Sideways (Week 3: Hopi Mesas back to Flagstaff)

We decided to take the back, unsignposted and largely missing-from-the-map dirt track from the Hopi Mesas to Kayenta, the cheap place to stay if you're visiting Monument Valley, via Pinon (probably originally Piñón or "pine nut" in Spanish), crossing a small part of the Navajo Nation which few other whiteys visit. The track produced a lady with a pick-up full…
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Sideways (Week 2: Winslow to the Hopi Mesas)

We propelled ourselves 20 miles back towards Flagstaff and 50,000 years into the past to visit Meteor Crater which, yes, is just a big hole in the ground, made by a fairly small meteorite which hit the earth at between 24,000 and 40,000 miles an hour, depending on which of the museum signs you choose to believe. Useless fact of…
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Sideways (Week 1: Flagstaff to Winslow)

Well, at least we're not going backwards this time. Not quite, anyway. When we arrived in Flagstaff, bruising and pain down the front of Glenn's leg screamed "SHIN SPLINTS" (or a "hiccup in his giddy-up", as he calls it). Knowing from bitter personal experience that trying to tough them out just makes them braver, we decided to act grown up,…
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Thank you, Mitzi!

A special thank you to Mitzi, who went out of her way to drive into the centre of Flagstaff, which is not even where she lives, to buy two surprise beers for us at the Weatherford Hotel, where we had a reservation. They were waiting for us behind the bar when we arrived tired and thirsty that evening. Thank you!…
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Russell Tank to Flagstaff

Water, water and water. That was what we spent most of the seconds of the minutes of the hours of this part of the hike thinking about. We set out with a swimming pool worth of water: 15 litres - all we could physically carry. We thought we had it all worked out and some extra water to get us…
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12 signs you’ve been hiking too long

1. You consider socks which are only slightly smelly to be clean. 2. You're excited about the prospect of being able to wash your clothes in a sink, even though it means going to dinner in soaking wet clothes and getting frozen by the air conditioning. 3. You hoard toothpicks from the rare restaurants you come across to clean your…
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Backwards (Tusayan to Russell Tank)

Sometimes I guess you just have to go backwards to go forwards... We set out from Tusayan with 12 litres of (heavy!) water and 10 days' of dehydrated food. The first day took us through beautiful pine forests, past a pair of elk hunt scouts with an elk bugle and a hunter camp and landed us in a beautiful camping…
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