A new Wordl world record! First try

The "Good Enough" Trail

And this trail is more than “good enough!”  It is a real find….a jewel of a hike.  And a great way to get our mountain climbing legs back in shape, right in our own neighborhood.

It climbs toward the Rim on the east side of Pine.  And it is a real climb—440’ in an eight tenths of a mile!  The beginning is sweet enough, as it winds through the pine trees.

The trail gently climbs to Wild Bill Spring—a very peaceful place where it feels like time has stood still.

From Wild Bill Spring the real climb begins….

The trail is covered in loose rocks, and the footing is treacherous.  The upside to this is that we were able to spot all the precious spring wildflowers that were scattered along the forest floor.

Four hundred and forty feet of climbing later, we reached the fun part….the trail stops going up right beneath the Rim under Milk Ranch Point and meanders north and south for several miles.  

The Good Enough Trail is basically a connector trail from Pine to several other trails.  What a find!

Last summer we hiked south on the Pine Trail, so this spring we headed north….the path through the forest both north and south are delightful.  And there are magnificent views peeking through the trees!

Here’s the view southwest to Pine with the Mazatzal Mountains in the distance…

And here’s a view of our sweet town of Pine, and to the west Strawberry Mountain rises between the small towns of Pine and Strawberry….

This obscure trail is better than “good enough.”  It is such a charming trail meandering through the forest that perhaps it should be named The Hobbit Trail.

Dan and Vicky forever…..”a worn red chair by the window”

It would seem like our life at Nuestra Casa and our mountain cabin are like night and day.  

For the past six months we have lived in our home in Leisure World—“an active adult community.”  In other words—a group of “active” senior citizens who live behind walls in a gated community, with 42 pages of rules, two 18-hole golf courses, 2 full-sized pools, tennis, basketball, and pickleball courts, lawn bowling, two ballrooms, ping pong, bingo, pool rooms, and every imaginable club, including crafts, woodworking, political, and so much more.  There are organized outings and week-long trips, exercise classes of all kinds.  The list of offered and possible activities goes on and on.

And then there is Pine, Arizona….a mish mash of homes and people with no two alike.  There seems to be NO rules—it’s a free for all.

The surprising thing is that, although Nuestra Casa and our cabin are totally different, we love living at each of them equally.  They seem to compliment each other—to add spice to our life.

Although each home is a different environment, we do pretty much the same thing at each home….we cycle, walk, hike, play ping pong, and we dance, dance, dance.  We spend every second of every day and night together….all by ourselves, except for the special times when our family comes to visit us.  

Our homes are different, but we are true to ourselves and our love.  We are Dan and Vicky forever.

This has been our first wonderful week this summer at our mountain cabin…..it started with Thanksgiving in April at the cabin!

I had frozen several of our Thanksgiving meals, and had saved the last one for our first “summer” night at our cabin.  

We ate Thanksgiving Dinner in April on our back deck where we admired my new Valentine’s Day lot and the view of the Mogollon Rim in the distance.

This is our second summer at the cabin.  The cabin is much smaller than Nuestra Casa, and we have a TON of  “stuff” for all of our sports activities and hobbies.  So we decided to spend a few days organizing all this gear.

We used about half the space that we did last summer, when we we’re constantly frustrated and looking for a necessary item.  Everything is now all visible and easily accessible.  

The walk-in storeroom (aka spare bedroom/activity room).

The barn (aka shed).

Now that our “work” was done, it was time to play!

We cycled all around Pine and visited all of our favorite spots.  It was a blast!

Up to Mogollon Rim, we just had to go…for our first hike of the summer.  There was still some snow at 7500 feet elevation!

There was a gorgeous view looking northeast towards the hundreds of miles of hiking on the rim plateau that stretches to Flagstaff and beyond!

We spent a day walking in our neighborhood in Pine—Cool Pines.  We saw lots of our neighbors sleeping under the trees.

And we finally found “a worn red chair by the window that we found at a sale down the way….”

This chair on the left of the photo above is something that we have been looking for ever since we bought our cabin.  It is a necessity for us to have a “worn red chair by the window.”  This phrase comes from the song that represents how we feel about the cabin—Ripplin’ Waters, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  

Here is our “worn red chair by the window” in our cabin.

And we danced in each other’s arms on the deck of our cabin to Ripplin’ Waters.

What a memorable first week for our second summer together at our mountain cabin!

We finally agree with a "Systems Analyst" on the Onion's American Voices

 

 

 

 

Owen and Mila said we need a bigger refrigerator….

 We can’t figure out why?

After all, we still have lots of room on the front.

And we have ANOTHER refrigerator at our cabin in Pine that has lots of room left for us to fill with photos our children, 13 loving grandchildren, and family that are so dear to us.

If we run out of room, I guess we could use our freezer in the garage at Nuestra Casa, and the freezer in our barn (aka. shed) at the cabin.  We’ll see.  Our dear family just keeps growing….and we are so very happy about that!

Sunrise over the rim….

 ….from the back deck of our sweet cabin.

Morning has broken on the first day of our endless “summer” in our mountain paradise.

Look who came by our home to say goodbye!

It’s getting hot here in the Valley.  Most days it has been in the 90’s, and a few days ago it was 99 degrees.  It’s time to move to our mountain cabin in the cool tall pines.

We’ve packed the Turtle (our F350 truck and slide-in camper) and the Rat (our 4Runner).  We’ve loaded Roadrunner and Wile Coyote (our eBikes) onto the back of the Rat, and we’re off for months of fun—exploring new trails hiking and on our bikes, revisiting our favorite grasslands and forests, camping high up on the Mogollon Rim, holding each other as we dance, and relaxing on our decks as we watch the elk and deer who live in Pine with us.

On the road to Pine….I’m the scout in the Rat, and Dan is the rear guard in the Turtle.

The drive to Pine is spectacular!  Ten minutes from Nuestra Casa we are out of Mesa.  We wind along the Salt River to Saguaro Lake and the Supertition Mountains, and past the the Four Peaks Wilderness to Mt. Ord.  Then the Matzatzal Mountains follow us to the west all the way to Pine as we climb to 5,000 feet elevation several times just to go back down again down into the Tonto Basin.  

The Mogollon Rim stretches 200 miles east and west in the distance at 7500 feet.  As we crest the hill into Payson we are suddenly right beneath the Rim.  This is where were we will hike and cycle for days on end this summer.  

And all along the 80 miles to our cabin the hills are covered with saguaro, prickly pear, cholla, and barrel cacti…..and yellow blossoms are abundant between the cacti.

This is Dan’s very favorite part of the drive:

We’re leaving Nuestra Casa and headed up to our cabin in the little hamlet of Pine for the next 5-6 months.  We’ll return to our beloved home in Mesa when it gets too cold to hike and cycle at 6000-7500 feet elevation in the mountains.

Before dawn on the day we headed to the cabin we cycled our 125th 50K in support of Candice’s Ultra-marathon Guinness World Record achievement . 

We will not be cycling 50K on the bumpy dirt roads up on the Rim.  125 is our 50K Leisure World Record….and we’re awfully proud of ourselves!

Candice took off running this morning on Day 167….after today she will have 32 more day to run a 50K to reach her goal of 200!

 On our last day at Nuestra Casa our friends came by to say goodbye…..

And look who welcomed us when we arrived at our mountain cabin!

We love our home and our life in Leisure World so much that we were a little sad to leave this morning.  

But here we are sitting our on the back deck of our snug little cabin in Pine.  

We are gazing at my new Valentine lot behind our cabin and at the Mogollon Rim towering in the distance…..and LOVING IT!

Evening sun on the rim…