Arizona – kristilynk

Grand Canyon – part one

The day started at 345am. I ate a boiled egg and a banana. Built my pocket burritos out of precooked, shredded chicken and avocado smashed up. Next up, filling hydration packs. I had brought one 2 liter and one 3 liter bladder bag plus 2 12 oz collapsible water bottles for my from ouches on my day pack. The collapsible bottles I filled with water and electrolytes, I use LMNT sooooo salty.

Time to go! We left the hotel a little after 430am. I called the taxi on the way to the visitor center, packing lot 4, so they could scoop us up to take us the south Kaibab trail. The shuttle service doesn’t start until 6am at this time of year and we wanted to start the hike earlier to make sure we were out of the canyon by 2pm. Rain was predicted to roll in around that time.

When I called the taxi they actually told me the taxis were so busy they would need to call me back in an hour! This was 430 in the morning 🤯

At the parking lot we waited, got out of the car and actually were a me to sneak on to someone else’s taxi ride. Score! From the parking lot, south kaibab trail is 2 miles so we were there in no time.

My second time to the Grand Canyon. 1st time going IN the GC.

I was a little nervous going in but once we got going my confidence soared. I thought, I got this. The downhill is pretty steep, and it’s a long way down. I would recommend prepping with a LOT of front lunges.

From Kaibab, we headed west to the Tonto Trail

The farther west we went it was cool to see green lush tree lines, you know what that means! Water! 😍

This is around the time I realized… I forgot my pocket burritos!! Not good.

Super rookie move. Remember, I had only eaten one boiled egg and a banana. Luckily my hiking crew member was a hero and thoughtful and brought 2 bagels, so I gratefully scarfed it down.

Just after this rare shade finding, there was a little creek I didn’t take any pictures of because there were too many people rest here and I wanted to keep trekking. I did dip a plastic sandwich bag in the creek to fill it up with water to soak my neck cooler in for 30 minutes, it was getting hot .

There was very little shade in this trail. Having a hat is very important. Anytime I found shade it felt so great to take the hat off to let my brain breath.

I’m really not a fan of hats, glasses or things – like neck coolers – around my neck. I wore them when needed but as soon as I could those items were OFF.

Around this time we stopped and I collapsed my trekking poles. I like to have my hands free and I was tired of carrying them.

The old water line busted so they just replaced it. I think the construction is fairly new. I really hope they bury the line or cover it with something more aesthetically pleasing because this is not what I want to see.

Off to Havasupai Gardens

Another stop around here to sunblock and dip the neck cooler in the stream again.

Next up! Off to bright angel.

But first, I met Phantom, he’s a canyon mule and so sweet

Not gonna lie. I was scared. I’d never met a mule

We LUCKED out. Just before the over 3500 foot ascent, the clouds starting rolling in so the sun was GONE! I could not have been more thankful.

I ate an RX bar, 200 calories.

It didn’t last long.

This is about where I started to question my judgement. I was losing steam and fast.

Pitt stop for a peanut butter and jelly snack. Only 170 calories. Up up we go.

This was – what they said to be 1.5 miles left of the trail. It was miserable.

Wow, I made it.

The walk to the shuttle was painful. The rise in the shuttle bus was amazing. It felt great to sit after 7 hours of walking.

Back at the car, we grabbed a fresh stash of clothes, socks, shoes and some body wipes to clean up before the ride home.

Pit stop in Flagstaff for a burger and fries and Diablo Burger. I had the Blake and it was sooooo good.

In 3 weeks we plan to hike the south rim to the north rim. Lessons I learned that will be applied to the next trip.

I must drink a shit ton of water the week before and especially the day before the 25 mile hike. I will need to pack way more calories for this next trip and NOT forget the pocket burritos. I’ll need to eat more frequently. I’m positive I can do the rim to rim. I know the hike up was so hard was because I did not fuel my body enough to make it and this made the ascent more difficult than it needed to be.

Until next time! Happy trails 😁

February 2024

Feeling a little off today. Disconnected may be a good descriptive word for my head space today. I’m not going to try to analyze it or fix it. Just recognizing the feeling and sitting with it for a moment.

