Before my helicopter trip we visited a quiet and peaceful state park just outside Phoenix

WHITE TANKS on JANUARY 6TH

We stayed at White Tanks State Park, the largest park in the system, for a couple of days. It was great to get away from the continuous traffic noise of Phoenix and enjoy the peace of a campsite out in the boonies.



In a place where annual rainfall is less than 10 inches a year and summer temperatures will be above 100o degrees for weeks, water is important. These mountains have been a reliable source of water to people for thousands of years.

We walked up to the site of one such source, marveling at the bone white rocks in the stream beds that give the park its name. The violent monsoon rains scrub the boulders clean and the gentle rains trickling down through the rock layers keep the top pools [or tanks ] fed year round. At first the stream bed was dry, even though we have had more rain than usual for this time of year, but soon we saw some small pools and then as we got to the top there we heard the trickle of running water from pool to pool and finally at the top we saw the drizzle of water running down the cliff face and filling the top pool.

It was a short hike and we were glad that there was something to see at the end of the trail but as we stood there at the pool, gray and dusty images flickered at the edges of our vision as thirsty travelers, from the past, in loin clothes or buckskins or denim flung themselves into the pool and drank deeply knowing that they would not die of thirst that day.

In hindsight the minor chest discomfort on the hike, which went away when I coughed up some mucus was in fact the start of my heart problem. The crushing chest pain I had always heard about was just not there. It was just like having a chest infction and a cough. Many other people in the area were reporting such infections.