto a dirt road, near the power lines and a quarter of a mile off of the highway.  We found the cache easily and retrieved a travel bug from it; then we got back into the 4Runner and continued on our way to the trailhead.

Next stop: Vekol Road, off of I-8.

Vekol Road was one of those fun, high-clearance 4WD roads, which, of course, we had once taken in our old van.  Ten years had passed since then, and time and weather had taken its toll.  The road was much worse now, and we were glad that we now had a 4WD vehicle.  The road was so bad in places that we ended up airborne at one point, when John took a bump too fast

There were two caches to be found along Vekol Road, and of course, we looked for and found both of them.  Naturally, since we had stopped to look for all of those caches on the way to the trailhead, we didn't arrive there until 10:00 a.m.  A late start for sure, but at least we had fun getting there.

We parked across the road from the South Lava Flow Trailhead, where there was a kiosk containing information about the wilderness area.  Right away, we geared up and set off on our hiking adventure on the Lava Flow Trail.

The trail began with a beautiful, flat hike through the desert, with Table Top Mountain as our backdrop.  The desert landscape was lush with saguaros and other species of cactus, all swollen from the winter's rains.  Additionally, the rains had caused the grass to sprout on the desert floor; everything was green, as far as the eye could see, and it was beautiful.

After a mile, the trail then turned and descended into the wash, at the base of Black Mountain.  We followed that wash for about a tenth of a mile, before climbing back out again.  From there, the trail continued along the base of the mountain for another mile or so, as it headed towards the West Trailhead.

Needless to say, with our late start that morning, we didn't make it that far.  We nearly made it to the end of Black Mountain before stopping for lunch.

We ate lunch around 11:30, on top of the boulders at the base of Black Mountain.  Mary - being the billy goat that she is - scrambled right up the boulders without any trouble and ate her sandwich; after lunch, she climbed even higher - higher than Grandma cared to see her climb.  I think she was showing off her rock-climbing skills; she certainly makes it look easy.

Although we certainly could have kept going on the Lava Flow Trail, we decided to make that our turn-around point.  We had already hiked about two miles; returning now would make it a four-mile day.  John, on the other hand, wanted more of a challenge than this trail provided and had been eyeing Black Mountain.  As we set off on our return hike, John announced that he was going to take different route than us: up and over the mountain.

"Sure, knock yourself out," I said.

So, with that, John started up Black Mountain on his adventure.  Meanwhile, Erika and Mary and I stayed on the hiking path.  We now had one goal in mind: to make it to the wash before John.  He had a tendency to end up ahead of me whenever he did something like that; this time, we were going to make it there first!

It took us about thirty minutes to make it to the wash.  That was a good pace for us, considering that Mary's top speed was only about two miles an hour, but it was definitely much slower than John was capable of hiking.  I truly expected to find him sitting at the wash, wondering "what took us so long", so I was surprised to find that he wasn't there after all! 

"Wow, that's a first!" I remarked. 

We waited for him there for about fifteen minutes, all the while watching for John to appear at the top of Black Mountain.  We started getting worried when he didn't appear right away; it was not like John to take that long on one of his excursions. 

Before we could start looking for him, he appeared on the trail, behind us!  After climbing to the top of Black Mountain, John could see that he was going to be in trouble if he continued in that direction.  It was not flat on top as he had expected; instead, he would have to cross several peaks and valleys before he could descend into the wash on the other side.  It would take him much longer than he had hoped, and without a way to communicate that to us, he knew that we would be worried about him.  So, he decided to climb back down again and take the trail back to the wash.

From the wash, it was another mile to the trailhead.  Along the way, John decided to play with the GPS that he had borrowed from his parents.  We had given them a Garmin Nuvi for Christmas just a couple of weeks earlier, and they loved it - for one, it reminded them of the GPS unit from the movie RV.  They even named her "Mitch" (i.e. rhymes with "bitch"), because it constantly "mitches" at them.  Bill suggested that we take it along with us on our hike, as he thought it might be fun to play with it along the trail.

"Mitch" proved to be very entertaining, because, yes, it sounded just like Lola, the GPS unit from the movie RV.  Every few minutes as we hiked along, the voice on the Garmin reminded us that we were "not on any marked road" and that we should turn around to return to the marked road.  When we kept going, it then announced that it was "recalculating".  It continued to do this almost all the way to the car, until John got tired of hearing it and switched off its voice. 

We arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 p.m.  Instead of leaving right away, though, John suggested that we take a quick drive up the road, three-quarters of a mile, to the Table Top Trailhead.  There was a geocache hidden there, so he figured, while we were there, we should retrieve it.

It only took us a few minutes to get to the trailhead; but, by that time, Mary decided that she didn't want to walk the 300 feet or so to retrieve the cache; she was done walking.  She and I stayed behind at the 4Runner, while John and Erika went to look for the cache.  It took them a while to find it, as it was well hidden; once they made the grab, they hiked back to the 4Runner.

Having done what we set out to do that day, it was now time to leave the Table Top Wilderness Area and return to civilization.  After safely making our way back on Vekol Valley Road, we started making our way back towards Phoenix, returning the way we had come. 

Along the way, we stopped a couple more times to look for geocaches.  There were two caches located off of I-8; one was at a rest area, and the other was in a campground.  That gave us a total of seven finds for the day - not bad at all!  There were more to be found in Maricopa, too, but we decided to save those for another day.

Instead of looking for more caches while passing through Maricopa, we stopped instead for treats.  Erika wanted to treat us all to ice cream for taking her on such a fun hike, so we stopped at a Dairy Queen at the edge of town.  The cool treats were a great way to celebrate the end of a fun day of hiking...

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