Day 2 (Saturday) of the Alpine SoCal “Winter Blast” started out with another fine breakfast courtesy of our (so far) outstanding hosts (Nick & Ramona Escamilla) and co-hosts (David & Nicole Guhse).

Notice the Valentines Day motif.  awww… 🙂

I heard about a nice hike located right here in the park from Jack Giddens.  He and a couple others had attempted it the day prior.  Sounded fun, so we decided to give it a try.

The trailhead is located at the entrance to the rodeo grounds here where we are parked, and since the parking area is so huge, we thought we’d get a head-start and drive down to the trailhead parking lot.  There we broke out the doggy back-pack and my “sympathy” stick and headed on down the trail.

Coach was perfectly happy with the situation as you can see.

We stayed on the main trail and headed down the wash into a canyon.

I found some information online about this hike, click here and here  for more info.

We paused for a flower picture because you don’t see flowers too often here in the desert.

The scenery was incredible.

There are trails all over these hills… see the people way up there in the pic below?

The canyon started to get tighter and tighter…

Even little Coach said; “Carry me again… Carry me…”

We meandered our way through the canyon, which by the way – I understand is called “the crack”.

Finally, we came upon this drop-off that Jack had reported about yesterday.  It was like a little dry waterfall chute and was treacherously smooth.  Oh, and did I mention it was definitely more than a ten foot drop… this is where Jack and his entourage from yesterday had turned around.

I wasn’t about to turn around after going this far, so I scooted down on my stomach while Stilla held me with my “sympathy” stick (cane).  After I was a foot or two from the bottom the cane came apart and I plopped to the bottom.  No harm done, just a bump on the knee. 🙂

Once at the bottom, Stilla lowered little “Coach” to me in his back-pack and then Stilla lowered herself while I held her feet as she slid on down.

Now we were committed… no turning back now.  Hopefully, there’s another trail to get back out of here!

Next, we came upon a spot where there was no way through without getting your feet wet.  I opted to take my boots off and my trousers had the zip-off legs.  Stilla decided to trudge on through.

If you were able to stay (balance yourself) on the mini boulders it was only knee-deep.

We continued on… all the while, thoughts of that movie where the guy is trapped in a slot canyon and had to cut off his arm, was going through our minds…

And then, at last! We came back out into the daylight.  What a cool canyon.

After coming back out into the open, we saw a trail on the right that went up and back towards the way we came, but this time above the canyon.  We followed it up for this magnificent view of the Colorado River.

Then we stayed on the main trail heading back.  There were several chances to go higher when the trail forked, bet we were careful to stay on the lower trail… finally we ended up back in the wash where we started before the canyon got tight.

And were we glad to see the rigs back at the rodeo grounds as we got closer to the parking lot 🙂

Nah… it wasn’t bad at all.  An awesome way to spend the day… and we got some much needed exercise.

After we got back and relaxed a bit, it wasn’t long before it was time for the scheduled “Cowboy BBQ” sponsored by the park.

Here’s a view of the huge grill sending up some smoke and good aroma as we walked down to the lower parking lot area to partake.

Close-up view of the huge grill.   Yummm.

We saved some seats for our fellow Alpiners as the line for the food grew longer and longer.

A band was in full swing.

Here’s a couple pics of our happy SoCal Alpine Coach group:

Good food, Good people, Good fun!

We walked back to the rig to get ready for the evening’s happy hour and fireworks show.

We passed by this mound of sand that was the center of activity for all the kids… and even some teens.  They were having a blast sliding down the sand hill…  Oh, to be young again, eh?

Another Arizona sunset reflected off the front of the Urban Escape Vehicle.

Then – We all gathered at our designated viewing spot and enjoyed each other’s company and the spectacular fireworks.  Here’s a few pics that came out alright once I used the Canon instead of the iPhone.  Of course, pictures can’t do justice… you have to see it in person.

There was music and announcements specifically for the fireworks extravaganza on the radio, but it was difficult to get tuned in for whatever reason.  At one point, I went to the Coach and retrieved our old AM/FM ’57 Chevy radio that I used to take to car shows.  After messing around with it for a while, we were finally able to get it tuned in and hear some of the announcements and music.

And finally, if you want to see some more of the fireworks… just click on the following video clips I recorded with the Canon.  Hopefully, they represent a little of the better displays.  Several of my clips wouldn’t copy over to the blog due to size.  So these will have to do.  Enjoy!

Stay tuned for more adventure tomorrow… we plan on taking the ATV out and checking out some of these trails in the area that people here have been telling us about.