But occasionally, as with all humans, we have a lapse of judgment that puts us in a bad situation.  When those rare instances arise, however, it is through a combination of knowledge and luck that we always scrape through those situations.

So that, in a nutshell, is what happened to us on Sunday, May 20, when we decided to go hiking without first setting an itinerary for the day.

Life, of course, had been very busy for us over the past five months, and we had been finding it very difficult to find the time to get away for the weekend.  Our original plan for this particular weekend was to go camping for the first time in many months; however, those plans changed very fast when it was announced that Mary would be participating in the Young Champions of America State Pom and Cheer Competition on May 19 at Central High School.  (This happened after Mary's Cheerleading team took first place at the Regional Showcase two weeks earlier.)  Obviously, it was far more important for her to attend the State Competition, where her team finished in second place!

After the competition and the celebratory lunch at Applebee's, the three of us came home with Suzanne Daggert and her daughter Katie in tow.  (Now that they were back in Phoenix, we were getting to spend more time together.)  Suz and I hung out together while Mary and Katie had a play-date.  And John?  John went to work on his laptop.  He had a major project that he was working on, and he worked through most of the evening on it.

After a late night of working, John awoke the next morning with no idea what we were going to do the next day.  All he knew was that, whatever we ended up doing, he had to be home by 2:00 p.m. to go on a conference call.  That put a limit on the distance that we could travel from home for our outing; he preferred that we stay within two hours of home, so that we could be back in enough time for him to take that call.

With that in mind, John suggested that we go up to the Mogollon Rim and hike either Houston Brothers or Clover Creek: two of our favorite trails.  Before we had even left the house, though, he changed his mind and said that we would hike one of the trails outside of Pine.

So, with our gear packed in the back of the 4Runner, John and Mary and I left the house to begin our drive up to Payson.  It was 7:00 a.m.: for the first time in a long time, we managed to get out of the house at a decent hour!

Our drive to Payson was uneventful; we spent that time talking about our plans for the upcoming summer vacation, including our trip to Jamaica in June and all of the extra-curricular activities that Mary would be doing while not in school.  During all of this, John was still pondering where we should go hike, as he wasn't quite convinced that he wanted to do that trail outside of Pine.

"I know!" he exclaimed as soon as we pulled into Payson around 8:30 that morning.  "Why don't we do that Houston Mesa Loop that we did when we went snowshoeing earlier this year?" 

We both agreed that it would be a great idea.  Even though we had never done this trail without snow, we knew that it would not be a bad route for us to take.  From what we had seen of this trail, it was a nothing more than a pleasant stroll through the manzanita, pinion and juniper, with only a few small hills: a perfect day hike for us!

Before embarking on our day hike, though, we had important business to take care of in Payson: there was a geocache hidden in the city, and Mary and I had to find it.  It was one that John had already located by himself, but he wanted Mary and me to find it, too.  It was one of those clever geocaches that he wanted us to see firsthand.

Although John knew where it was, he gave the GPS to Mary and asked her to point out the way.  She did a very good job of telling him where to turn, too!  In just a few minutes, we arrived behind the strip mall where the Quizno's used to be.  We parked next to the dumpster and got out of the car to start our search for the geocache on foot.

With the GPS in her hand, Mary led us to within three feet of the geocache, but she could not find it.  At that point, we started picking up rocks to see if any of them were fake ones.  Sure enough, we found it!  Now, I won't say where exactly we found it, only because there are probably others out there looking for it (I don't want to give away the surprise, of course), but I will say that it was indeed a very clever hiding spot.  Although it was supposed to be a microcache, we did find that there were a few small treasures inside.  We signed the log, took a treasure and left one behind, and then we put the cache back where we had found it.

Having completed our treasure hunt of the day, we pulled away from the strip mall and continued through town on SR 87.  Just north of town, past the Home Depot and the new "traffic-calming" roundabout that we have come to despise, we came to Houston Mesa Road.  We turned right and proceeded to the Houston Mesa Trailhead, located about two miles down the road.

