Pilgrimage to Mecca

That’s how we spent our New Year’s Day. Not to the holy site in Saudi Arabia, but to the Mecca Hills Wilderness near Chuckwalla, California. There the sacred shrines were layers of granite, sandstone, gneiss, schist and other rocks woven in wavy patterns throughout a 600 million year time period. We hiked Ladder Canyon and Painted Canyon, in the correct order this time. Last year, we missed the turn-off to the ladders to help hikers ascend and ended up doing them going down at the end of the hike, when it was already dark. I imagine you can find a blogpost about it from last year, complete with the 10-miles dirt road for 4-wheel drive only and Talia’s car (which qualified) getting a flat while traversing it after surviving the ladder fiasco. 

 

So this year, we started earlier in the day, found the Ladder turn-off and all was going swimmingly until— I slipped on some pebbled part of the path and tore the skin of much of my left leg as if I had just slid into home base. Luckily, Talia had packed the first aid kit, so we brushed off the pebbles burrowed into the cut, wiped it clean and bandaged and taped it. On we all walked—no problem and the mixture of the expansive views and the extraordinary rock formations was balm to our souls. 

 

Despite our front wheel drive, we drove in our Prius alongside Talia’s car and on the way out, there was a confusing turnout that I took and got stuck in the sand. With all pushing and me reversing, I managed to get back to the main road, but now our front end that was already dubious got torn off further and was scraping the ground. The combination of big clips, knives cutting out car parts, a screwdriver unbolting other car parts seemed to mend it, but not enough to continue on. A passing car slowed down to see if we needed help and I asked if they had duct tape. At first, they said, “No, sorry, “and then exclaimed, “Wait! We do! You can have it!” This was the miracle we needed to patch the car together enough to drive the washboard dusty road out to the blessings of asphalt. And so we did. 

 

More interesting that the disaster story (two years in a row) are the images of this indeed holy site. Enjoy!