For Labor Day weekend this year, we decided not to go camping.

It wasn't so much that we didn't want to go camping; it was more like we couldn't go camping.  But that's just what happens when life takes over. 

Despite it all, we were able to get one day during the long weekend to ourselves for hiking in the high country.  We decided to drive up to Show Low and do a short hike there.  John suggested that we hike one of the trails in Woodland Park, in Pinetop; it would be city park hiking (which we normally don't do) but it would still get us out of the heat and into the pines.

We soon learned that our good friends John Coffman and his wife Jan Banka were planning to be in the area as well.  John and Jan would be staying at a bed and breakfast - the Osmer D. Heritage Inn - in Taylor-Snowflake, about 30 miles east of Heber-Overgaard.  Naturally, we invited them to come hiking with us, as we always have a great time with them.

In preparation for our hike, John loaded the GPS with a bunch of geocache coordinates, including a pair of caches in Taylor-Snowflake.  One of these caches was located directly across the street from the bed and breakfast where the Coffmans were staying. John thought, wouldn't it be fun to introduce John and Jan to the game of geocaching, too? 

We arranged to meet up with John and Jan on Sunday morning, September 2, around 8:00 a.m., in Taylor-Snowflake - of course, we didn't quite make it there by 9:00, as the trip took much longer than we had anticipated.  To get there, we took SR 87 to Payson, where we turned onto SR 260 East, towards Heber.  In Heber, we turned left onto SR 277 and continued towards Snowflake.  When we finally arrived in Snowflake - around 8:30 that morning - we turned right onto SR 77 and found the inn on the left, a block away.

The Coffmans were waiting patiently for us in the garden of the B&B when we arrived.  After we all exchanged greetings, John and John started talking about geocaching.  John said that he had heard of it, so we decided to show him what it was all about.  With that, we followed the GPS coordinates to the parking lot across the street, where we claimed our first geocache of the day.

Once we found that geocache, we decided to start making our way towards Pinetop-Lakeside.  We drove our car, and John and Jan followed in their rental car.  (They had flown to Show Low in John's plane then rented a car at the Show Low Airport.)  Before getting underway, though, John suggested that we make one more stop along SR 77 in Taylor, so that we could find one more geocache.  John and Jan agreed; they were definitely interested in playing the game!

After claiming our second cache, we continued south on SR 77 until we reached Show Low.  From there, we merged onto SR 260 and headed into Pinetop-Lakeside.  Finally, we turned onto Woodland Lake Road and followed that all the way to Woodland Park, where we would begin our day hike.

Our plan for the day was to make a loop hike out of the various trails in Woodland Lake Park.  We would begin with the Lake Loop Trail then connect to the Walnut Creek Trail.  Eventually, we would return to the parking lot on the Hitching Post Trail and complete the four-mile loop.  It was a good plan...on paper.

It was nearly 10:00 a.m. when we started hiking that morning - a late start for sure, considering that the 11:00 meltdown was just around the corner.  Of course, we hoped that having Jan there would help to prevent the outburst, since Mary loved Jan's company.  We also hoped that our choice of trails would make a difference as well; after all, it was a city park trail: flat and easy.  In fact, the first part of the trail - the Lake Loop Trail - was paved...how easy is that?

As we started hiking that morning, we came across a fun sight: fuzzy green caterpillars, crawling along the edge of the trail.  Fascinated, we stopped to get a closer look at them.  John and John even picked one up so that they could show Mary; that later turned out to be a big mistake.  Within minutes, their fingers were tingling, as if they had been stuck by tiny needles.  It turns out that these caterpillars were Mesquite Stingers, a type of venomous caterpillar.  And to think: they looked innocent enough!

At the opposite end of the lake, we connected to the Walnut Creek Trail; at that point, we left the lake's edge and the paved trail and entered the wooded area.  The trail was still easy and flat; but now it was a dirt footpath.

We kept hiking; and before we knew it, we came to the trail junction with the Hitching Post Trail. Not long after that, we arrived at a small reservoir where, to our surprise, we found what appeared to be a sort of amphitheater.  There were bleachers set up, stadium-style, in front of the pond; there also appeared to be some sort of stage.  We were not sure what the purpose of the amphitheater was, but we figured that it was probably used for lectures or musical performances.

Upon leaving the reservoir, we continued along what we thought was the trail...but it wasn't long before the trail completely vanished!  We ended up hiking cross-country through a meadow behind a school, not really sure where we were.  It was a good thing that we had the GPS, or else we would have been completely lost.

After wandering for some time through that meadow, we eventually found our way back into the woods again, where we discovered that we were on a disk-golf course!  That was good to see, because it meant that we had not strayed too far from the trail after all.

Or so we thought.  We kept hiking through the woods, hoping to find the trail; but we just couldn't find it.  We soon decided to just keep going, cross-country, using the GPS to guide us towards the car.

Around noon, we found ourselves in a subdivision.  I couldn't help but think about our trip on the Houston Mesa Trail earlier in the year, when we had cut through a subdivision to abort our hike.  Would this be another taxi-cab rescue?

Well, not quite...but that was where our hike ended that day.  Jan and Mary and I waited in the subdivision, next to the community pond, while John and John hiked ahead to bring the cars around.  The parking lot was still three-quarters of a mile ahead; but it would be faster for them to just run ahead.

Twenty minutes later, John and John arrived to pick us up; by that time, it had started to sprinkle outside, so the timing couldn't have been better.

It was past lunchtime; so the five of us looked for a place to eat.  We soon found ourselves at a quaint little place called The Christmas Tree.  They were open for business and it didn't look crowded, so we decided to stop there.  It turned out to be a good choice, because their food was quite good...and, only seconds after we went inside, the skies opened up and a big thunderstorm blew through town!

After lunch - and after the storm had passed - John (Coffman) suggested that we go for a drive.  He wanted to show us the property that he was considering buying, in a neighborhood off of Bucksprings Road.  Interestingly enough, we had just been in that area only a few weeks earlier, when we hiked the Country Club Trail for my birthday!  We told him and Jan that there was a plethora of trails nearby if they decided to buy that place.

The other thing that John wanted to see was the Hon-Dah Casino, at the junction of SR's 260 and 73.  He had heard that John and I had attempted to have dinner there for our anniversary earlier in the year, and he wanted to see what it was all about.  John promised him that it really wasn't all that it was cracked up to be; it wasn't Vegas, after all.  But we went anyway, because he wouldn't know until he saw it.

The casino was packed when we arrived there that afternoon.  The parking lot was almost completely full, so it was nearly impossible to find a place to park.  Once we were parked, we went inside to browse the casino...and, as we predicted, John and Jan were not impressed.  Ten minutes later, we left.

With the day drawing to a close, we decided to go our separate ways, so that we could head back towards Phoenix.  We said our goodbyes to John and Jan and started on our long journey back home.

We could have driven back home non-stop, but where was the fun in that?  Instead, we stopped off in Show Low to search for another geocache that was located off of a city trail.  Although we didn't find the cache, we did have a nice time hiking the trail; the views from the Mogollon Rim were magnificent!

We also stopped off in Overgaard, at the Gaard-Chak, to meet up with John's parents briefly.  When we arrived, however, we found that they weren't at the cabin; instead, they were at The Cabin (the bar down the street).  We joined them for a drink but kept our visit brief because it was getting late.

It was nearly 5:00 when we left Overgaard that night.  On the way home, we stopped in Payson at the McDonald's for dinner; we took our food to go and ate it on the way home.

Okay, so the day didn't exactly go according to plan...but it still turned out to be a fun day!

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