When we arrived at the trailhead, we found that there was already one vehicle parked there; a few minutes later, its occupants returned from their day hike.  As we walked by them to begin our hike, they asked us, "Do you happen to know how long that loop is?  We hiked three miles and we never looped back."

We told them that we did not know how long the loop was.  We really didn't know, and in retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to know that ahead of time.

We began hiking at 8:50 that morning, after sharing our traditional trail kisses, of course.  The trail started off on a wide footpath that twisted through a forest of pinions and junipers as it followed the contour of the land.  After a quarter of a mile, we came to a trail junction, where the Houston Loop continued to the left, and on the right was the trail that went to the Horse Camp.  Since we were interested in doing the Loop, we stayed left.

For the first hour of the morning, we were hiking very strong; of course, it helped that it was early in the day and that the sky was a little bit overcast, making it pleasantly cool outside.  Mary was hiking at a her best that morning, too; during the first hour, she hiked at a clip of almost two miles an hour.  So, with all of those factors playing in our favor, we arrived at the loop within the hour.

At the beginning of the loop, the arrow on the sign indicated that we needed to go left, and so we did.  After a few feet, the trail then veered off to the right - and I almost missed it!  It was a good thing that John was paying attention; otherwise we would have gone the wrong way!

The trail continued to wind through the forest, ascending and descending with the land, along the wide footpath.  As we hiked along, John and Mary made up stories to pass the time.  We were having a great time, being together as a family.

Around mile two, we came to a junction with the Shoofly Trail, which could only lead to the Shoofly Ruins that were up the road.  We had no idea how far away they were, but having visited them before, we knew that they were somewhat close by.  We considered taking that trail just for fun, but we decided not to, because our mission was to finish the loop.

We continued on from there.  The trail finally began to turn in the right direction of the loop (we were getting a little worried about that) and it also started heading uphill.  The climb wasn't steep, nor was it difficult, but it was a steady climb, which, to us, indicated that it was going to take us to the top of the mesa.  John speculated that we would probably top out on the mesa then come back down again and finish up the loop.  That would have made sense to us.

We did not, however, climb up the mesa.  The trail topped out sooner than we thought, and then we started back downhill again. 

As we continued hiking along, John kept looking at the GPS to see what our progress was along the loop.  He was starting to get a little worried about the trail, because it seemed to be taking us a long time to complete the loop.  At every turn, we were expecting the trail to turn south again, but it just kept going east.  John recommended that, if the trail didn't start heading south by 10:30, then we should turn around and return the way we came.

So wouldn't you know it?  The trail turned south before 10:30, lulling us into a false sense of hope that we were soon going to find our way back to the loop junction.  Naturally, we kept going...

At 11:00 a.m., we broke for lunch under the shade of a juniper tree.  Our lunch consisted of sandwiches, apples, and raisins.  The fruit was very refreshing after the long hike, especially since the clouds had burned off mid-morning and the sun was now bearing down on us.  Our lovely cool morning was turning into one hot day.

As soon as we were done eating lunch, we picked up our gear and continued on our hike.  By 11:30, John announced that we were two miles - straight line - from the car.  That sounded promising...until John added that we were not going in the right direction.  We needed to be going southwest; instead, we were going southeast, away from the car.  Up ahead, however, the trail seemed to be turning in the right direction, so we made the decision to keep going.

It wasn't long before the trail led us into a very exposed area, with lovely views of the Mogollon Rim to one side Payson in the other.  In the distance, we could see the smoke of the Promontory Fire billowing off of the mountain in the east; that fire was burning through See Canyon, near Christopher Creek, and had already scarred about 4,000 acres.  During our hike, we saw one of the helicopters being used to fight the fire fly overhead.  It had a water bucket dangling from it, and we guessed that it was going to one of the lakes to pick up water to dump onto the fire.

Much to our dismay, the trail kept going...and going...and going...On top of that, the day was getting hotter and hotter, and the trail was becoming more exposed.  Moreover, the wide footpath on which we had started hiking so many miles ago was now more like a road.  In fact, we soon discovered that it was a road.  After descending a rather large hill, we came across a small fence that bordered on a subdivision.  A quarter of a mile later, we encountered a couple of men on ATV's, out for a joyride on the trail.  We asked them how much further it was to the Houston Mesa Trailhead, but they replied that they did not know.  Not a good sign.

