This Mother’s Day, Kim and I decided to take my Mom out for a nice streamside hike. Parsons Trail, in the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area within 
Coconino National Forest, has been on my “to-hike” list for about 12 years, and is flagged in several guides books I own. It was time.
While we didn’t get to the trailhead until nearly 12pm - just in time for the blazing noon-day sun - we really enjoyed the trail. There’s a surprisingly impressive riparian area in the canyon, and quite a bit of water as well. We had several nice places to stop and eat lunch and, later, a snack. We didn’t encounter too many people on the trail, though we did run into two drunk twenty-somethings at the swimming hole, as well as a forest ranger near the wilderness boundary.
Next time, we’ll be sure to get here a bit earlier (either in the day or the season), and have enough time to hike a bit further, take a quick dip in the several large pools along the trail, and stop for a mid-day nap streamside amongst the trees. We had a great time, and it really makes me wonder why I didn’t get to this trail sooner–and how many similar trails are still waiting for me.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
Well, it took only 58 weeks for us to hit the 40,000 mile mark on our Subaru Forester. While I’ve certainly been using it quite a bit for work, nearly 12,000 of those miles came from three road trips we took.
Last April, we headed up to Utah to visit Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, among other locales. A few months later in July, we put on about 6k miles during our summer road trip, ending up as far away as western Nebraska. Then in December, we made our way up to the Washington-Oregon border and back down the coast.
All in all, we’ve been pretty darn happy with the vehicle. While we still would have preferred something with a bit higher clearance so we’d feel a bit more comfortable tackling some tough dirt roads, we’ve definitely appreciated the size (I love the turning radius!) and gas mileage it gets. And besides, it probably makes more sense to get a beat-up pickup or SUV to bring out on those roads instead of your “good” car. We’ve yet to encounter any mechanical problems, though we did need to replace all the tires recently, as bad alignment ruined two tires; as an AWD vehicle, it’s best to replace all four tires when you have a problem. OF course, we managed to race through the entire warranty - only 36,000 miles - in the first year, so if anything goes wrong from here on out, we’re in the hook for it. Luckily, the Forester line has a pretty darn good reputation for reliability, and has been the reigning Consumer Reports Best Crossover SUV award winner for several years now.
We knew when we bought the vehicle that we’d put on the miles, primarily because of our roadtrips and other outings. During our April trip to southern Utah, we also stumbled on a new project: documenting some of the cool places we’ve taken the vehicle. While we haven’t done a stellar job of taking a picture at each cool place, we have managed to take at least one on each of the trips we’ve taken. I suspect that we’ll get better at this with time. Anyway, feel free to check out the set showing where our Forester has been.
I finally got around to posting my pictures from our stop in Rocky Mountain National Park last July. Not sure why it took so long to get those up; I managed to get all of the other stops on that trip up in a timely fashion.
