misjudged the cleanliness of the puddles
Posted by Zonie on February 25, 2024 at 07:39:49
With the dry and warm weather continuing, one place I knew I would not be needed this weekend was the mud puddle belly flop contest at the Lost Dutchman Days rodeo in Apache Junction. I also knew that this weather would bring out the tourists to gawk at grown men playing with their food and that it would likely be sold out anyway.
I still had a pair of old overalls to completely trash, and I figured there would be plenty of remnant mud on the state trust land, with its badly rutted power line trails. There were indeed some very big mud puddles, and, as it was about 75° in the afternoon, I was comfortable being completely soaked and plastered with mud the entire time.
Sometimes I do some serious hiking before doing a full wallow. Not this time. I wasn't even half a mile east of Tatum Boulevard before having a complete wallow. Before reaching the powerline trail junction about a mile east of Tatum, I waded through some deep puddles I thought might be clean enough for clean-up afterward, but that turned out not to have been the case. The trucks churned up the sediment more than I realized.
I followed the trail southeastward towards the substation, stomping in the puddles. I churned up some of them to bring out the better mud and did some more wallowing. At one point I got up when I heard dirt bikers approaching and stood to the side of the trails. I was happy to see one dirt biker riding through the mud instead of going around, but he didn't roost me.
I backtracked and then turned north to Coyote Central. I crested the ridge and saw that the three mud holes from my previous video had merged into a water hole that was very large indeed and would doubtless last well into the spring even if we didn't get any more rain.
I headed back west a short distance to a large creamy mud pit and spent quite a lot of time enjoying that. A Jeep with some young men deviated towards it. I thought maybe they wanted to try to take it through, but they were just curious about a grown man lounging in a mud pit. After some time I found myself shivering slightly. It was so relaxing that I forgot it was still winter and that I might have difficulty maintaining body temperature lying in the mud that long.
I got up and laboriously trudged with the weight of all that thick sticky mud on my overalls. This work quickly warmed me. Between the sun and my exertion chunks of mud soon started shrinking and falling off. I decided it was time to head back and try the puddles for cleanup.
I found that I could thin the mud a bit, but after the third puddle I was still covered with slimy, sticky mud. It was just lighter than before. I figured that would have to do, so when I got to Tatum I just drove home muddy. In retrospect I should have backtracked to Coyote Central. All that water would have cleaned me a bit.
Since I'm throwing out the overalls anyway (and they developed some more tears during this hike), I didn't waste a lot of time cleaning those. For some reason I did have a lot of trouble getting off my wellies. I think they sealed with my socks, but I used the hose to break the seal. Muddy clothes, however, were not the only issue. The mud had worked its way all over, and I had to hose down my body, including my hair. I got it done soon enough. Overall it was a very satisfying day. Bonus: Another set of overalls are wearing out, so maybe I won't have so much cleanup next weekend either.