Rattlesnakes AND Bugs!

Normally I like hiking but last year I had such a horrid experience hiking in the Arizona canyons that I had vowed to never do it again. Well this morning, I decided to give that hiking in the canyons thing another try.  Maybe last year's hike was particularly hard.  Maybe last year's hike had an unusual amount of rattlesnakes and killer wasps.  Maybe I was wrong about my conception of hiking in July in the canyons.  Nope. I was not wrong.  I was not wrong at all!!!!!!! This morning's hike started out well enough.  A bunch of smiling happy women ready to take on the challenging adventure.  Not too far into our walk, the bugs descended upon us.  There were so many bugs everywhere.  Swarms of them.  If we slowed down even a little we were instantly covered in bugs.  We vowed to hike as fast as we could to avoid major blood loss by the attacking bugs.  As soon as we were making good progress with our speed hiking.....RATTLESNAKE!  Not a little rattlesnake either!  A great big rattlesnake with a great big rattle.  You know you are in trouble when the hiking guide grabs his chest and starts shaking in fear.  He was so frightened by the sudden appearance of the gigantic snake that he had to stop to recover his racing heart.  Well, I am frightened by teeny tiny garden snakes so imagine my terror!!!! There we all were, waiting for the snake to leave the hiking trail, listening to the guide say how startled he was and that snake was huge and the rattle was huge and the striking distance was at least 3 feet so keep our distance WHILE being eaten alive by bugs!!!!! Yes.  SO MUCH FUN!  I kept saying that tomorrow, we will all laugh about our snake filled (because we saw more than one rattlesnake) bug-filled, speed hike day. Tomorrow it will be really really funny.  It turns out that it didn't take until tomorrow.  When we saw each other later today, we were already laughing about our hike.  We talked about how we ended up singing cheesy 80's tunes as we tried to escape the canyon alive.  We had all bonded by our shared hatred of our hike and we had turned the agony into a really funny laugh-filled hike as we ran/hiked out of the canyons.  We had one goal - GET OUT ALIVE!  Of course we all made it.  I will never hear the song S A F E T Y   dance again without thinking of running away from killer bugs and snakes.  And for anyone wondering about tomorrow's schedule....NO HIKING ALLOWED!