Day 5 & 6- I hope pain is something you enjoy.

The warm up is over. Time for the real backpacking!

After MUCH discussion, we finally decided on Hackberry Canyon as our backcountry experience.

You'd think I'd have been put on notice when, once again, we needed GPS just to find the trailhead.
Ever optimistic (ask anyone, I'm prone to optimism) I followed the boys blindly into the canyon.
The absence of water where there was supposed to be water was a slight concern. But we soon met a stoned ranger who assured us that there were some seeps a little ways, I mean quite a ways, actually, but not too far up the canyon.
Ok.

After the ranger came the horseflies. Soon we all looked like Pigpen with our very own swarm that followed us everywhere we walked. About four miles in, we found a spot the flies didn't seem to like and stopped immediately.

We made a fire to deter the knats. Didn't work.
Then we made dinner. Freeze dried meals. Steve liked his. Bruce and I had to bury ours.
And then suddenly and unexpectedly, the stream just dried up.
100 degrees and no water. Surely it would come back tomorrow. Right.
Mercifully, it did. We did a hike further up in the canyon so we could say we'd seen something and then got the hell out of there!