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On our way up to play in the snow we stopped at the Natural Bridge north of Payson. For several years we have passed the bridge on our way up to play in the snow and this year I said we were going to see it.

(In June of 2008 we went back when we were up on the Rim for the Mayberry family reunion and a bunch of the family hiked the bottom trail. The trail starts upstream of the natural bridge and then exits at the natural bridge, on the brochure it looked like a short easy hike. The trail is not really a trail, more like a bottom of a gorge with a stream and a bunch of bolders. The only way to tell where you should go was an occasional arrow glued to a bolder. We climbed up, down, under and around bolders and it was quite hot. We had a bunch of little kids with us that needed a lot of help. We had a line of adults who would be at different areas on the trail and we would have to hand a kid from one adult to the next adult or hold a kids hand. It was a really tough going but we were having fun and were in no hurry to get done. Anyways, we had been going down this trail for an hour and a half and we came across a big woman (around 350lbs) and she said we should turn around (she was very adamant) because the trail where we were heading was REALLY bad. She explained to us how it was really steep, their was a dangerous dropoff and on and on about it. We thought crap, it gets worse then it has been?

While we were stopped talking a couple Mayberry boys ran ahead up the trail so we had to keep going up the trail to get them. Not more than two minutes after we passed this lady we could see the natural bridge and a real trail. We only walked five or so minutes after that to get out of the canyon and we walked on a smooth trail wide enough for two people. The trail was really steep but not bad and to think we almost turned around and did the hour and a half again if we would have listened to her. CRAZY! We were quite irritated with the lady after her "help" and after she came back out a member of our family nicely pointed out what the trail was like where she had not gone.