Good old fashioned Halloween is still alive!

Halloween….oh what a night!

When we were children we deliberated for weeks and weeks trying to figure out what to be for Halloween.  Then, about a week before Halloween, we had to make our final decisions.  The next week was spent getting together odds and ends of clothing, maybe using old wire clothes hangers, cardboard and paste, to make our costumes….sometimes we’d be a clown, or an Indian, or a witch, maybe a cowboy, or a ghost, or a strange monster that we had created in our imaginations.  The costumes were always homemade.

Halloween night after we had carved our pumpkins, melted wax in the bottom so the candle would stay in place, and put our lit pumpkin out on the front porch, it would be time to get into our costumes so we could go out and trick or treat.  

We’d often raid our Mother’s makeup cabinet for the final touch to our costume.  We’d smear the makeup on our face, brighten our cheeks and lips, exaggerate our eye brows, or maybe we’d use Mother’s entire tube of bright red lipstick to depict flowing blood if we were a bleeding monster.  And our Mother wouldn’t get mad.  She’d just shrug and laugh and tell us how the “blood” was so realistic and “gross." Then we knew that we had achieved the PERFECT Halloween costume.

We’d head out, totally unsupervised, to trick or treat with a large paper grocery bag (remember them?).  We’d run from house to house with hoards of other brightly-colored costumed friends….sometimes there’d be 10 or more children trick or treating the same home, especially if we’d passed the word the treats were extra good.  By good, that means that they were extra large candy bars.  

Homemade popcorn balls were not our favorite. And handing out anything healthy or fruit-like was simply unacceptable!  No adult would dare, and if they did, they were asking for a “trick.”

This was back in the 50’s, before any home would even hand out penny candy----that was considered cheap and unworthy of all the work we had out into our costumes. The average candy bar that we were given in the 50’s was the size of today's giant candy bars.  

So you can imagine our haul on Halloween night—after 2-3 hours our grocery bag would be almost full.  We’d be in seventh heaven….days or maybe weeks of candy to gorge ourselves on.  And our parents never said a word or doled out our candy.  I guess they figured we’d worked awfully hard for it, so it was ours.  

When I was older, I realized that our parents had taught us lesson, without saying a word.  If we ate too much candy, we were punished---we were sick the rest of the night.  We all only did that one time.

When Dan and I became parents our children had the same old fashioned Halloweens—in charge of their own costumes and free run of the neighborhood gathering hoards of candy with their friends. 

Jules and Emily:

Candice, Owen, Rachelle, Alison:

Halloween spirit never left me…I just had to join in on all the fun and get dressed up when I handed out the candy to the trick or treaters….and my children (who would always come trick or treating at least two times).  Every time I pretended not to know them—and they got to “surprise” me when they told me that they were my very own children.

Jules (Jules and Dan built this incredible costume together):

Owen, Candice, Rachelle:

Emily and Jules (once again, Dad and Jules built this video game costume together….what fun!)

Our grandchildren have continued the Halloween tradition….

Adam and Ian 16 years ago—all dressed up to celebrate Halloween.

In 2010 I spent a very special day with Marina and Stella in their homemade costumes getting ready for Halloween at the Halloween Greenbank Farm festival.

Later, Marina and Stella went to trick or treat their great grandpa Vernon at his beach cabin.

10 years ago when we were visiting Soren, Sebastian, Emily, and Sean, we all went trick or treating together.  It was a wonderful Halloween!

One Halloween when we lived deep in the woods on Whidbey Island there was a knock on the door.  Surprise!!!!.... for the first time in years, we had trick or treaters.  It was two of the cutest little witches that we have ever seen….Marina and Stella!

Years later, Soren and Sebastian sent us a photo of them all dressed up on their Halloween costumes as they headed out to spend the evening trick or treating their neighborhood.  They looked kind of scary…typical boys!

Two years ago when Hannah was 1-1/2 years old, Mila used her makeup artistic skills to turn Hannah into a magical kitty creature.

A year ago Aryana, Easton, Alison, and Calvin carved pumpkins and put them on their porch to greet the kids who were all dressed up and out trick or treating.

Last year on Halloween night Marina, Stella, and Candice went trick or treating in some pretty cool costumes on Pearl Street in their town of Boulder, Colorado.

Soren and Sebastian dressed up when they were in New York City with Emily.  They have awfully good taste in their friends….none other than John Wayne, the man with “true grit,” just like their Grandpa Dan!

The Halloween tradition is still going strong….this year Hannah and Vernon dressed up as a ballerina and a pilot.  Mila and Owen took them to a Halloween party where they all celebrated with their friends….what fun!

And Candice and her team while out scouting the route for her new ultramarathon race, the Arizona 300, took a break for some Halloween fun….

Living in Leisure World, with only “active adults” 55+ years old, it seemed as if Halloween had died.  

But no—it hasn’t died with our children and grandchildren, and it hasn’t died in Pine, Arizona.  A few weeks before Halloween, we looked out the front door at night, and saw orange pumpkins glowing across the street.  The next morning we went to investigate and found that overnight the ghouls had invaded Pine!

We are elated….Halloween is not only alive, but flourishing! 

Yes it is….we celebrated Halloween by having fun dancing exuberantly to the theme song for The Adam’s Family and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's The Monster Mash.

