Sometimes, even the best laid plans go awry. And in my experience, it happens more often than not.

For our ninth anniversary, John and I decided to go backpacking; nothing fancy, of course, because we didn't have the time off to do anything more extravagant. We opted to take Mary with us, too, because we had just purchased a backpack for her.  No longer would she have to carry a school backpack whenever we went backpacking; now she had a real backpack - a Deuter Fox 30, from REI - in which she could carry her own gear comfortably.

Now we just needed to take it on a test run.

A week or two prior to our trip, we were asked by the Guckenburgs if we could watch Joshua for the weekend, because Janice and Danny would be going on a marriage retreat with their church.  True, it was our anniversary weekend, but since we weren't going anywhere special, we agreed to take him along with us.  A few days later, our backpacking party grew from four to five, when we decided to invite Erika to join us as well.  We figured that it was better to increase the adult-to-child ratio, since it's always a good idea to have the children outnumbered.  Moreover, we owed Erika a backpacking trip, as that was supposed to be John's Mother's Day gift for her.

With our backpacking party set, we now had to select a trail. Since this was probably going to be more of a luxury backpacking trip (a backpacking trip that would be less than two miles in length on an easy trail, and one that would involve the importation and consumption of adult beverages), we had a number of options from which to choose: Clover Creek, Kinder Crossing, and Houston Brothers, just to name a few.  (These were all sites at which we had done luxury backpacking trips in the past.)  They were all good trails...but John had a better idea.

Just last month, while Mary and I were in Baltimore on vacation, John had attempted to backpack the entire twenty-mile Cabin Loop, in the Coconino Forest.  The Cabin Loop is made up of four different trails, each of which has an old cabin along the way: Houston Brothers, U-Bar, Barbershop, and Fred Haught.  Unfortunately, John did not finish the whole loop; he cut his trip short by several miles after he ended up with killer blisters on his feet.  (It was very odd that he should get blisters, too, because it had been years since either of us had gotten them.)  During his trip, though, he had fallen in love with the Fred Haught Trail and now wanted to show it to us, knowing that we would love it, too.  So that became our destination for the weekend.

On Friday night, after Janice and Danny dropped Joshua off at our house, we got all of our gear packed up into our backpacks.  Joshua, too, had all of his things - sleeping bag and clothes - loaded in an old school backpack.  Once everything was ready, John presented the kids with a present, to commemorate the trip: a pair of butterfly nets.  He thought it might be a fun science lesson to catch some butterflies, so we had purchased them at the Learning Is Fun store.  The kids loved them and couldn't wait to use them.

With all of our gear loaded in the 4Runner, we hit the road on Saturday morning around 7:00 a.m.  On the way out of town, we stopped to pick up Erika and all of her gear as well; then, we made our way towards the Beeline Highway, to begin heading north to the Mogollon Rim.

It was a long but uneventful journey to the General Springs Trailhead to begin our backpacking trip on the Fred Haught Trail.  To get there, we took SR 87 north through Payson, Pine and Strawberry to the Mogollon Rim.  Once on top of the Rim, we turned right onto FR 300 and continued for many, many miles to the signed turnoff for the Fred Haught Trail.  We took that rough road for about a quarter of a mile and parked opposite of General Springs Cabin, at the trailhead.

Upon our arrival at the trailhead, we began gearing up for our hike.  While John assisted his mother with her pack, I took the kids (who were ready to go) into General Springs Cabin to show them what it looked like inside.  It was your typical pioneer-days log cabin, with two rooms separated by a wall.  The cabin was devoid of furniture but appeared to have been restored (probably by the Forest Service), so it was free from the usual damage that it must have suffered over time.  The kids thought that it was cool that someone had actually lived there at one time; but what they really liked is that it echoed when they shouted inside of it.

Once Erika's gear was ready, we began our hike.  The Fred Haught Trail #141 began with a short, flat jaunt along a fence line; at the end of the fence, the trail then crossed the creek and continued on the other side.  For the next quarter-mile, the trail traipsed through the green grass that paralleled the creek.  This first half-mile was the easiest part of the hike, and the kids did very well; they walked way ahead of us and often had to be told to stop and wait for us.

At the end of the first half-mile, the trail took a sharp right turn and began to climb up a small hill.  The climb was not steep - nor was it very long - but it was enough to cause the kids to start their groaning: "My back hurts!", "My backpack is heavy!", "My feet hurt!", and so on.  And it didn't stop after we crested the hill; it continued, even as we started back down the hill again, towards the creek.  Hearing their complaints, we knew that we were going to have to find camp soon, before they gave out on us completely.

Despite their complaints, we managed to get another mile out of them before finding camp, which was good because there were no campsites during that mile.  As the canyon widened, though, we began to find some beautiful, grassy benches along the creek, so all we had to do was find one that was big enough for three tents.

We found a perfect campsite about a hundred yards off of the trail, on a nice grassy bench just a few feet above the creek.  The kids were grateful that we had found camp so fast and that they could finally drop their heavy packs; we were just grateful that we didn't have to hear the complaints anymore.

After we dropped our packs, we set up our three tents.  John and I would use the newer backcountry tent, and we put the kids in the old two-man tent (the one that we had had for nearly ten years); Erika brought her own tent, and yes, she even brought the poles this time!  Once the tents were set up, we then put together a shelter in the trees nearby, so that we would have a nice, dry spot to cook and eat our meals.  There were monsoon storms in the forecast, so we planned ahead by bringing tarps to use as shelter.  We laid one tarp down on the ground and tied the other one above it, using ropes to tie it to the trees.  Finally, we took our single-serve boxes of wine and set them in the creek to keep them cool; in order to prevent them from floating away, John built a little dam of rocks and set the boxes in front of it.  By the time happy hour arrived, they would be nice and cool.

