The plan was to catch an early flight from Orlando, Florida to Tucson, Arizona, catch a pre-arranged ride to the trail, set up camp and relax for the whole afternoon before starting our hike tomorrow. But when do plans ever go accordingly?
Neither of us realized we were flying during Spring Break, but we certainly were and that meant double the traffic to the airport AND double the line through TSA. We ended up missing our flight by minutes. Our plane hadn’t actually taken off, but boarding was closed and they would not reopen it.
We secured a new flight, went through TSA again to get to a different terminal, and waited 4 hours until it was time to board our flight, finally! Only after boarding our layover flight in Denver, was that flight delayed by an hour. Fighting through turbulence, our plane finally landed in stormy Tucson, AZ.
Our shuttle driver promptly picked us up, but later we realized that he put the wrong location in his GPS. 2.5 hours later, through the rain, sleet and mud, we arrive at a somewhat random trailhead just north of the terminus – not the desired location.
There was a small covered area, so we threw our sleeping pads on the concrete and called it a night! By the time we laid down, it was almost 1 AM back home. It continued to storm throughout the night. It was both our first time cowboy camping, a cool first!
