Todd's Turn To See Carr Falls Running

Aug 21, 2022

So after work on Friday morning, I got in my car in San Antonio and drove to Sierra Vista Arizona. I love this place, and often wish I’d never left. I came back here again last month for the firt time in 5 1/2 years, and then just a month later I had the itch again. Several reasons for the trip, hoping to get in a few hikes, picking up my daughter’s birthday present (Kelly found the guitar my 14 wanted), and meeting with my old boss (a job at the place I used to work may be coming open soon).

I’m not sure how the hiking is going to go, as it’s really raining a lot here this weekend (as a weather forecaster, this should not have surprised me). But we did get in a fabulous hike during the day today, and as an added bonus, the waterfalls definitely had water in them!

So, since Kelly has already had 3 of her hikes here to the waterfalls in her 52 week challenge, she didn’t count this as a new hike for herself. But she definitely had a plan for some things that I needed to see.

We started out near the bottom at a place I’d been before. But then shortly after we set out on the trails, we also ended up traversing a few spots that were definitely not trails.

You guessed it, we went over those boulders and sometimes even right through the stream. This was one time where I was really happy to have packed my hiking sandals. Seriously, I found these things at a thrift store my daughers wanted to hit to search for vintage clothes. While they were looking, I wandered over to the shoe section and found these hiking sandals in my size, and with really good tread (they looked likely they’d never/barely been worn). They definitely came in handy today, as we had a few instances where Kelly was attempting to keep her feet dry, so did a bit more climing and bouldering, whereas I was able to just jaunt right through the middle of the stream.

Of course we were treated to some pretty nice views on the way up.

Slight confession here. I didn’t know it when we first set out to the falls earlier today, but Kelly actually wanted me to see the ones at the very top that she visited a few weeks ago. We got pretty close, but I’m still not quite at the point where I am comfortable with vertical rock climbing (and there would have been some of that near the top). Oddly, I don’t really have an issue with going up, it’s the coming back down part that scares me.

Kelly was much more calm and relaxed hanging out on the edge.

In the end we got almost back up to the place she was at the end of July … which was perfectly fine with me, but somewhat disappointing for Kelly. I promised that I’ll try to figure out a way to get more comfortable with rock climbing in the future. That being said, on the way down we did pass a contingent of Sherrif’s deputies and an ambulance near the bottom where my car was parked. They were getting ready to head up the trail with a litter. We didn’t get the details, but apparently somebody got hurt. :-(

In the end we got what we came for though: some nice pictures, a few thrills, and a relatively strenuous hilly hike. I’ll definitely be back here again.

Here’s the Alltrails link … we went much further than this, but it’ll get you to the starting point.