While surfing the Internet at work one day, John found another wilderness area that we had not yet explored: the Eagletail Wilderness, just off of Interstate 10, west of Phoenix. Now that the weather was cooling down enough for us to do some desert hiking, we decided to go there to see what it was like.

We left early in the morning, before the sun came up, and drove west on I-10 until we reached Salome Road, exit 81. According to the directions, we had to go left after the exit and follow 547th Avenue to the Eagletail Ranch. After entering the ranch, we would take a dirt road twelve miles until we reached the trailhead for the Eagletail Wilderness. From there we would park then hike in until noon then hike back out again.

There was one problem, though: the directions we had been given were completely skewed, and we could not find the Eagletail Ranch! We could see the mountains from the interstate; but we just couldn't figure out how to get to them! By nine o'clock, after having driven around for almost an hour, we gave up. That was when John suggested that we go to Sundad, his old stomping grounds. Along the way, he would show me places he used to go to drink, and he would show me the place where he first learned to skydive: the Desert Skydiving Center in Buckeye.

To get to Sundad, we had to drive through Arlington until we reached a dirt road that would take us right to Main Street. From there, it was another forty miles of driving through low desert and mountain passes. Fortunately, the road was graded, meaning that it was possible to go about 55 miles an hour. Along the way, John told me that he used to go there a lot with his father and his friend Preston. They would camp there, sometimes during New Year's Eve, and drink until it was time to go home. Until that day, no one in his group had ever brought a woman there; to do so was against tradition. However, now that Preston was married -- and John and I were engaged -- it was all right to bring me there.

Sundad is now nothing more than a ghost town. Nothing is left of the town except for a few cement slabs where buildings once stood. In the 1920's, it used to be a tuberculosis community, where people infected with this deadly disease were taken to live out their last days. The town was eventually abandoned, and all that remained were the buildings. Then they, too, disappeared, as people passing through would tear them down to use the wood for firewood. Sometime in the 1970's, and elderly woman came to Sundad to lay out white rocks, marking the site where the town once stood. John said that whenever he and Preston came to camp there, they would repair any damage that had been done to the markings, which included the name "Sundad" as well as arrows pointing to Main Street.

We parked the van on Main Street then started hiking towards a hill, two or three miles away - our plan was to do some hiking that day, so we weren't going to go away empty-handed! We walked through the desert and along washes; and as we approached the hill, the landscape gave way to black lava rocks. The hill itself was covered with them. We figured that there had once been active volcanoes in the area centuries ago.

Upon reaching the base of the hill, we stopped to snack on bananas and Power Bars. John decided to climb all the way to the top of the hill, but I stayed at the bottom because I had a cramp in my hip. It only took him minutes to make it to the top, but it took longer for him to climb back down because of the loose dirt. He told me that he was glad I didn't go up there with him because it would have been too dangerous for me.

By the time we returned to the van, it looked as though it was going to rain, so we decided to leave Sundad. John also had many other places to show me, including the town of Hyder, which consisted of a few ramshackle buildings and a bar where John and his father used to go for beer. The bar, which was a run-down dump with cardboard walls, had been recently closed down. John was surprised, because there wasn't another bar around for miles.

After that, we drove into Agua Caliente, which is on the other side of the mountain from Hyder. We stopped for a moment at the cemetery, which contained headstones dating all the way back to the 1800's. Then we continued driving until we reached Gila Bend, where we stopped to get ice cream. From there, we continued north on Old Highway 80 to return to Arlington, where we stopped at the Desert Rose bar for a beer, as tradition dictates. Finally, to complete the trip, we drove to Buckeye. John was planning to make a jump at the Desert Skydiving Center; however, there was no one there, so we went home.

Return to Naked in the Woods.