It was shaping up to a year of record rainfall in Phoenix - the beginning of the end of the seven-year drought that had already caused so much damage in Arizona.  All of us Arizonans welcomed the rain...

...as long as it only rained Monday through Friday.

Of course, it didn't; and rainy weekends meant that we had to spend a good number of Saturdays and Sundays at home.  There would be no hiking, no camping, no backpacking, no skydiving...not until the rains let up.  Sure, we did get a lot of projects done around the house - for example, we tiled and painted the kitchen, and we redecorated Mary's room.  However, we were dying to get back into the outdoors again, even if it meant doing a short hike in the city.

Then, one Sunday afternoon in late January, it happened: the clouds moved on, leaving us with a beautiful, sunny day - a perfect day for a hike. 

We didn't have a whole lot of time to plan our excursion - in fact, up until that morning, we didn't even know that we were going, as the weather had been too unpredictable lately.  When we awoke that morning (on January 23) and found that the sun was shining, we decided that it was time to get out of the house.  We would do a short hike, something close to the city.  John suggested that we do a three to five mile hike in the McDowell Mountains, so I said, "Sure!  Let's go!"

With our hiking gear loaded in the trunk of the car, John and Mary and I left for McDowell Mountain Regional Park at 8:00 in the morning.  We arrived at the gates of the park about a half an hour later; there, we paid our fees and kept driving to the North Trailhead, at the northernmost part of the park (at Asher View Drive).  There, we would hike the North Trail, a 3.1 mile long flat loop hike.  It would be the perfect diversion for us.

After a tenth of a mile, the trail forked at the beginning of the loop.  We decided to do the clockwise loop for no particular reason, so we took the left fork and continued hiking.  Along the way, John continued to point out the desert foliage to Mary, while I took pictures of the trail.  I was amazed to see how green everything was; the recent rains had brought life back to the desert again. The saguaros were looking fat again, and there was grass once again on the desert floor.  Although I knew that it would take a couple more years of that type of rainfall to call the drought over, I was at least optimistic again.

As we continued along the trail, it soon began to turn northward as it paralleled the wash; here, there were many washes criss-crossing through the desert.  John took off to go explore the washes while I kept Mary on the main trail.  We eventually met up again before the trail began to curve again.

About halfway through the trail, it was time for Mary to take a break.  We found a nice shady spot under a mesquite tree and sat down to snack on oranges while Mary rested her little feet.  Once she was rested, we got up and continued on our hike.

During the last half of the hike, we discovered that this easy trail was also popular among bicyclists; several times, we had to step aside to let passing bicyclists through.  We also encountered a woman hiking alone while talking on her cell phone - sort of takes away from the wilderness experience.  (I didn't even have signal on that trail.)  Of course, I suppose that that's the type of thing you're going to see when you're hiking in the city.

The last quarter mile of the trail took us through some washes.  Although these wash-crossings were not at all treacherous to us, they were to Mary.  She had to slow down and take each one carefully so that she wouldn't fall down and get hurt.  (She had already fallen once and was not happy about it.)  By the last wash-crossing, though, she had gotten her technique down and was handling them with ease.

We completed our hike at 10:30 a.m., about 2 hours after we started.  That meant that Mary had hiked at a rate of about 1.5 miles an hour - not bad for a 4-1/2 year old!  She had also done the whole hike without begin carried; John and I were both thrilled that we were now able to get more distance out of her.

Having completed our hike, we decided to reward Mary with a trip to the nearby playground, where she spent about 15 minutes playing on the swings and on the slide.  Then, we put our tired child back into the car and drove home.  The day's adventure was over...

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