Sitting with it, prompted me to stop scrolling through IG and start scrolling and remembering the past 4 months. Here’s my Feb.

Lilou, the cowGIRL corgi came to meet Mork before we went away to cabin in the woods for a weekend. They did great. Lilou is only 1year old so she is pretty rambunctious. Mork tolerated her, when he was done, he put her in check and she submitted. Thankfully, they were good together.

This was a bit after Mork escaped and we had to run around the mountain for 15 minutes playing catch me if you can. I did but oh my goodness! That boy was so happy to be running free, I captured him about 25 feet down a hill, picked him up and hiked him back up the hill. I think I died.

We stopped for coffee at the strawberry inn in the way home.

The weekend was super chill, we played games, listened to music, walked the dogs and talked.

Back home and the rest of the month consisted of work, walking Mork & trying to stick to the training plan for the 1/2 marathon in May. I was in track around this time.

Stay tuned for more possible updates 😅

January, what?

Gah! I can’t believe you’re almost gone. I wanted to do something fun with you, like get out of town.

Weekend in the pines or a day trip to the snow, a hike somewhere new. None of that happened.

I did start training very early for a half marathon and have stuck to it every week running 3 days a week and increasing mileage according to the Hal Higdon training half marathon training plan for a novice.

I bought myself a pair of sweet new running shoes. Poor associate at the shoe store, he worked hard for his commissions. I swear I tried on 8 pairs of shoes, 3 different brands. I wanted Saucony but they didn’t have my size in any fun colors. Hoka was next but same… no fun colors. I broke down and got the Brooks. I was reluctant because for some reason I think of old”er” people when i think of Brooks. I thought they were along the lines of New Balance 🤣 but look at how cute they are!

Ask me how fast I can go in my new shoes!

Not only do I love the color but they are the most comfy fluffy running shoes I’ve ever worn. I’ve out 21 miles in them so far.

Dry January has been super easy for me. Today marks day 34. Interesting to note I have not dropped a single pound 🤨

Last weekend I went to a bar to watch some live music and hang out with a couple of friends. On the way to the bar I drank a CBD drink. I swear by these, Mad Tasty

I feel chill after I drink one of these and I can hang out for like 4-5 hours in one place! Unheard of, for me anyway. I wonder if I can buy stock in this. 🤓 I get them at my local Total Wine, I grab 2 every time. I stayed up way until 1am- who am I? 🤣🤣

I went out for pizza and I didn’t get my basic pepperoni. I tell you this Holy Shitake Mushroom from Mellow Mushroom was unbelievably delicious. I may have had a slice for breakfast the next day.

So although I did not get out of town this month I did manager to do some things not in my usual routine.

I’m ready for February.

Lake Day

I love water. The ocean, the river, a pool, a hot tub – or is it a spa? Are all hot tubs spas? Are all spas hot tubs? – I love water.

I don’t love the lake. I mean, they’re beautiful, because its water but…to me, it feels… germy. Especially in Arizona. Its HOT, the water is just floating around, not really going anywhere. Kinda gross if you really focus on it.

With that said, I am trying to get past this. So, me and my friend and our mens met up at Lake Pleasant in AZ., the mens sat at the restaurant, on the water , had drinks and snacks while me and the friend putzd around on the lake with our paddle boards.

Rule #1 carrier your blow up paddle board down to the dock.

Rule#2 get comfy and don’t complain, it’s going to take about 5 minutes to blow up the board.

Rule#3 don’t be afraid to ask for help getting into your board from the dock.

There was some shade, thankfully, it was still hot 🥵

Once

On the water it was my bliss 😍 even though I did forget sunblock!

Thought I’d stop by

May! So far so good but lets travel back in time a bit all the way to April, like 2-3 weeks ago.

I’ve done some moving and shaking, but just around Arizona.

April was Tucson for a show in downtown. We stayed at the historic Hotel Congress and had too much wine so even if there were any ghosts to be seen I would have been stone cold sleeping.

