Walk in the Desert

Sunday, February 14, 2016 – Valentine’s Day

Today is Valentine’s Day and Dolly got some candy.

Later in the morning, Yuma and I decided to walk to the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains you see behind me.

In my mind those mountains were about two miles away.  Luckily, I took two bottles of water with me.  The temperature is supposed to hit 88 today and no breeze.

Let me just tell you up front, when you look at mountains in the distance, don’t guess how far away they are.  You can be wrong by miles.  And I was. 

I know I can walk about five miles in a day before my feet give out and I start limping pretty badly.

I started out at a fast pace.  It was still fairly cool and the ground was pretty hard, making it easy at first.

This what my destination looked like at the start.

 

After walking for about three miles, the hard ground turned to sand dunes, washes and hot sun.  The mountains are closer, but I can see there is at least two miles still to go just to get to the base.

Yuma was a real trooper.  He would run ahead and then look back and wait for me to catch up and then off he would go again.  Glad he was along as my faithful companion.

As you can see in the photos, there is no shade. Not a tree in sight.  I am starting to limp now and I am having doubts about making it.  Finally, found an Ocotillo cactus providing a little shade, so Yuma and I sat down in the sand for some water and to rest my feet.  The sand is hard to walk through.

Also, there are lots of animal burros in the sand.  As I walked along, my foot would fall through the sand into a burrow causing me discomfort.  Wouldn’t want to turn an ankle out here. 

  

As I sat there looking at my objective, I made the decision to turn around and walk back before things got out of hand.  The sun was beating down and I was already worn out.  I didn’t want to give up, but i did learn a lesson.  Don’t assume large mountains in the distance are just a couple of miles away, because they definitely are not.

Hated to listen to Dolly’s “told you so” when I got back to the RV, but at least Yuma and I made it back alive.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

See you later.