I promise we tried to #optoutside with you #REI. Really. We made a plan. We never make plans. We picked a hike we have done before because we figured that would be our best chance at success. 

Since it was projected to be a chilly day in Tucson, we decided to go in the afternoon. After a decent, but not too big, lunch, we bundled up in sweatshirts and started the 45 minute drive to Madera Canyon. 

The drive was beautiful. And as we arrived, the sun was starting to warm even the shaded areas. Our dog hopped out of the car ready to explore and pee on every new smell. Everything was going great. Fuck capitalist greed. We’re opting outside damnit!

But then we realized that we had passed the only stand that had the self-pay envelopes. We had assumed that there would be another. But no. Of course there wasn’t. And worse yet, H and I couldn’t agree on whether to go back to use the self-service pay envelopes before the hike or just wait until afterwards.

So one of us went back to pay while the other sulked and waited. We didn’t speak for half an hour as we hiked uphill on the WRONG trail. 

“Should we just turn around and go home?” H suggested angrily.

“I didn’t come all this way for nothing,” I quipped and continued hiking, breathless, up the steep incline.

When we finally called a truce, H’s allergies were flaring so bad that he had to dig through the first aid kit for pills. After taking the pill, he realized it was the sleepy kind and we immediately hustled our asses back down to the car before he crashed.

But at least we took some pretty pictures and didn’t kill each other right? 

 

My photo

 
His photo
  

Update: Turns out that Madera Canyon has a beautiful waterfall that we didn’t get to see either. The real kicker is that we had read about the waterfall, but decided not to look for it since the streams seemed to be all dried up. Then, we saw this recent photo posted on FB.

A Stranger’s Photo