Go, you chicken fat, go away!

Vickie asked me if I wanted to go hike Hilltop with her this morning and I said yes. When we got there she said she wasn't feeling great and she was just going to hike around the base.  I ran up as much as I could, but it wasn't much.  At one point I slipped and had to catch myself with my hands.  I decided I would just do one ascent.  I got back down to the van and called Vickie to see what she was doing.  She said she was going to keep hiking around for a while, so I said that I was going to head towards home and she could pick me up on the way.  I started running very slowly towards home.  She finally got to me about 1.25 miles after I started.  She dropped me off and went back because now she was feeling better.

Two loops around the East Maricopa Floodway and the RWCD Canal.  It's been a week and a half, so I don't remember anything.

One loop.

2 loops.

This was a hike with my wife, daughter Katelynn, Daylene, Lebrea, Daylene's brother, Daylene's brother's girlfriend, and Daylene's brother's friend.  We drove out to Anthem.  Anthem was originally designed to be a master planned community.  They had no idea how big it was going to be.  It's located north of Phoenix.  It got so big that it was causing all sorts of traffic jams for people on the I-17.  They had to redo the infrastructure out there with onramps and offramps.  I'm not sure if it's still considered a community or a town.  I think it's just a community.  Anyway, we parked in a residential neighborhood right on a street in front of some random houses.  Seemed weird.  We were running a little behind so everyone was already there except for Daylene's brother's friend.  He told us to go on without him and they would catch up.  So we walked to the end of the block and to the trailhead. 

The mountain we climbed was Daisy Mountain.  It wasn't terrible.  It got kinda steep toward the top.  There was a tattered American flag waving at the peak.  We took some pictures and rested for a bit.  Lebrea was the last to summit.  The other boys had caught up to us and passed us.  There were two other peaks we were going to climb and the third one had another American flag.  By the time I, Vickie and Katelynn got there, everyone had already left because they didn't want to stop anymore.  It was getting very hot, and everyone was sweating sooo much.

We started our way down and Katelynn was afraid she was going to fall, so she was going very slow.  I went on without them, but then I turned around and told them they needed to pick up the pace.  At this rate it was going to get real hot, and then they might get stuck in the heat.  When we got out of the steep part I could see Daylene and Lebrea heading south even though I couldn't see how the trail led to them.  I turned around and could see Vickie and Katelynn.  So I continued onward.  At some point the trail must've split because I can see with Strava that Vickie and Katelynn took a slightly different path than me.  I went up to the crest of another small hill.  They went around it.  That was probably the safer way to go because coming down was very slippery.  I was almost skiing down.  I had to just turn sideways and slip down until I could stop.  It took a while, but I finally got down to the bottom.  Luckily because I saw Daylene and Lebrea earlier I found the correct trail to hike back.  If I hadn't seen them, I wouldn't have seen the trail because at the bottom of the hill was a jeep trail, and the single track trail was somewhat hidden.  So I started hiking and hoped that my wife and daughter would find it, too.  After a while I called Vickie.  I asked where she was.  She said she had just gone through some loop or something.  I was like, that doens't help.  Using the Strava Flyby tool, she must've already found the trail while I was talking to her because she really wasn't that far behind me.  Also, going around the hill probably made it easier for her to see the trail.  I kept going and they started to catch up to me.  That was good because it meant Katelynn finally got over her fear.  They caught me and Katelynn had already gone through her two bottles of water, plus the extra one my wife had.  Luckily I had two extras in my pack.  I gave it to her and they beat me back to the van.  We then drove half a mile south to go get some acai bowls.  I guess we're real fancy now.