The following week we headed up to Crown King. A couple of our friends are getting married up there this coming October so they wanted to check out the venue. Crown King is another historic location, old mining town = dusty and dry. The little hotel we stayed in was a different story, many flowers, green grass, horses and really felt like we were in a little magical place.

Cut to..Jasons birthday week. There was a huge damper on celebration due to the sudden, unexpected, devastating death of a good friend. Good friend in the sense of chosen family. I won’t say any more…because, Hi, I am Kristi. I tend to bury my head in the sand when reality smacks me in the face.

Last minute decisions and phone calls were made to gather a group of our close friends and celebrate the life of Scott and Jasons birthday. Scott would have wanted it that way. It was a good night.

Fast forward another week, this trip brought us up more north to Whitehorse Lake in Williams, AZ. It is not often we camp in a for real campground. When I say “not often” I mean like I am pretty sure there have only been 4 times we have stayed in a for real campground. Whitehorse is the absolute coolest of all of the campgrounds of the 3 I have visited. Three sites because I have now been to Whitehorse 2 times. That’s all the math I will do tonight.

We rented the group site, there were 7 spots and a gazebo for us all to hang out, drink, play games and grill. I didn’t play games and I didn’t grill so I drank.

Amy brought all the ladies lil champs and OJ for mimosa for mothers day – bubbles and branches

Muppet babies, yes this is in AZ but it was like 35 degrees at night and COLD. Our 78 year old dogs get cold.

Renting out the entire area is the best way to go when camping in a non-wild manner. We were here for Saturday, Sunday and came home on Monday. The trip was not perfect, there were issues which were out of our control. WIND..oh my goodness, so..much..wind. This was my 2nd time here, neither times was I able to get the paddle board on the water. It was too windy this time. The last time I had just had 20 stitches from my hand removed and I didn’t want to chance getting lake water in my newly healed wound. As I was typing those words, I was making myself sick to my stomach just thinking about that. Sorry if that disturbed you.

The tiny dog, Larry, decided to try to end his life by jumping off the tailgate of the Tacoma. It didn’t work, he survived but he was sore.

Chubba Wubba, Ollie, had a scary seizure in the middle of the night. She too survived but was also sore and tired.

Our brand new, out of the box, Coleman sunshade broke because it is a 150.00 piece of garbage. The metal things snapped in the wind. We had to throw it away. I need to have a word with Mr. Coleman please.

We were all good and tired by the time we got home Monday afternoon but really in the end…a weekend in the woods, even with a series of unfortunate events, will always be a good idea. There will always be beautiful moments in nature. I’ll hold those moments closer.

Insert catchy title here!

Feel free to read this post and title it for me. 😊 More often than not, I click the create blog post, the new, daunting, blank page beckons me to type the title of the new post. I stare blankly at this section of the post with an empty mind. OR, something dingy and random pops into my head and voila… that’s my title.

I have zero plans for this post. I have nothing and everything to say. We are 40 days into 2022, how is it going for you all so far? I feel like maybe be 2022 is going pretty well. I have so many activities going on in my head. This month I decided to try, dry February.

Why, you ask? I’ve read it’s good to give your body a break from alcohol, that it might not be a good thing for your organs to drink alcohol everyday. I chose February because it is the shortest month of the year 😃. They sayyyyy I may lose weight. That is if I can control my new desire to eat all of the cookies from a ridiculously good cookie shop called Crumbl that moved into the neighborhood. I’ll let you know how that goes come March 1.

I bought a few new plants that I love.

I am told this only needs to be watered one time per week. 😅 my type of plant!

To the right is Lavanda the Spanish Lavender and to her right is Rosemary.

I have not figured out how to care for those two babies. Jason has told me I should water them every two days. It seems like the Rosemary may need that but I think Lavanda can go every 5 days. These plants are my intro into horticulture. I love the idea of a raised garden bed in my backyard – this may or may not be on the plan for 2022. I’m not committing yet so settle down 😅

Until next time! Take care of yourself, you’re worth it! 🤩

2022, day 1

Done, in the books! It’s officially 2022. My day started out with a casual 4.5 wog (walk/jog) on the treadmill in my garage. I didn’t want to leave my house so I opted for home “gym” time.

