Last month, John and I discovered a wonderful little place called Kinder Crossing, and we loved it so much that we wanted to return there in the near future, to do an overnight backpack. We decided to do it on July 28-29, and we invited John's parents, as well as the Guckenburgs, to join us on our trip, because Kinder Crossing was one of those rare treasures that we needed to share with the rest of the family. Bill and Erika jumped at the chance to do another backpacking trip with us, and Janice and Danny told us that they would do a day-hike with Joshua to spend the afternoon with us, since they would be camping on the Mogollon Rim anyway. (We couldn't convince them to backpack with us, but that was okay because they don't enjoy backpacking like we do.)

Since this was going to be such an easy, short backpacking trip - a luxury trip, like our last two trips to Clover Creek - we decided to bring a few luxury items with us. Naturally, that meant that we would have a bag of wine to pass around, but that wasn't the only luxury item that we brought. John's parents had recently bought Mary a Baby Boat to use in their pool; they deflated that and brought it with them so that Mary could go swimming in East Clear Creek. We also brought swimsuits and water shoes with us so that we could all enjoy a nice, relaxing day of playing in the creek.

Saturday morning, we managed to get on the road without a hitch. The motor home arrived at 6:00 a.m. sharp, and in just a few minutes, we had the car seat installed and all of the backpacks loaded. By 6:15, we were ready to go.

Instead of taking the usual route to the Mogollon Rim (via SR 87), Bill decided to take I-17 to SR 260 East to SR 87 - this route would take us the same amount of time, and we also didn't have to drive through Scottsdale!

Our trip to Kinder Crossing passed without incident. En route, Mary showed off her new trick - playing catch with her little soccer ball - and then she took a nap. Meanwhile, John taught his father how to use his new GPS, which he had received for his birthday earlier in the month. He had also received the Topographical Map CD-ROM set for the entire state of Arizona - the same set that we use to print up topo maps for our adventures - so John showed him a few pointers about using the GPS in coordination with the topo maps.

We soon reached FR 95, then FR 95T, the turn-off for Kinder Crossing. Although we were certain that we weren't going to be able to park at the trailhead, we were determined to get as close to the berm as possible. The road, however, was not that good, and we ended up parking the motor home in the shade of several pine trees, a third of a mile from the berm. That was going to add that distance to our hike, but since it was such an easy hike to begin with, we weren't too terribly concerned about the extra mileage.

We arrived shortly before 9:00 a.m.; after taking a few minutes to gather our gear, it came time to put on our heavy packs. Bill's pack - the one with the wine and the scotch - weighed forty-eight pounds! The "Limo" weighed about sixty pounds, including Mary, who had just recently been weighed at twenty-three pounds and three ounces!

My pack was heavy, too, because I was carrying diapers and baby food again, but I was surprised just how well it rode on my back! I had decided to pack it a little bit differently this time, just as an experiment. Instead of laying the stuff sacks horizontally in my pack, I stood them upright…and it made a huge difference in the way the weight was distributed in my pack. I decided that this would be the way I will pack my backpack from now on, especially when we go to Paria Canyon in two months…

At 9:10 that morning, we began our short hike into Kinder Crossing. As we came to the berm, where we had parked during our first hike, I announced, "If anyone sees a digital camera lying on the ground, it's ours. It will probably be in a million pieces…" In all honesty, I was joking when I said that, because I was certain that we would never find the camera again. However, our curiosity did get the best of us, so we all took thirty seconds to scour the area before continuing our hike. No trace of the camera could be found.

At the berm, we took the road to the right, which led us to the trailhead - and, to our surprise, there were no cars parked there! (Could it be true that we would have the creek to ourselves?) From there, we began our descent into the canyon. Our hike was uneventful, and forty minutes later, at 9:50 a.m., we found ourselves at the campsite that John and I had discovered last month. There, we dropped our packs and said, "We're here!"

And so, we were done hiking for the day. Upon our arrival, we began to set up our campsite putting up our tents and laying down our ground covers. Then, when that was done, Bill pulled the wine out of his backpack and poured the first round. I mentioned something about "Guckenburg-bagging" the wine, remembering a past incident, but we laughed it off.

Around 10:30 a.m., while we were dressing Mary in her bathing suit, the Guckenburgs arrived. After saying our greetings and admiring how cute Joshua had become, we took the kids down to the creek to let them play in the water. At first dip, East Clear Creek was very cool - not cold - but once we got used to it, it was fine. As soon as we put Mary into her baby boat and pulled her out into the swimming hole, she began splashing around and giggling - of course, the cool water probably felt very good against her diaper rash!

