Matt's Aravaipa Trip

May 1-3

We usually write in the third person since we're always switching off writing the posts. There are a variety of other reasons for this, not the least of which is that I (Matt) don't want people to know it's mainly me who uses the little smiley face symbol - :). But this one is just easier to write in first person.

I have had the opportunity to get much more involved with the boy scouts recently and have very much enjoyed the opportunity to go on several campouts during the past few months. The latest trip was a backpacking hike/campout at a place called Aravaipa. It's a canyon preserve that's located about 50 'air-miles' NE of Tucson and is home to a ton of different types of wildlife and plants. It has a perennial stream running through the middle of it and the whole hike was pretty much spent either walking along the side of the stream or through it.

These first couple pictures show what most of the hike was like as well as some of the desert scenery along the way...

The water was never much more then knee high - this was one the deepest spots that we had to cross. This is Andy, my brother in law, who is about 6'3."


Our scout troop is actually made up of three different wards in Maricopa, so we have a lot of boys. They only allow 30 people in to camp through the west entrance per weekend, so we reserved all 30 permits and actually had a waiting list of people who wanted to come on the hike from the different wards. This was the whole group that went down...


This was the first night we were in the Canyon. We couldn't camp on the Trailhead so we had hiked in about 2 miles in the dark to reach our camp site for the first night. We didn't get to the camp site until some time around midnight and didn't go to sleep until about 2:00 in the morning. It was actually pretty nice at night - I believe the low was in the high 50's to low 60's while we were there.


Here I am awaking from my slumber. I usually don't sleep very well on campouts but I have learned to cheat a little by taking over the counter 'sleep-aid' pills right before I go down for the night. Works like a charm. I'm just hoping that nothing ever happens to the boys at night because if it does, it's going to take a while to wake me up. I actually bought this tent from Walmart for less then $20 right before the trip to use as my backpacking tent. It was a junior tent and worked nicely except for the fact that I had to sleep diagonal to fit in it.


Andy and I enjoying a nice warm oatmeal breakfast. after the first night.


We hiked about 3 miles further into the canyon on Friday and set up camp about 5 miles in. We got to camp at about 1pm. A few of us decided to hike up a nearby side canyon called 'Horse Camp Canyon.' Most of the boys were having too much fun swimming/exploring, so it was actually only 3 of us leaders that went up along with one of the scouts and his father.

This one is looking back towards the main canyon.

Andy and I found a way to climb down into this little pool area. The water in the side canyon was definitely deep enough to swim in, but it was a little on the murky side.

There was a lot of these little cutouts in the side canyon, which gave me the perfect opportunity to take a goofy picture...

Andy and I tried to run up to some caves we saw in the distance but we weren't able to get much farther then this when it would have been a little dangerous to keep climbing so we didn't make it all the way to the caves. If you look closely you can see me in the middle of this picture (this is still in the same side canyon).

There were several different types of cool plants and flowers in the canyon that I hadn't seen before. There was a bunch of these bushes that put off these nice white flowers that pinted up and were at least 6 inches in diameter.