A Story for— well, with— the Grandchildren

My wife Karen and daughters Kerala and Talia both share many interests in common and have our own special passions. But there’s at least three which all four of us equally share:

 

• We love to cook.

• We love to read.

• We love to hike.

 

Naturally, we want to pass this on to the grandchildren, but at 8 and 12, the cooking part hasn’t hit either of them yet and we’re one out of two with reading. But with hiking, they’re with us 100%. Yes, the 12-year old puts on a show of carrying the mandatory eye-rolls for her age group of doing something so uncool as hiking in nature with one’s family. But once she hits the trail, she’s a happy camper, 100%. 

 

So off we went in two cars to the Painted Canyon some 40 minutes away from our Air B&B in Indio Hills, aptly named for its stunning multi-colored rock formations. Arrived at the turn-off and hit our first hurdle—only 4-wheel drive vehicles were allowed on the rutted dirt road that led to the trailhead. Luckily, my daughter Talia’s car fit the bill and we parked our Prius on the side of a wholly deserted road in the middle of nowhere, slightly nervous about its invitation for car thieves or catalytic converter robbers. On we bumped for some four miles and reached a parking lot with some forty other cars. It was 2:30 by the time we set off on the Ladder Canyon Trail, a “moderately challenging 4.4 mile loop hike” and so named for a series of ladders securely roped in at some spots to get hikers up or down some difficult vertical passages.

 

The first part of the trail was in gravelly sand, a bit of a challenge to walk in and me in my Tivas, with pebbles lodging between my feet and the sandal. Kerala had a GPS map on her phone and after a mile plus, noticed that we had missed the turn-off to begin the loop. No problem, we would simply do it in reverse direction. On we went, surrounding by towering rock walls and the sandy trail many times not at all obvious. We began asking some people coming the other way and one wanted to know if we had lights, suggesting we wouldn’t be making it back before dark. Kerala’s GPS map disappeared when her phone service did, but on we walked confidently. The service came back on and we saw that a dot placed us near the top of the loop, about to turn back the other side. 

 

On we walked and after a bit, I suggested we looked at the phone again as it didn’t feel like we had turned sufficiently. Sure enough, the dot placed us off the trail above the turn and so we navigated back and found a tiny obscure turn off with a mark on a rock. We started climbing to a most beautiful ridge path, happily walking on the top of the world while the sun began its descent over the distant mountains. 

 

And that’s where the trouble began. We followed reverse stone arrows on the path and then suddenly came upon this: 

Not a good sign. We doubled back and tried some other options and each one seemed to lead us nowhere. The sun was setting and the clock was ticking. Finally found yet another poorly marked obscure turn-off that had us descending to the canyon and things were looking up as we were heading down. Twisting and turning through narrow paths shoulder-width in some parts, anticipating with each turn the promised ladders that we knew should be there. An exuberant “Hooray!” when we found the first one, quickly turned to “What now?!!” when we came to a place that seemed there should be another. Instead, we scooted down this small abyss holding on to rocks on either side until we reached the next ladder, a scary descent for the 8-year old who was looking worried and now it dark enough that we needed our phone lights to navigate. Had we done the path from the beginning in the correct direction, these ladders would have been fine going up, but were a bit dicey going down and not helped by the darkness and wondering if we would ever emerge or have to spend the night with little water and no food huddled against rocks. At the very end of the maze, there were some four more ladders which were not easy to spot. I became the scout up front and at least twice, I was convinced we came to a dead-end before finding the obscure escape route. By now, it was wholly dark.

 

But lo and behold, we finally reached that sandy horizontal trail and were rewarded by the shadows of the full moon on the canyon walls. When we arrived at the parking lot, there was only one other car of the forty plus that had been parked there.

 

So we rattled and bumped along on the washboard dirt road and Talia looked at her console and said, “It says we have a flat tire.” We convinced her to keep going, certain that it was an electrical failure and worried about arriving at our Prius to see 1) If it was still there and 2) The catalytic converter was intact. When we got to the road, there it was (all of it), but piling out of her car, there is also was —her flat tire! 

 

Earlier that day, Talia had noted several qualities I have that are untypical of men. Things like reading poetry, publicly crying, asking directions and being thoroughly unhandy. However, I’m proud to report that changing a tire is one skill I have!! And so with some help from Karen and Zadie, I did! And finally we were headed home at 7:00 pm, having walked 6.7 miles of that 4.4 mile hike with a shaggy dog story to tell the grandchildren—except that they were part of it!

 

I think tomorrow we’re going to hang out all day around the pool.