Then, it was Joshua's turn to go into the water...but the water was too cold for him! As soon as Janice put him into his baby boat, he screamed bloody murder until he was removed from the water. Each time someone tried to put him back into the boat, he screamed. So, Bill came up with a solution: he put an inflatable ring on top of Joshua's baby boat and then put Joshua on top of that, with his feet kicked up in the air. We all laughed out loud and said that all he needed was a beer in his hand!

Later that morning, we decided to swim over to the waterfall, where we swam around on the slippery rocks until lunchtime. At that point, we headed back to our campsite, where we ate sandwiches and drank wine until the last drop was gone...at 11:30 a.m.! (After the Guckenburgs left, we joked that that was the second time they had day-hiked into our camp and drunk all of our wine without bringing in more! But at least this time they didn't have sex in our tent...)

After lunch, we all enjoyed a quiet, lazy afternoon at our campsite while the babies slept in our tent. At the same time, I noticed that I was getting some color on my shoulders and back, but I didn't pay any attention to it - I guess I was more concerned with keeping Mary from getting sunburned that I failed to put sunscreen on myself. By late afternoon, though, I knew that I was going to regret it, as my shoulders began to burn ever so slightly...

Janice and Danny and Joshua left us just before 3:00 p.m., only minutes after I used the self-timer on our new camera to take a group picture. At the same time, John and Bill decided to go exploring, while Erika and I played with Mary at camp. Once again, I took Mary down to the water and put her in her baby boat so that she could splash around. I also took the water filter with me, so that I could kill two birds with one stone: while Mary swam around in her boat, close by me, I stood knee deep in the creek and filtered water for dinner!

Meanwhile, John and Bill went to explore more of the canyon. At the waterfall, the creek bends around the ridge and continues in the opposite direction towards Horse Crossing, another trail that we planned to hike one day. John and Bill wanted to see how far they could get - was it possible to get to Horse Crossing from there? John believed that it was, but they didn't make it that far, because it was starting to get late in the day.

When they returned, it was happy hour. Erika sliced up some cheese and sausage to be served on Ritz crackers, while Bill began serving the Scotch and water. Since I'm not much of a Scotch drinker, I only nursed mine, but the others made sure that both bottles were gone before the evening was over, so that Bill didn't have to carry it out in the morning!

Soon, it was dinnertime. As a special treat this time, John and I decided to try something a little different. Instead of eating the same old one-pot chicken and rice meal, we brought along a few extra ingredients to spice up our dinner: a diced parsilla pepper, a minced shallot, and a mushroom. These ingredients didn't weigh much at all, and they were just what we needed to add some extra flavor to an otherwise bland meal.

Once we were done eating, John took our pots and pans down to the creek to wash them while I fed Mary her dinner. Before I could feed her, though, I had to change her diaper to prevent a leak from occurring (not that THAT would ever happen during a camping trip!) We caught it just in time; she only had a small leak, and John was able to clean it right away by pouring a little bit of water on it; it was dry in no time.

Then, I had to change her diaper AGAIN when she began to fidget while I was feeding her. The result? I spilled a quarter of the jar of baby food on her leg and diaper! D'oh!

After Mary was finished eating dinner, we got her cleaned up and let her play on the tarp until bedtime. That was when she did something amazing: she crawled for the first time! At the age of seven months, instead of learning to crawl, she learned how to get around by rolling. By ten months, we thought that she was going to outgrow that stage and begin crawling, but instead, she learned how to roll faster and more precisely. By eleven months, we were convinced that she was never going to learn to crawl and that she would learn to walk first, so to see her finally crawling was a wonderful sight for us to see. We were so happy for her that we scooped her up into our arms and gave her lots of hugs and kisses.

Mary fell asleep at 7:30 that evening, in my arms, a half an hour before her usual bedtime - we had completely worn her out! I took her into the tent and put her into a blanket sleeper (she had outgrown her bunting) and tucked her into her makeshift bed. She was out for the night.

Without Mary to distract us with her antics, we began to discuss important upcoming events: namely, our trip to Paria Canyon in September. John had promised me that he would take me there this year, now that I was strong enough to do such a trip, and he was able to get permits for September 20-23, which would make it a four-day trip. (Last year, he had done it in three.) Although we were not going to take Mary on this trip - we had already arranged for her to stay with Janice and Danny - we were still going to be carrying heavy packs, unless we could find a way to reduce what we carried. John recommended that we leave the tents at home - or at least in the motor home - and use tube tents, as that would reduce a lot of our weight. (That was what Bill and John had done last year.) Erika, however, had trouble with that idea. She liked having the security of sleeping in a tent.

To solve the argument, Bill thought of an experiment: although they had already set up their tent, they would try sleeping outside for the night. Even though Erika was afraid that a snake would sneak into her sleeping bag, she agreed to the challenge. So, at eight o'clock that evening, when Bill and Erika retired for the evening, they moved their sleeping bags outside and arranged them on the tarp, next to their tent.

