Hike to Humprey's Peak Summit

My wife and I joined forces alongside another couple to plan out an amazing roadtrip. One goal we set was to summit a mountain as three out of the four of us had never done so before. We all live in Kansas City, MO, and have no mountain summiting opportunities in the area. We set our sights on Humprey's Peak just north of Flagstaff, AZ. The one person in our group had done Humprey's Peak before and so it made since for us choose it (that and it sounded less intimidating than starting with a 14er). The trail is 4.8 miles to the summit and you gain 3,333 ft of elevation along the way. It was without a doubt the hardest thing i've done in my life (we made sure to take a lot of breaks along the way and kept well hydrated). After 7 hours, we finally made it to the summit! Having never summited a mountain before, we were not acclimated to the toll the elevation would take on us, but we endured and made it, even if we were slow. Once at the top, we took the opportunity for pictures and to rest and enjoy our accomplishment. The return trip down took about 4 hours and we ran out of water with about 2 hours left of the hike. Fortunately we made it safely back to the car where we had more water waiting.