Memorial Day Weekend 2016: Hiking And Eating And Friends

This year, our Memorial Day weekend gave us the opportunity to gorge ourselves silly on delicious food. No big surprise, that happens often on this holiday weekend. But we also got the chance to try a new outdoor adventure as well, and we were pleasantly surprised by the outcome!

For years now, we have been curious about visiting Chiricahua National Monument. It's not too far away (it's a little ways outside Willcox, AZ, which is about an hour and a half from us), and it contains lots of natural beauty. After doing a little reading online, Nathan and I discovered that most of the hiking trails there are pretty low difficulty; when you have whiny younger daughters, this is a plus. To top things off, we have had many friends visit the monument and bring back glowing reports.

Nathan and I love to go hiking, and in recent years, our kids are finally getting old enough to tackle bigger and more challenging trails. This has encouraged us to go hiking more frequently (see, for example, our hikes in Madera Canyon, the Grand Canyon, and especially Picacho Peak for examples of our increasing daring. And these were all from the last year!). We decided that we would try "one more" hike before spring melted into summer and the weather became too hot to hike for the next several months. Off to the Chiricahuas we went!

We were lucky with the weather; it was warm but not hot (I think the high was only in the 80s that day; plus, being far from a city, the air was naturally cooler anyway). We got some cool breezes that were incredibly refreshing. And The Internet was proven correct; the hiking trail we chose wasn't too difficult, with only minor descents & ascents. We chose the Echo Canyon Loop Trail (which includes the Hailstone and Ed Riggs trails) for our first visit, about a 3.3 mile round trip.

 

While on the trail, we were lucky to run into some friends of ours, the Sparks family. They too are avid hikers, and we met up with them unexpectedly (they'd parked their car at the opposite end of our trail, and taken a longer route totaling about 7 miles. Hopefully we can try that route next time!). We didn't stay together too long, as we were headed in different directions, but it was fun to meet up, visit with friends for a few moments, and compare notes.

 

There's not much more I need to ramble about; I think the pictures of this beautiful place pretty much speak for themselves!

 

 

 

 

It was invigorating to climb among these beautiful rock formations, and to "squeeze" through the narrow gaps between the stone pillars. It was dizzying, on occasion, to look up or down through these formations and see how far we had come (or how far we had yet to go); the drop-offs sometimes had my heart in my throat!

 

 

The girls overall quite enjoyed themselves; we probably needed to bring a little more water (isn't that always the way??), but by and large everyone really loved it. We can't wait to come back to the Chiricahuas again...hopefully soon!

 

 

Our hike was on Saturday, May 28. After taking a day or two to recover from our strenuous physical activity, we spent Monday May 30 (Memorial Day) consuming vast quantities of calories, thus undoing any physical benefits we may have gained from our hike two days before. Sigh; such is life, especially on holiday weekends. We had not one, but TWO big meals that day...the first was at a friend's house with a group of friends, and the second was at our own house with a group of other friends.

The first outing (a large, early lunch) was a "seafood boil," something I'd never experienced before. The hosts, our friends Justin & Clarissa Brown, had lived in West Virginia for a while before moving to Arizona, and said they'd learned it from some of their southern friends in their time near the East Coast. It was a curious, silverware-free ritual, and I was a little nervous about how it would all turn out.

 

The preparation of the meal was quite simple; the Browns set up a huge steel pot on an outdoor burner, filled it with water, then set it a-boiling. They would eventually add quartered red potatoes, corn on the cob, sausage, and shrimp to the pot as well, along with an Old Bay-style seafood seasoning mix (they told us that at many seafood boils, crab or other shellfish may also be used). Everything would be added in stages and cooked until tender; then, the water would be drained, and the fun part would start.

 

First, the table would be covered securely with a large, disposable plastic tablecloth. Then, the huge drained pot would be upended, spilling its contents all across the table! Finally, huge dollops of butter or margarine would be set directly onto the tablecloth at several points. And then it was time to dig in with your bare hands and eat!

 

At first, my fastidious side was very nervous to try the huge heap of food lying wildly on the table. It felt almost barbaric to me! But I watched as everyone tucked in, and finally followed suit. We had to peel our own shrimp ourselves, but it was worth the effort once they were dipped in butter and popped into our mouths. The corn on the cob and potatoes were so hot at first, they almost burned my fingers when I picked them up. But they tasted so good that I soon forgot about my original scruples. By the end of the meal (which was a very civilized free-for-all, with everyone happily chatting and raiding the food pile with abandon), my fingers were tender from handling the hot food, and greasy from all the butter. And we were all oh so satisfied!

For dessert, I'd made mint brownies for everyone to share afterwards. Even though everyone was very full, we somehow managed to fit a brownie in our stomachs. Overall, our family found the whole thing a big success! The seafood boil was such a fun idea, and we were so happy to be a part of it! Hopefully we can finangle a way into inviting ourselves to the Brown's house again if they ever do another seafood boil in the future.

Aurora REALLY enjoyed her Memorial Day burger.

Not long after that, though, it was time to go back to our house, and get set up for the next big meal of the day, which was a barbecue at our house. We didn't have anything big or amazing planned; we just grilled some meat (burgers and hot dogs for some, chicken for others, seasoned with Nathan's delicious homemade honey pepper barbecue sauce!), made a few side dishes, and then let our kids run and play like maniacs through our house while we all visited.

We had originally planned a game night, to go with the food, but our tuckered out stomachs and wired kids meant that we mostly sat around and talked. But that was still lots of fun, as we got to catch up with good friends and have a few laughs. We went to bed that night stuffed, happy, and looking forward to the rest of our summer. If Memorial Day weekend was any indication, it would be a good one!