Fish Creek Canyon

Last Saturday, Nicholas and I headed out with some of his friends from school to the Superstition Mountains. It was a beautiful drive to get where we were going. Actually, it was the same scenic drive I went on with my family many weeks back, which you can check out here. Anyway, we arrived at Fish Creek Canyon and the first thing we had to do was rock climb down to the bottom. It freaked me out. Honestly, it wasn't even that far down at all, but I hadn't realized I was going to be doing rock climbing like that. Next thing I know, we're climbing back up the other side of the canyon to a cave where we could hang out and hide from the heat for a little bit. Again, it freaked me a bit. I just wasn't expecting it, so I got pretty anxious and upset. Though, once I was in the cave and looking out, it wasn't so bad, and from there on out I was a trooper.

We spent the day hiking through the canyon, climbing over giant boulders, and making our way through the hot desert heat. It was only supposed to be about 104 that day but we found out later it got up to 113, so it was pretty damn hot to be hiking in. Nevertheless, it was great. Until the branch... that almost took out Nicholas' eye. You heard me right. And if it hadn't been for his poor eyesight and glasses, he probably would be blind in one eye. As we were hiking, Nicholas slipped on a smooth rock and launched forward, his eye heading straight for a small but fairly thick tree branch that was jutting out into his path. I was ahead of him and all I heard was his shout/swearing. I turned around and he was on the ground, covering his eye, terrified to take his hand away to find that he couldn't see. Luckily, when he did take his hand away, he could see perfectly fine, though he had a pretty big cut on his eyelid. He hurt, and for a few days after too, but we are both so happy he is okay and that it wasn't worse. Thank goodness for imperfect vision and glasses, am I right?

We hiked a little ways more, rested for a bit, then decided to turn around. We had to rock climb back up to the road from the canyon which was much easier than going down. We got some nice cold water from the car, then headed out. We were all going to go swimming at a nearby lake, but the 4 of us in our car decided we were just going to head back home because we were pretty tired, so the others went on without us. It was a long day of hiking in the heat, but it was a very new experience for me that I surprisingly enjoyed a lot. I didn't get many pictures while we were hiking since I was a little preoccupied, but here are some from the cave and the last place we stopped before turning around.

Below the bridge is where we first had to climb down, and behind the bridge is the cave where we climbed back up into and hung out for a bit.