Of course, John, being the smart child that he is, decided to see if he could scare his mother by coming up with all sorts of imaginary animals. "Look!" he would exclaim. "A rattler-piranha!" or "A snake-bear!" Naturally, Erika did what anyone else would do: she ignored him completely.

John and I managed to stay awake until 9:00 p.m. - a record for us. That was when John arranged his sleeping bag on our tube tent and curled up to go to sleep - and I retired to the tent and curled up next to Mary.

Sometime during the night, I woke up to pee and discovered that I was sleeping on a downhill slope - that was giving me a mild headache, so after I got up to answer nature's call, I turned my sleeping bag around and went back to sleep. Then, a couple of hours later, Mary began fussing in her sleep for the same reason: she was also on a downhill slope, and it was probably getting uncomfortable for her. I turned her around and gave her a bottle of water to put her back to bed.

Just then, I heard a loud sound, like the fierce growling of a bear, reverberating through the canyon. I froze for about a second; then, I listened to see if I could hear Erika scrambling back into the tent - it was so loud, I thought, she had to have heard it, too!

Then, I heard it again, and I realized that it was not a bear after all: it was someone throwing up! When I heard it one last time, I figured out that it was John, so I got up and went to investigate, to make sure that he was all right. He cursed the Scotch and assured me that he was fine, so we both went back to bed.

I awoke at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to the sound of a crackling campfire - and, yes, to the burning sensation on my shoulders (oh, yes, carrying my backpack out of there was going to be a chore!). When I emerged from the tent, I found that John was awake - as were Bill and Erika, though they were still wrapped up in their sleeping bags. As I approached John and wished him a good morning, he groaned and grunted something that sounded like "Morning." Obviously, he had a bad hangover, and he just wanted to die.

When Bill and Erika joined us, they asked how we slept. John only grunted, and I replied that I had slept fine until 1:00 a.m. when "Barfalomew" woke me up.

"What did he do, come into your tent?" Erika asked.

I looked at her, bewildered. "You mean, you didn't hear him?" Oh, the irony! She was so worried about critters coming to get her in the middle of the night, and yet she didn't hear the "bear" vomiting in the woods! Instead, she had slept right through it. (It was decided that morning that we would not bring the tents with us into Paria Canyon, unless there was a strong chance of rain in the weather forecast.)

It took most of the morning to cure John's hangover. Naturally, when Mary awoke at six a.m. in a good mood, that didn't help matters any, because Mary tends to squeal when happy. Eventually, John's hangover began to subside once he was able to eat something. Then, his hangover disappeared when he took Mary down to the creek to help him filter water. While John pumped the water through the filter, Mary quietly played with the water bottles...and it was such an idyllic scene that I sneaked up behind them to take a picture. It was very reminiscent of "The Andy Griffith Show", in which Sheriff Andy Taylor takes little Opie fishing in the opening sequence of the show.

Instead of packing up camp early and hiking out of the canyon, we decided to take our time that morning. Bill went for an early-morning swim that caused him to scream like a girl because the water was too cold. He came back from the creek dripping wet and said, "Don't go in there!" Then, around 8:00 a.m., Mary went down for her first nap, so John and his parents went to explore Yeager Canyon, one of the side canyons down there. I stayed behind at camp and enjoyed the silence.

When they returned from their exploration, John told me that Yeager Canyon was definitely one to explore further. Though it was choked with fallen logs, it was passable and very beautiful, so he recommended that we do it the next time we go there.

At nine o'clock, we began to pack our backpacks to prepare to leave. Although we had been planning to break camp around 10:30, we decided to do so sooner, because there were gray clouds gathering overhead - and we really didn't want to get stuck hiking in the rain again! (Mary had just gotten over her cold from the last rained-out adventure.)

We broke camp at 9:50 a.m., which, according to John, would get us back to the motor home by 10:30. Then, we got lost, so we had to tack a couple of minutes onto our estimated time. Of course, it was only a minor delay: we went too far and missed our creek crossing, so we had to hike back and find it.

After the creek crossing came the long, trudging climb uphill. Although this was not a difficult hike, the weight of our packs made it seem worse than it actually was. To add to it, Mary kept squealing every time John stopped hiking to catch his breath. That caused his headache to flare up again, so by the time he reached the top of the hill, he felt like he was dying. By the time we came to FR 95T, he slowed way down and trudged along until he reached the motor home.

But...we made it! Although we were all tired from the hike, we were very happy to have had such a wonderful time in Kinder Crossing. We thoroughly enjoyed swimming in the creek, and best of all, this had been Mary's best backpacking trip every, because she didn't get sick! To celebrate our successful trip, we stopped at Famous Sam's in Payson to have hamburgers and French fries (but no beer!) before heading home to Phoenix.

Return to Naked in the Woods.