The Jumping Point

On Monday I went for a hike down a trail not far from our place with a friend from Flagstaff. We hiked the four miles in to a place along Beaver Creek called "The Crack" nice and early to avoid the heat of the day. But we both decided we wanted to get back home by mid-afternoon, which meant turning an easy four-mile walk into a not-so-easy four mile death march in 106 degree temps with little to no shade.

So, to prepare ourselves for what we knew was going to be an unpleasant afternoon, we opted to take one last dip into the creek before hitting the trail. We just happened to be passing by one of the more popular "dipping" spots, too: The Beaver's Tongue (named for its tongue-like shape and the fact that it's perched 18 feet above Beaver Creek, I suppose).

I won't belabor this too much, since it's really not a very interesting story. Suffice to say that jumping off the tongue is not necessarily an easy thing to do the first time...unless you've got balls of steel. Which I don't. Here I am pondering the pending dip.

Note the impressive physique. Yeah, baby. That's what I'm talkin' about!

Anyway, it took me about eight minutes of standing at the edge, staring down into the deep green pool below me before I finally got the nerve to leap off of the ledge.

Ok, so it wasn't so much a "leap" as it was a dorky power-walk off the edge. With a loud and impressively high pitched little girl-like scream accompanying my descent.

You can call me "Grace", thank you very much.

As fun as this looks, the amount of water that shot up my nose made it decidedly less so.