Once our campsite was set up, we sat down under our tarp shelter and ate our lunch.  The kids ate their lunch quickly, so that they could go play in the creek with their butterfly nets.  They didn't catch anything, but they sure have fun chasing the butterflies around.  While they played, John and Erika and I stayed under the tarp shelter and relaxed.

A little bit later, John suggested that we go for a hike.  Erika was up for it, as was I, but the kids were not; they just wanted to play in the creek.  I decided to stay at camp with them so that John and Erika could go exploring.  While they were gone, the kids continued to play in the creek and in the meadow, and I went into the tent to take a rest. 

John and Erika hiked a couple of miles on the Fred Haught Trail.  Along the way, they found many campsites along the creek; they also found an old chimney, where there was once a cabin.  That was as far as they got; by that time, the monsoon clouds were beginning to gather in the sky, so they decided that it was time to head back to camp.

It began to rain on them just before they made it back to camp.  The kids and I were waiting for them under the tarp shelter, trying to stay out of the rain, when they arrived.  John and Erika joined us there, and that was when we declared that it was officially Happy Hour.  John retrieved some of the wine boxes from the creek, and Erika broke out some crackers and cheese; and with that, we sat back and toasted to the rainy afternoon.

As we finished our first glass each of wine, thunder cracked, and it began to pour relentlessly.  We were forced to leave our happy hour behind and retreat to our tents, where it was dryer.  While hiding in our tent, John and I whipped out an iPhone and watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to pass the time.  It was hard to hear it over the pounding rain; in fact, we couldn't hear anything over the sound of the heavy rainfall.  We had no idea what was going on outside of our dry tent...

As soon as the rain let up, we heard Mary call out to us: "Mommy, Daddy, Joshua is all wet!"

Oh, no!

"What about you, Mary?" we asked.

"My stuff is dry, but Joshua's stuff is all wet."

"Well, maybe he can go in with Grandma."

"I'm all wet, too!" Erika exclaimed.

Oh, no!

Apparently, during the storm, several things had happened while John and I were high and dry in our tent.  The zipper on the kids' tent had broken; it had been getting stuck for some time now, but this time, it was broken for good.  Then, the tent floor began to leak, just as it had done when we were backpacking on the Bonanza Bill Trail, back in September of 2006.  During that trip, I had taught Mary to keep everything on top of the sleeping pad and not to touch the sides of the tent; she remembered that lesson and made sure to pile everything she had with her in the tent on top of her sleeping pad.  When we were able to check on the kids, we found that her stuff was completely dry.

Joshua, on the other hand, was completely soaked.  His sleeping bag was saturated and would never be dry by the time bedtime rolled around.  His backpack was wet, too, as were all of his clothes.  And yes, even his blanket and his toys were wet.  He didn't have a sleeping pad on which he could keep his stuff, nor did he know not to touch the sides of the tent during a rainstorm.

And then there was Erika, who, despite her attempts to keep her things dry, had to deal with a tent that leaked from above.  Had she put her tarp over her tent instead of under her sleeping pad inside, she might have been able to stay dry; instead, her sleeping bag was wet - not as wet as Joshua's, but wet nonetheless.

So now, we had one wet kid and one wet Grandma, one broken tent, and more rain coming.  We had only one option available to us: bail, and bail quickly.

It continued to rain - lighter this time - as we scrambled to pack our backpacks under the protection of our tarp shelter.  Within thirty minutes, we had everything ready to go; by that time, it was 5:00 p.m.  We told the kids, the faster we hiked, the faster we could be in Pine for dinner, so they needed to forget their troubles and their pains and just hike.

Before breaking camp, Erika went to retrieve our wine...only to discover that the boxes were floating away in the swollen creek!  She ran after them and managed to grab all of them, but in the process, she fell, face first, into the creek!  She returned soaking wet...but at least the wine was safe!  (We would need that wine later.)

It was still drizzling when we started hiking back to the car - sure, it was cold and wet, but at least it wasn't pouring down rain.  As we hiked, we hoped and prayed that the skies wouldn't open up on us again.  After all, we were miserable enough; we didn't need more rain to add to our misery.

Despite the wet gear - especially Joshua's soaking wet sleeping bag, which must have weighed a ton - the kids hiked at a very good pace.  We covered the entire two miles in just one hour and without any complaints or tears.  At 6:00 p.m., we arrived at the 4Runner - truly a sight for sore eyes!  After shedding our wet gear, we threw everything into the back and drove like mad to get out of there.

Just after 7:00 p.m., we arrived in Pine.  We were all starved by then, so we stopped at Sidewinder's - the new bar in Pine - for dinner.  There's nothing better than bar food, washed down by a cold beer, after an ordeal like that!

After dinner, we drove back to Phoenix. On the way, the kids fell asleep in the backseat with Grandma and slept all the way home.  Once we were home, we brought them into the house and put them to bed.  As for our wet gear, that all stayed in the 4Runner overnight; there was no reason to try to sort it out until morning.

Needless to say, when we did finally go through the wet gear, we didn't even bother to dry out the old backcountry tent that the kids had been using.  After nearly ten good years in that tent, it was time to say good-bye to it, leaky floor and broken zipper and all.  Farewell, Peak 1 Aries!

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