For as long as I have known him, Steve has expressed a desire to "witness the awe-inspiring power and might of a Huachuca thunderstorm." He got his wish. Lightning cracked all around us. Thunder boomed overhead and rolled down the canyon. And then the rains fell, slowly at first, but reaching cloudburst proportions. We sidled up under a bushy pine tree with our rain ponchos deployed, and packs and cameras tucked underneath. The rain was ice cold, and then it began to hail, marble-sized hail smacking into our plastic raingear. It rained for forty minutes; the trail became a creek, the creek alongside the trail became a torrent.

Finally the rain slacked off and then quit as the storm marched down the canyon towards civilization. "Are you happy now, Steve?" I asked, and he just grinned at me. The creek gradually turned back into a trail and we headed upwards again, leaving our ponchos on against the tree-drip. Another check-mark on the list of 'things I want to do before I die' for Steve.

The sun made an effort to shine between clouds, and we decided to take a side trail that wrapped around the southern exposure of a mountain. Perhaps we would catch something basking out in the open. Although high up in the Huachucas, this exposure featured the agaves, manzanita, bunchgrass, and other plants found at lower elevations. It was all very interesting, but no reptiles presented themselves. It was now late afternoon, and we decided it was time to turn around; it would take us a couple hours to hike back out, and it gets dark pretty quick on the eastern side of the mountains.

Our walk back down the mountain was uneventful, and even worse, the road-cruising that night was terrible. Other than a few Spadefoots, the roads were empty. The road surfaces we worked were cold, and were not thermally radiating objects; perhaps later on in the wee hours of the morning they would be, after the air temperature dropped further. We were too bushed to stay up that late and find out, and had another big hike coming up the next morning up Miller Canyon.