June 29, 2003
gnarled hoodoos
It was a day of pun and hiking Saturday when the interns drove up to Sedona. Here is the Fellowship before 6 of us set out to hike Bear Mountain.
From left to right: Jen, Scott K., Lindsay, Nathaniel, Yours Truly, Scott M., and Ben. Not shown here is Tanya (behind the camera) but we wouldn't wanna leave her out--here she is earning the Jen-given nick of "Miss Attitude" after I turned the camera around on her.
Our travel guide on the expedition was a book written by local hiker Cosmic Ray, who despite his name gives straight advice. According to Cosmic hikers of Bear Mountain should look out for "stunning views of gnarled hoodoos," and advises the reader to "surrender to your imagination." So that's what we did. There were probably more "gnarled hoodoo" jokes than actual hoodoos themselves.
Here's the Scotts standing in front of a particularly gnarled one. (Why, what did you think a hoodoo was, oh beloved but dirty-minded reader?)
Wordplay wasn't confined to the subject of hoodoos, however, and in fact covered a broad range of more and less perverse topics. Among other things we decided that that a Kraft single should be termed a "chee," to denote it from the plural of several Kraft singles, "cheese." Here Ben, the trip's designated joker, has a good laugh during a break.
Along the way we came across quite a few cairns (so many that we stopped cairning, another pun we beat to bloody death). Too many in fact--they were misleading in places. Here is a retardedly large one. Somehow after this picture was taken Scott M. managed to stack 4 more on top, just to insure it really stands the test of time.
There was also some cool flora, like these tinsel flowers.
And check out this raging yucca in bloom.
It was a good 4 hour hike, even though the top was a bit of a letdown. The day was extremely hot and we all got quite a workout. Here we are afterwards (Lindsay's taking this one).
Finally here's some eye candy from some of those stunning views.
Posted by Alan at June 29, 2003 10:08 PM