Two weeks following our ill-fated attempt to backpack the Fred Haught Trail #141, we decided to return there to do a day-hike.  It was a shame that we had been rained out before, because the area was so beautiful that it deserved to be explored again and again.

On Sunday, July 27, our plan was to hike more of the Fred Haught Trail - rain or shine - to see more of that stunning canyon.  We hoped to make it to the junction with the Arizona Trail (Blue Ridge segment), at the three-mile mark; that would make for a six-mile day hike.  It would be a long hike for Mary, but since the trail was mostly flat, we knew that she could handle it.

And to make it more interesting, we decided to select a few geocaches to find along the way.  It always helped to be able to look for treasure while hiking; it kept Mary interested in the task at hand.

To get to the General Springs Trailhead, where our hike would begin, we followed the same route as last time: SR 87 north, through Payson, Pine, and Strawberry, to the top of the Mogollon Rim, then east on Forest Road 300 for many miles.  As usual, the journey along the Rim Road was long and tedious, so to break it up, we stopped to look for caches.  Though we only found one, it was nice to at least get out of the car to stretch our legs.

We arrived at the General Springs Trailhead around 9:30 a.m. and immediately set off on our day hike.  From the trailhead, the Fred Haught Trail followed a fence line for the first quarter of a mile.  At the end of the fence line, the trail then crossed the creek and continued on the other side.  Just as we crossed the creek, though, we saw something slithering in the grass next to the trail.  It turned out to be a small garter snake, about twelve inches long - a harmless snake, but we still observed from a distance so as not to disturb it.

After the crossing, the trail paralleled the creek for the next quarter of a mile or so; and hidden along this stretch of the trail was another geocache to find.  During our backpacking trip, we had been saving that cache for the trip out; but when we aborted the trip early, we never went to look for it.  Now that we weren't in a hurry to leave, we had the time to look for it.  We found it on a ridge, about ten feet above the trail; once we had signed the log and replaced the container, Mary and I hiked back down to the trail.  John, on the other hand, continued up the ridge.

"I'll meet you at the top of the ridge," he indicated, pointing to the hill that we were going to have to climb within the next hundred yards.  Once again, he was going to go for a little explore, which meant that he would be waiting for us up the trail.

While John went exploring, Mary and I went to look for the next cache.  This one was located up on top of the ridge, under a log.  Although the container was covered with ants, we were still able to claim it and sign the log.

Sure enough, John was waiting for us on top of the ridge...although we didn't see him at first, mainly because he was hiding.  I let Mary hike ahead to go look for him, and as she approached, he jumped out from behind a boulder and scared her!  She wasn't happy about it...although it was hilarious!

Now that we were reunited, we hiked together over the ridge and down the other side, back towards the creek.  As we started downhill, we crossed over a drainage then followed a ridgeline, high above the creek, for a while; soon, the trail began to switchback down to the creek.  We crossed over again and continued on the other side.

The further we hiked down the trail, the wider the canyon became.  It wasn't long before we began finding all of those beautiful grassy benches.  We also found the bench where we had attempted to camp two weeks ago; our wood pile was still there, meaning that no one had camped there since we were there last.

After passing by that campsite, we were in new territory - or at least new for Mary and me.  John had hiked this trail before, so he pointed out all of the points of interest along the way.

A short distance away, we passed by a small fireplace that had been built by a camper; it was made entirely out of rocks and looked like a great place to have a huge campfire, even though it wasn't even that great of a campsite...not when there were plenty of beautiful campsites closer to the water.  John pointed all of them out to us, stating that you could put entire Boy Scout troops out there and still have room for more.

We soon came to the junction with the Arizona Trail, at lunchtime.  John indicated that this was a good place for us to turn around; although he would have loved to go further, he knew that Mary wasn't going to be able to do so.  We knew her limitations, and we were already pushing them by having her hike six miles roundtrip.

We sat down by the creek and ate our lunch.  After finishing his sandwich, John then hiked a little way upstream, to see what he could see; when he returned, about fifteen minutes later, we started off on our return hike.

Our return hike went very well, probably because we took so many breaks along the way.  The breaks kept Mary refreshed and prevented her typical meltdowns.  During our breaks, John pulled out his iPhone and showed us some of the games that he had downloaded; Mary got a kick out of them.

In addition to our "resting" breaks, we also took a lot of photography breaks. We stopped to photograph a herd of cows that were grazing next to the creek; we also stopped to take pictures of the mushrooms that we found near our campsite.  Some of the mushrooms were as big as John's hand.  John laid down in the grass and shot off about twenty or thirty pictures of them.  Mary did the same thing but only managed to get about two or three before she discovered that her card was full.  We discovered that we had not dumped her camera in a long time.  John had to delete a few bad pictures just to make room for her mushroom shots.

We completed our six-mile hike around 2:00 p.m.  Mary was very tired by that time, but fortunately for us, she was still in good spirits.  She did, however, fall asleep rather quickly, once we were on the road again.  That made it harder for us to do any more geocaching that afternoon.  We were only able to find one more cache, and that was only because it was a "park and grab".

With our child sleeping peacefully in the backseat, John and I called it a day and started back towards home.  Another fun hiking adventure had come to an end...

Return to Naked in the Woods.