Afterwards, I cleaned to prepare for friends and fam time, showered and complete just in the knick of time! It was a full house minus a few people (a couple down due to Covid and one down due to work emergency).

We had everything bacon! Jason made brisket, Shannon brought her world famous potato salad (with bacon), Danny made Mac n cheese topped..with bacon, Wyatt brought field peas, green beans mixed with… you guessed it… BACON! Me think I will be trying two days meat free this upcoming week.

We listened to records, watched movies, Shannon brought tarot cards, ate and of course there were adult bevy’s.

Hence the reason my activity numbers are so low today. 😅

The 3 minutes of exercise might be when I did some dishes. 😂 All in all it was a good first day of the new year. I was happy to spend it at home, with people I love.

I cannot end this post without a picture of the most excellent meat slab. You’re welcome 😇

I’m told the red ring is called the “smoke ring”

Friday Night Fun

So, I’m back! Late, but I made it! I’ll be honest, I missed my Sunday appointment with you because I am lazy. Period. I didn’t want to, so I didn’t.

I’m here now and I am going to tell you about my experience at the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament in Scottsdale, AZ.

First I must say, I struggle with the word Medieval. Is it pronounced Meddy evil or Mid Evil? Tell me in the comments please, I’d like to stop stressing over the proper pronunciation.

Moving on… my sister and brother in law (If they are mentioned again, they will from here out called by there proper names, Shannon and Brian) scooped us up at 17:15 to make the trek to Scottsdale ~ about a 30 minute ride. We met our friends, Danny and Amy and Christopher and Cali and Andrew in the front so we could all be seated together. Apologies for the crappy photos but I havent figured out how to get my cell pictures from icloud to look normal, no I’m not that old I just do not have the attention span to figure it out yet. That’s another plan for another day. 🙂

*Tip number one – If you are with a group of people you have to purchase your tickets (50.00 per person for dinner and the show) at the same time to be sure you will be in the same group. Even if you’re in the same group, you’re not guaranteed to sit next to each other unless you all check in together.

We grabbed drinks (one glass of wine and a less than a pint of beer cost 20.00 ~ in the same range of what you’ll pay at a Football game or a concert) at the 80 foot long bar (of which only 30 feet were used and open so it too a bit of time).

Group photo time! I think this was an additional 21.00, they take it and if you like it you can buy it for a mere 21.00 if you don’t like it…you don’t have to buy it!

We all took a walk through the “Museum of Torture” ~ this is an additional fee, only 2.00 but just as a heads up. The lack of air flow in this walkway was the most torturous for me. Seriously, it is Arizona and this museum was so hot and stuffy, they really should splurge some and crank the A/C up in there. I also learned that I would have definitely NOT survived the 11th century. These crazy ass torture devices were insane. It seemed to me alot of the devices were geared more toward outspoken, “ill-behaved” women.

Next up, Dinner and a show. They call it a four course meal when really they just bring everything to you separately. First up, a piece of garlic bread and a bowl of soup. Yum 🙂

Seriously, I will figure out this whole icloud, cell phone photo business…just not today.

Don’t, worry I did not take a photo of each and every morsel they brought to me, just this really. Next up was a chicken leg (oh by the way! no utensils you sop the soup with your bread and drink the rest from the bowl itself) then they brought what appeared to be a potato wedge, then a half a corn cob, then ice cream. I only ate the bread, soup and chicken leg. I had a glass of wine and water and got full. I heard the potato wedge was super salty and the corn cob was just like a corn cob 😉

The show is about two hours long and consisted of jousting, fancy pretty pony tricks, there was a falcon and some mano y mano choreographed sword fighting with the occasional spark spouting from their swords. In the end it was a fun night with friends and family.

To be honest, I did have to force myself to make myself believe this was OK for the horses. I do hope these horses are treated like the princes and princesses they truly are. There are so many horror stories of creatures in captivity and I want to believe these gorgeous beings are having the times of their lives.

Happy New Year!

It’s good to be back! Well, I think? I guess it depends on how well this post goes. I am extremely out of blogging/writing practice. I didn’t bother to check my page to see how long it has been since I’ve posted ANYTHING. I would venture to guess it’s been at least since the last NY.

