Today we took a special hike---our 500th one since
we started doing road trips January 2012.
500 hikes in just under five years.
Neither of us can really wrap our heads around this number. 500 hikes.
For you math whizzes out there, that is well over one hike every four
days for five years.
What can we say about this?
First, the average length of those 500 hikes is a bit over 5
¼ miles. Second, the vast majority have
not been on established hiking trails.
Third, only a fraction of the time have we run into other hikers when we
are hiking—we almost always have the hike to ourselves.
Our 500th hike was quite representative of our
500 hikes. We found an old mining road (this
time in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge) and followed it to the end. We LOVE mining roads. Not only are they better than hiking trails,
but when walking on them you can’t help but marvel at the skill of these
desperate, and probably basically unhealthy, men who toiled in the heat to
build them for pay that probably was little more than enough to keep them
alive. 100-150 years later these roads
are still usable to walk on.
We also like these roads because we NEVER see anyone else on
them.
And there is always a sense of adventure to these roads.
What will we find?
So, while we followed it to the “end,” being the savvy
hikers we are, we knew that a road like the one we found wouldn’t just
“end.” It would have cost a lot of
man-hours to build and money to pay for those man-hours. It was built because someone was going to
make some money from having it built.
So, we kept walking in the general direction of the end of the road, and
after going up and down several small hills, we found the mine! And evidence of an old mining settlement. Not on any of the Kofa maps or on our Garmin
Maps.
Neither of us can say that we will be able to do another 500
hikes. At our age, any number of things
could end this way of life. So we make
sure we enjoy every day and every hike and every bike ride and every year
watching our grandchildren grow.
The campsite where we spent our final five days in Kofa, and the departure spot for our 500th hike:
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