Crazy Day on the Arizona Strip!

Saturday we decided to revisit Fossil Canyon on the Arizona Strip.  Paul found it without a problem.  We hiked down to it and it was as beautiful as ever!  So much wonderful geology on display - limestone and lava mostly.  We got about a mile and a half into the hike and ran into some water that we would have to wade through to go on to the end of the canyon.  It was not what we wanted to or had planned to do, so we headed back out.  It was still a great hike!  

Next, we decided to keep going down the road and maybe go to the old Mt. Trumble Schoolhouse.  But we saw a side road that Paul thought might lead to the top of Fossil Canyon.  We drove down that until it came to a well used campsite. We hiked down a wash a little ways and actually came to the top of a canyon that had a knotted rope all set up on anchors to climb down into it about 30-40 feet.  We didn't feel comfortable with that either.  

We went back to the campsite and then decided to follow a road to see if it might lead to another way into that canyon. It didn't, so we started back to the truck, we thought. We went quite a ways until it seemed like it was taking forever to get back to the truck.  We knew it hadn't been that far.  We climbed out of that canyon and looked around to see if we could see the truck.  Nope.  We decided to go back into the canyon and try to find where we had made the wrong turn...we found it and made it back to the truck. Yeah!!!  I have to admit that I was pretty worried and had thoughts of spending a cold night lost out there in the boonies or walking all over the place trying to find the way back to the truck.  We could have gotten back on the main road pretty easily, but it would have been a long walk from there too.  I was letting my imagination get away from me.  

Next, we decided to keep heading out the road towards the old schoolhouse...and then we saw a sign that said we could go to the Black Rock Fire Lookout Tower, and decided to go there instead because it was closer and we were running short on time.  It was a good road and went through some beautiful areas getting higher and higher.  And then we got into a little snow...not much.  But then we went higher and the road started getting muddy from the that little bit of snow melting.  And then it got really muddy and we started sliding around more and more...and then we decided it was time to turn around and almost got stuck. Again, I was letting my imagination get away with me. BUT, Paul was able to get it done and down we went down being careful not to slide off the road.  So, this day turned out to be full of interesting adventures of almosts.  I was very relieved in both cases that nothing more than an almost took place.  The truck got SO muddy!  We washed it off at a self serve car wash first and then took it to an automatic one.  It came out still dirty, so they let us go through again...still some dirt, but we called it good and went home and got things ready for a fun picnic at a great park for dinner!