Milestones

Sometime Monday afternoon while we were gone hiking the 'hit counter' surpassed 300,000.....WOW!  For me, personally, that number is amazing, but compared to many highly popular blogs I read it is quite small.  All that being said, if it were numbers I was after it would be a cause for concern, but that is not why I write the blog.  When I started writing my blog its purpose was to document our travels and experiences for our kids, relatives and friends, and was not updated daily, but only when we moved from one location to another, or did something I thought might be interesting.  That now we have somewhere between 300 and 500 people stopping by to check on us each day blows my mind.  It wasn't until we had been on the road for 9 months that I resolved to write something every day....that was the day we started our first workamping job at Amazon.com in Campbellsville, KY in October of 2012.  Thank you so much to all who do follow my ramblings on a regular basis!

Most of the 4 days we have been here in Camp Verde has been spent on 'home improvement' projects, so Monday we decided to change things up a bit and go hiking.  I recently bought a book entitled "50 Favorite Hikes of Flagstaff and Sedona" written by 'Cosmic Ray'.

After browsing through a few hikes I chose the 'Bell Rock Loop' hike.....4.8 miles in all, and rated by 'Cosmic Ray' as moderate in difficulty.  We headed out around 11:15 and arrived in Oak Creek Village around 20 minutes til noon.  In order to park your car in any trailhead parking lot you must purchase a day, or week pass.  The day pass costs $5.  Parking on the weekends in these parking lots can be difficult, but on Monday we snagged a spot rather quickly.  There are a number of hikes you can do from this trailhead and all the trails are pretty clearly marked with good signage.....the key is to actually read the signs....:-)

 Bell Rock

We were on our way hiking the Bell Rock path by 11:50 am.....apparently somewhere about the 1.8 mile mark 'we' missed the turn off for the "Little Bell" trail, which would have made our hike a 'loop', and kept following the Bell Rock Pathway just assuming that at some point it would begin to 'loop', but alas we assumed incorrectly and ultimately found ourselves just 1/2 mile from the north parking lot.....4 miles out.  Of course, 4 miles 'out' means you must hike 4 miles 'back'.......this is also known as an 'out and back' hike.....not what we had planned.

So, our planned 4.8 mile loop hike morphed, unintentionally, into an 8 mile 'out and back' hike.  In spite of our error we had a great hike, and were not disappointed by the views we enjoyed.  I think we surprised ourselves by actually hiking 8 miles....there was no whining, or complaining.

We arrived back at the Bell Rock parking lot around 2:45.....almost 3 hours after starting....ready for a late lunch.  As we headed south on 179 we spied a place called 'Famous Pizza and Subs' on the right with al fresco dining.....perfect.  We both ordered a Left Handed Brewing Nitro Milk Stout......I added a Caesar Salad, and TLE a Greek salad with greens.  We found a table outside and within minutes our drafts arrived.  Unfortunately after 25 minutes our salads had not arrived.  I went back in to inquire as to the whereabouts of our order and found they had forgotten us......we ordered the salads because we thought it would be a quick order.....nothing like poor customer service to take the edge off an otherwise pleasant experience.  Within a few minutes we had our salads replete with apologies.  Yelp gives these folks 3.5 stars, but we would be closer to 2.5 based on poor service.....the salads were nothing special.....had they been exceptional we might have been able to overlook the slow service.  


We were home by 4:30 and settling in for the evening.....thanks for stopping by!