In 2017, I denied you access to my stories and photos of travel, monotony, ups and downs. Quick summary ~ (based on memory so I’m sure more things happened but I can’t remember everything). My memories are all documented on my phone and I don’t know how to extract them to my laptop so here goes..2017 highlights! Mother/daughter trip to San Diego to visit friends, photo shoot road trips with the husbands band, lunch dates with the bestie, annual Backwoods Beerfest (camping with booze on the Mogollon Rim), trip to visit friends in North Carolina (love it there), Roger Waters concert, Mother/Daughter trip to Amsterdam and Spain, Great Christmas with family and friends.

Cut to:

The last day of 2017 was spent with the husband and our friend visiting from Switzerland. Where do you take a guy from the cold mountains of Switzerland when he visits Arizona?

Flagstaff, AZ. of course 😉 We jumped in my car and headed north.

First stop was lunch at SnowBowl. The lunch was subpar but the views and the company were supreme.

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Sadly, Arizona has had zero snow..look at how dry the trees and their surroundings are

All the snow behind us, for the skiers, was man-made. After lunch we decided to venture off to a place neither Jason nor I had ever been. The Lava River Cave. It is located about 18 miles west of Snow Bowl so it took us no time to get there. It is off a dirt road, so I did worry we were headed in the wrong direction, but it turned out to be an OK drive even with my little Volkswagen.

The cave entrance is only a short jaunt, through the pines, from the parking lot.

I am claustrophobic and we only had cell phones to light our path so I didn’t think we were going to get out of there alive. As per usual, my worries were unwarranted, walking over the rocks down into the cave was cake and super open, not like a spelunking cave at all. 🙂 P.S. don’t ever ask me to go spelunking…not doin’ it!

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VICTORIUS!

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We made it about half way through and my cell phone died leaving me with no light source, I had to walk up all in Jasons business to follow his light. A few times, I couldn’t keep up and had to stop dead in my tracks and cry, “Help me, I’m stuck”.

We made it out alive! 🙂

If you’re ever in the area, you should check it out. It’s pretty amazing this tube, just under a mile long, was formed around 700,000 years ago from melted rocks..

You can read more about it here: Lava River Cave

Daylight was fading fast so we decided to head south, made a pit stop in Sedona so our Swiss friend could absorb the spiritual vortex mojo of this great locale. We did arrive just in time for him to see the great red rocks of the area but the sun quickly disappeared. Grabbed a cappuccino to go and head for home.

All in all it was a great way to end 2017.

With that, I will end this post with a visual of how my day one 2018 was spent. Perfectly.

The Plan

A couple of months ago the plan was to bring in the new year with our closest friends and family in the desert..camping. It all sounded great until a few days ago when the plan started to sound…let’s say…mentally challenged.

Winter decided to make an appearance in Arizona! We haven’t seen any snow in the suburbs outside of Phoenix but it rained all day yesterday and it was less than 30 Fahrenheit for the low. We would have died in our sleep. No doubt about it.

Jason and I thought it would be a better idea to have the celebration at our place. Have a nice cozy fire in the backyard (yep, on a NO BURN DAY, we would’ve totally done it) with our friends and our dogs and our drinks. That plan was perfect and the best thing about it? We wouldn’t have to drive anywhere…

For the most part, everyone was all in but…there’s always a but…they all have children under twelve. Of course the children would have been welcome BUT.. we have nothing entertaining at all for children to do in our house. They would have been bored to crazy.

Plan C…get our daughter to drive us to our friends house and then we could take a taxi home! Brilliant! 🙂 But…she left and went up north with her friends AND..that would mean we would be leaving our fur babies at home..alone…scared..to deal with the loud firecracker noises.

In the end, we decided to stay home with our fur babies and power through episode after episode of Orange is the New Black season two. In between we ate a delicious Jager Schnitzel with hunter sauce, beets and mashed potatoes courtesy of chef Jason. There was also whiskey and wine..of course.

Happy New Year people! In my heart of hearts I wish nothing but peace, love and prosperity to er’yone! 🙂