We return to the Matzatzal Wilderness for our celebration

 .......our celebration of 10 years of our courtship.  

For our first night, we stayed in a site close to a hike we wanted to take.  On our maps it looked like this hike could really go somewhere.  

So much for maps.

Our site:

 The hike looked like it would be on a road.  However, the "road" quickly disappeared into a wash.   We spent most of it walking into and out of this wash, following a trail left by some motorized trail bikes.

It was actually very beautiful, but we could see that it wouldn't go anywhere.

 So the next morning we left and drove up a spur that we had hiked upon a few weeks prior when we camped on the edge of the Matzatzal Wilderness.  We had identified a couple of camping sites toward the end of this spur.

Here is our site.  For real.  Very high on the mountain.  Stunning views in all directions.  

Here is a view of our site from higher on the mountain.  Hard to see but we are there.  In  the second photo I have drawn a small box to show where we are:

One of the important features of our site was how close we were to the Arizona Trail.  We had about a half-mile hike to it.  So, for three days we went south and north on it.  One day we took small off-trails from it.  The hikes had a lot of elevation gain but were nothing short of spectacular.

The weather was quite warm so we usually got off on our hikes about 6:00 a.m.  Here are some photos from them:

 

 

I'm on the lower left in the following photo:

And Vicky is in about the middle of the next one:

On one of our off-trail hikes we found ourselves on a high desert meadow.  We absolutely love these. 

Photo of us on this meadow:

Vicky collects rocks.  By this I mean she finds them, and I carry them back.  Here she is photographing one of them.

See why she wanted it?!!  This heart shaped rock is now in her “magical garden” at our home.

A Horny Toad.  I think they are actually called "Horned" Toads, but we called them Horny Toads in Oklahoma in the 1950s.  We named this one “Gertrude”.  

Here is a shot from down below of our site.  Look at the middle of the top of the mountain where there is a bare spot.  We were camped on a hill beneath this bare spot.

 

 

Someone clever made this on one of the trails.  {Dan refuses to use emojis, but now he is using this photo as his very own “smiley face” emoji. ☺️🙃}  

 

 

 

Usually we were done hiking by about 10:00 a.m.  The rest of the day we sat in the shade provided by our camper.  The view was spectacular.  I worked on model cars, and Vicky knitted things for grandchildren.   

A view of the morning sun from our site:

People often have a bad view of "camp food."  Well, this is how we ate! 

We had such a good time that we spent a day longer than we had planned.  And we are sure we will go back to this spot. The hiking is excellent and the peacefulness cannot be duplicated.

Know what else?  We were one hour and 15 minutes from home.  That's why we moved to Arizona.

When we returned to Nuestra Casa we continued our anniversary celebration with a fondue dinner and dancing together.

 

And lots of ice cream!

We are going to continue celebrating our anniversary for the rest of our life....