My dad and I took Tyler hiking at South Mountain today. We did an easy trail - Desert Classic. Tyler did great but he was clearly disappointed because he wanted to go mountain climbing and see a mountain goat and this did not qualify as mountain climbing to him so we saw a small foothill and I said, "Ok Tyler, let's climb up this mountain and look for some mountain goats and Papa will stay at the bottom and take our picture once we get to the top." This was a grand idea to him so up we went. Well we were not on a trail and the rock was very loose so I kept telling him to watch his step and steer clear of the cactus. He was fine, going right up and just a couple of feet from the top, I somehow get a huge ball of cactus in my leg. I have hiked so much in Arizona. I have done some really hard, I would almost say treacherous climbs and here I am trying to figure out how I am going to get this huge mass out of my leg. I tried pulling it out but the cactus just kept getting in my hand so I called down to my dad and said, "Need some help up here." I was seriously trying to figure out how I was going to hike a mile back to the car with this stuck in my leg. Well, my quick-thinking Dad took a key and ran it down my leg as fast as he could pulling most of it out and the rest of the thorns (which were literally 2 inches long) we were able to pull out. Immediately, my leg turned horribly black and blue but suprisingly never really hurt much. Tyler got a little upset and scared and I ended up carrying him down the hill but I was so ecstatic to no longer have a cactus in my leg that I didn't mind. We ended up having a great time and doing about a 3 mile hike. Tyler was a trooper.
If you look really hard you can see us climbing up this foothill before the cactus incident.
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