We had better stock up on some old fashioned extra large candy bars for when all the ghosts, goblins, angels, monsters, princesses, and witches come trick or treating at our door in two days.  We can't wait!!!!!

We hiked in Candice’s footsteps on the Arizona Trail

Fall on the Arizona Trail in the Matzatzal Wilderness is magical!

We couldn’t camp for eight days within two miles of the Matzatzal Wilderness without driving the Desert Rat 1,100’ up a road that is so steep and rough that is called a trail, the Morman Springs Trail.

Luckily, we had brought our down jackets, because it was only 48 degrees and windy….but it was a bright sunny day, and the mountains were calling us!

 At the end of the “road,” we entered the Matzatzal Wilderness.

We hiked on the spur that leads to the AZT at mile 398.  That means that if we had hiked all the way from Mexico on the 800 mile Arizona Trail, we would have hiked 398 miles.

One of the fun things things about this hike is that two years ago Candice hiked the AZT from Mexico to mile 398 and beyond.  So on this hike, we were actually hiking in Candice’s footsteps!

Here she is….immersed in her element.

We wish that Dan and I had met when we were younger.  If so, we would have hiked the entire Arizona Trail.  Probably not all at one time, but we would have hiked and backpacked all the 47 Passages.  Knowing us, once we got the idea into our heads to hike every passage of the AZT, it would have been a fun goal.  And we would have done it!

We would have known we had accomplished something magnificent…sort of like the seven STP’s we’ve cycled, or grand-parenting 13 grandchildren together, or the 4,835 miles that we have hiked in the 12-1/2 years that we have been married, or cycling 7000 more miles than cycling around the world (31,000 miles +) in less than 12 years, or traveling 55,000 miles around the country camping in 350+ spots (rarely in campgrounds), or learning to dance so well that we create beauty with our dancing.

Anyway, back to our hike….we hiked north on the AZT.  It was amazing to notice the difference in hiking this trail in the spring compared to the fall.  When we hiked it 2-1/2 years ago in May, all the shrubs and trees were in full bloom and flowers dotted the trail.

But no matter when you hike in the Matzatzal Wilderness, it is spectacular!

We hiked over 625’ feet elevation in just over three miles.  And we had a blast, saw beauty,  and accomplished something magnificent together!

The old Cornucopia Trail to the Sunflower Mine

We walked in our own footsteps today and returned 2-1/2 years later to one of our favorite hikes. We camped in the same place on the Sycamore River as we had 2-1/2 years ago.  The first time we were here it was early spring, the river was running swiftly with small swimming holes nestled in the canyons. 

This time, a few days before Halloween, the river was a dry creek bed filled with rocks.  The leaves on the Sycamore trees that shade our Turtle (truck/slide-in camper) have turned bright orange and create music as they rustle in the fall breeze.

We have also changed.  We are older, in our mid-seventies now, and cannot hike as fast or as long as we could even a few years ago.  But we can hike, even on this rocky road/trail that winds through deep canyons and over rocky riverbeds, far into the mountains to the Sunflower mine.  And we are happy that we can hike among all the beauty that surrounds us.

The second hike on this post from our blog is a journal of our trek 2-1/2 years ago in the springs ago to the Sunflower Mine:

https://livinginthebedofapickup.blogspot.com/2021/04/on-edge-of-mazatzal-wilderness.html

Today we were not able to hike all the way to the mine, but we had a wonderful time, as we always do when we’re together.

Look what we found…an old handmade square nail.  It must be close to a hundred years old!

It’s unimaginable the amount of work it must have taken to build this road through the mountain canyons in the 1920’s!  Much of the road has deteriorated into massive rocks that are impassible, so the trail has been detoured into the riverbed in many areas.

But decades later a bridge still exists 1 & 1/2 miles up the canyon.

Luckily, we could cross the ravine as we don’t exceed 5 tons. No Danny, you are not too heavy.  You are just perfect as you are.

As we hiked into the mountains a caravan of six jeeps and, believe it or not, an old Bronco slowly trudged by us, as they headed up the trail toward the mine. They were definitely decked out with massive tires, springs, and jacked up far off the ground.  

We were still amazed to see that they were able to climb up this three foot rock ledge!  As you can see, we could barely climb up without pulling each other up.  Or climb down without without sitting and sliding off the edge on our bottoms.

But we, happily, did make it safely off the ledge.  At least we won’t have to answer “yes” to the question we get asked every time we visit a doctor these days….”have you had any falls lately?”

After we got back to our campsite we had a interesting and fun encounter with two men who ran by the camper.  They had run down the road that leads to the Arizona Trail, 1,100’ above us.  So Dan asked if they had been running the AZT.  When they answered “yes”, he asked if they knew our daughter, Candice Burt.

That stopped them in their tracks, “Oh my gosh, we’re in the company of royalty—Candice’s parents!”

It turns out that one of them had run two of Candice’s races, The Orcas Island 50 mile and the Bigfoot 200.  He is now training with his buddy for the 2024 Tahoe 200.

Here they are happily posing for us, ‘The Royalty.’

We gave them water, Coke, and V-8 Juice before they continued their training run.  What great, friendly men.  We hope to see them again at one of  Candice’s races.

Tonight when we go to bed, hold each other, and talk about our day, we’ll say to each other, “This was a good day….a day worth living.”