Exploding egos in the night

Yesterday I went back to hang out with the nasty little parasites in Arizona. Oh, and two lovely ladies too.

We got a later start than we initially planned, in part because one of the ladies had never been to Hoover Dam and wanted to stop there, but also because the other had lost some stuff that morning and had to go back to retrieve it before it disappeared for good. We were successful on both of our respective missions.

This time, when we got to the Colorado River I did swim, and let me just say it was FREAKING COLD. I knew that the second I waded in, but since I'd already decided I was going to do it (and to prove that I'm a MAN), I dove in and swam for a short while. My feet were numb when I came back out. It was refreshing though.

After my swim, there was another short delay in getting to the hot springs because I couldn't remember the last part of the trail. After running around on the rocks for a while looking for it I finally decided that the best thing to do would be to follow the arrows that were painted on the rocks. Shortly after that, we made it to the hot springs, and this time there were no fat naked European men sitting in the pool (which I may have omitted from the story last time), so that was a plus. We hung out for a short while and then decided it was time to head back to the car.

Unfortunately, it was actually past time to head back to the car, because it got dark on the most technical part of the trail. I had forgotten about all the scrambling we'd done the last time I went. Normally it wouldn't have been a problem for me, but normally I'm not trying to scramble with a 75 pound Rottweiler either. The dog was amazing, but there were a few parts where we weren't sure how we were going to be able to get her across certain parts of the trail. At one point, I was trying to scale a waterfall with her, and lost my balance. I couldn't grab onto anything without dropping the dog, so both of us fell about six feet. I landed right on top of the dog, but stuck my arm out so as not to crush her with all my weight. It worked because I didn't break any of her ribs or anything, but I didn't think about how easily I could have broken my arm doing that until afterward. Luckily the only thing that came of it was a few scrapes.

By the time we scrambled over our last rock wall it was completely dark. We had two headlamps, and plenty of water, so we weren't too worried about survival (at least I wasn't - I can't really speak for the ladies), but we did lose the trail a few times. The good thing about hiking in the desert is that you can almost always see where you need to be. We could have made it back to the car even if we hadn't found the trail again, but that wasn't completely necessary. Just necessary enough to angle our way to where our path intersected the trail.

It was quite the adventure, and what better to go with the end of an adventure than a nice meal at a Mexican restaurant? Even with that, I'm pretty sure that at least one of the ladies is never going to leave her house with me again.