We did, however, find something interesting along the way that made us forget about our troubles for a few minutes.  About a quarter of a mile from the subdivision, we came across what looked like a bomb shelter!  It was partially underground and was made of thick concrete.  Where the door used to be, there was a great deal of scarring and lots of graffiti.  Inside, there were multiple rooms; I counted four, but it was too dark to tell if there were more than that.  In one of the rooms, I could see sunlight; we later found that the light was coming from a concrete opening a few feet away. 

After leaving the shelter, we continued on for another fifteen minutes or so.  Then, suddenly John announced that we needed to turn around and go back the other way.  We just weren't getting any closer to the car; in fact we were more than two miles straight line from the trailhead! 

I pointed out to John that turning around had it disadvantages, too.  For one thing, we were three hours from the trailhead going the other way; at Mary's rate of speed, that was probably four miles.  That was going to take us all day to do that.  Additionally, we were getting low on water and snacks.  To top it off, Mary started crying and carrying on, because now she was tired and wanted to get back to the car.  Unfortunately, there was no other choice; at least returning the way we came was known distance; we didn't know how much longer we had to go if we continued on the loop.

Less than a mile into our return hike, we came across the subdivision again, as well as the steep climb uphill (the one that I was not looking forward to doing in the heat).  It was there that John stopped and said, "Let's cut through the subdivision and try to get back to pavement."

At first, I thought that he was crazy.  "Are you trying to get us shot or arrested?" I said.  But I was too tired to argue with him.  So Mary and I followed him through the neighborhood, past two or three houses, and onto the paved road.

Although we weren't completely out of the woods yet, we did feel better about our situation.  From that point on, things only got better for us.  For one thing, one of the houses by which we passed was for sale, so we were able to get an address off of that.  Based on that address, we figured out that we were near Star Valley: a long distance from the Houston Mesa Trailhead.  Now that we had an address (and cell signal), we were able to call for a taxicab to come and pick us up.

Calling for a cab proved to be more difficult that we had thought.  Information was useless; they kept giving us a number in the 602 area code.  Frustrated, John decided to call his parents to see if they were still in Overgaard, only to discover that they were already home.  That was a good thing, though, because that meant that they had internet access!  Erika was able to look up the number of a taxicab for us to call to rescue us.

Ten minutes later, we were picked up by Paul, the taxicab driver, and he drove us back to the Houston Mesa Trailhead.  During the drive, we learned that Paul was new to Payson; he had just moved there from Casa Grande, where he used to pick up skydivers from Skydive Arizona.  (Small world!)  John, of course, told him that that was where he did his skydiving.  "You wouldn't catch me doing that," Paul told him.  "Those people are crazy!"

We finally arrived back at the Houston Mesa Trailhead at 12:30 p.m., an hour and a half before John had to be on his conference call.  He was so grateful for the rescue that he gave Paul a generous tip before sending him on his way.  A few minutes later, we followed in the 4Runner.

It was quite a relief to be on the road again.  After stopping for cold drinks at the Circle K, we started back down the Beeline Highway towards Phoenix.  We made it back to Fountain Hills just in time for John to take his important conference call.

When we got home that afternoon, I decided to Google Houston Mesa, just to see how long that trail really was, and I learned a great deal about that trail based on the results.  For one thing, the Loop is actually NINE mile in length!  It is a popular trail for mountain bikers and ATV riders.  We also learned that the bomb shelter that we had seen was not a bomb shelter at all.  It was in fact an old abandoned seismology station...AND it was a virtual geocache, too!  There had been, at one time, a geocache buried there, but it had long since disappeared, so the place was now a virtual cache.  That meant that we had found two caches that day, not just one.

Later that day, John uploaded our GPS tracks onto the computer to see how long we hiked that day.  Including the mile that we hiked back to the subdivision, we hiked a total of 5.7 miles that day - not bad for a six and a half year old kid!

And so ended another typical Verley adventure...

Return to Naked in the Woods.