I'll put it in a separate post, but it looks like we're hiking through the Grand Canyon for at least 3 days. The tour that we'd like to go on has warned us about the physicality of the hike, and so we're both trying to get some conditioning in 3 weeks before we leave.

Adventure!

On Saturday we decided that Table Mountain in Washington state was adventure worthy for us.

Being a dude that moved continents, I don't really have any things, so we had to buy some hiking boots for me on Friday night, and Saturday was a good chance to wear them in a bit.

Anyone who has been to or heard of Portland, knows that it totally rains of all the times, but it was totally clear and nice the whole drive there... until we got there and then the skies opened up and gave us so many rains.

Exciting start!

Like pretty much everyone in the region, we've seen the movie Wild we always get excited to see the PCT markers. The Pacific Crest Trail is a 1,100 mile hiking trail from Mexico to Canada that you can only do during very specific windows throughout the year.

We've had friends that have done it, and it's super hardcore.

Mystery!

So, ah, you can see in the pic above, that someone has had to hand write in directions for Table Mountain. Not disconcerting at all. It seems like the kind of trick bears with great penmanship will pull...

Disaster! Not really, I mean, kind of!

After about 10-20 minutes, so really, totally at the start, the souls of my feet started really hurting. My brand new clompy shoes were way too clompy, or way too shoe-y. Either way my feet weren't happy. I had brought my other shoes just in case, but it was so super muddy that those shoes would have lasted maybe 2 seconds.

Problem Solving!

My partner, who is way smarter than me, suggested that I swap the souls out between my shoes... which I would never have thought of, I was looking around for banana tree leaves I could use as thongs. This helped immensely... do a degree the damage was already done, but to a much more manly degree everything was fine and it was onwards and upwards.

Volcanic!

The whole area seems so super volcanic, and annoyingly behest by power lines. It's somewhat fair enough because we pretty much parked in the hydroelectricity power plant, and I really like power, I use it all the time, but still, how is a dude supposed to take photos of weird mossy rocks if there's metal giants all over the shot.

Drama!

This is about an hour down the hiking trail... and we heard a whole heap of gunshots. They vibrated through the valley to the point where it sounded like each gunshot was setting off a series of fireworks. So loud!

Obviously I wanted to check it out, but it was really hard to tell exactly where they were coming from. My wife convinced me that popping my head over a crest or around a tree was a good way to get shot. That seemed highly unlikely, but I didn't want to risk copping the nicknames holehead or bulletbrain. No one wants a bad nickname.

We were trapped at this point... the gun shots didn't let up, and we had no idea which way was safe... except the way back... so we called it a day. Neither felt like we'd had a proper workout, but my ol clumpers weren't making friends with my feet so I was pretty okay to head back.

HoleHead gets lunch!

The above pic is Table Mountain, taken from the carpark... I'm honestly not sure if we even got anywhere close to it.

Since we were heading back, I decided to ignore all the snacks we packed and focus all my stomachly wants on lunch. We got to the closest General Store/Café but they decided to pack up early just as we ran in... so we drove like maniacs to the next town, my stomach growling the whole way. We found a Bar & Grill with a rough crowd... and got kicked out almost immediately. My partner didn't have her ID on her, and they wouldn't serve us even though we're ancient AND we didn't even want any beer.

By this point I had reached murder death kill levels of hungry and general small-town frustrations, when we found the coolest little hipster Texas BBQ place in the middle of nowhere. It was a full on delicious oasis in a desert of drab. It was amazing. I had two lunches.

We did not need dinner.

The End?

So we learnt that my shoes and feet need a lot more work, and we need to find some hikes to get our quads and calves a massive workout. The Grand Canyon hike will be a full day going down, and a full day going up (with a day of Canyon hikes in the middle) so we've got to get on it. I've never really hiked before, but I'm determined to be the best in the group! Not competitive at all.

All photos featured here were taken by me on my Nikon AW1. The exception is the Panorama shot taken by my partner on her phone.

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