Day 20…..9.6 miles…..AZT mile 470.2

Today was a really nice relaxing day in town. The cabin we rented behind THAT Brewery was super comfortable and after sleeping in a couple extra hours, QB and I split a box of Lucky Charms and explored the town of Pine. I guess this place is becoming a vacation spot for people from Phoenix and it was a perfect little pit stop for a thru hike. We got a pizza for lunch, did our laundry, resupplied at the market, got a couple Reuben sandwiches at the deli and headed back to the trail around 3:30. Once back on trail the miles were smooth and easy as we walked through a pine forest, a nice way to get back at it after pigging out all day. Just as we started to look for a campsite we saw a couple of elk browsing for leaves in the woods. The first elk jam of the trip!looking up at the Mogollon Rim

Day 21…..26.7 miles…..AZT mile 496.9

This morning the trail rolled through a forest for about a dozen miles until we got up close to the edge of the Mogollon Rim(Mogollon sounds nothing like the way it looks). We then climbed steeply for about a mile until we were up onto the rim. The Mogollon Rim is something of a geological feature that I can only describe as a plateau that goes on for miles and miles until we reach the south rim of the Grand Canyon(I think). You’ll have to check Wikipedia for a better explanation of what the Mogollon Rim actually is and you might even learn how to pronounce it. Anyway, now we’re up around 7000 feet, the trail has been relatively flat and we’ve been walking through a legit forest with big pine trees overhead all day. It has been very enjoyable. It’s a little colder up here though, I anticipate a 3 dog night but I don’t have any dogs. I did have a big hot bowl of macaroni and cheese for supper and that was a first for me. Instant mac and cheese is a supper time staple in the thru hiking community but since this is my first season using a stove I’ve never had it on trail before. It was pretty good, at least the first two thirds of it were good and it definitely warmed me up. Hopefully warm enough to sleep through the night on this pine needle tent site we found.

Day 22…..30.5 miles…..AZT mile 527.4

I was right about it being cold last night, even some of our water froze. This morning it was cold for about an hour of walking then all of a sudden it warmed way up and was an absolutely beautiful day. The trail has been flat and easy since we got above the rim and we clicked off miles a little quicker than usual finally having our first 30 mile day.

At the beginning of this trail we met a fair amount of thru hikers, I think something like 20 in the first 200 miles but until tonight we hadn’t met another thru hiker since Superior, 230 miles ago. It’s weird, I guess we started at a popular time to start this trail then got ahead of the bubble and remained in a little pocket without crossing paths with any other thru hikers. Tonight at camp though we caught up to Roadrunner and Pumpkin, 2 women who’ve been just ahead of us for awhile now. It was refreshing and fun to eat supper and camp with other hikers. These 2 are both former PCT hikers and Pumpkin actually started the same exact day as both me and QB in 2015. Crazy! We’ve got different schedules for the next few days so we might not see them again but it was fun to meet them.

Day 23…..27.7 miles…..AZT mile 558.1

Last night Roadrunner and Pumpkin were talking about their plans to go into the little town of Mormon Lake today to get a meal. QB and I hadn’t planned on stopping but this put the bug in our ear and some town food seemed like a really good idea, plus Mormon Lake was on a road that ran parallel to the trail so it wasn’t all that far out of the way. What a good decision. Mormon Lake is more like a village, it’s actually just a road that has mix of little cabins and semi permanent trailers along the side of what once was, or maybe sometimes is when it rains a lot, a lake. It was a pretty cool place and the best part was the pizzeria was open and serving breakfast. QB and I stuffed our faces real quick and got back to walking. We had both been low on food and without going into Mormon Lake we probably would have lived but we would have had to ration our snacks until we got to Flagstaff. After breakfast we walked the road north for awhile until it met back up with the trail. Even though it was parallel the road was probably a few miles shorter than the trail(notice the discrepancy in my numbers at the top of this post). Once back on trail we walked on top of a mesa following a series of forest roads and then a comfortable dirt path through juniper trees. In the distance we had a good view of Humphrey’s Peak, Arizona’s tallest mountain. Another time HP. Tonight we walked past Lowell Observatory, I guess some famous research place, then found a spot to camp and called it a day.Lake? this is supposed to be a lake Hawk!Lowell Observatory

Day 24…..19 miles…..Flagstaff alt mile 11.6

I’m in Flagstaff today in what will probably be our last major town stop of the trail. This morning we walked about 7 miles to where the trail meets the Flagstaff Urban Trail. We took the Flagstaff Urban Trail north for about 5 miles to where it crosses old scenic rt 66 and got a room there at the Travelodge. There was an awesome Mexican restaurant next door, Agave, and we had ourselves a nice Easter Dinner. They had my favorite food, sopapillas, that I’ve only had one other time in my life but it happened to be just down the street on rt 66 in Grants, NM last year. Still my favorite food though, if I’m ever to be executed that’s what I’ll be requesting for my last meal, a never ending plate of sopapillas. After lunch we dropped off most of our gear at our hotel room and with lighter packs walked about 7 more miles on the Urban Trail. Flagstaff has a really nice trail system right in the middle of the city, ideal for hiking, running and mountain biking. We even saw a couple mountain bikers get into a fight with each other(most likely a domestic situation). Once we got to a trailhead that seemed like an appropriate distance for the day we put our thumbs out and the first truck that came by scooped us up and a mountain biker Todd drove us into downtown. This place has got a lot going on, downtown Flagstaff’s got a bunch of restaurants, shops and because of such a big outdoor community they had something like 5 outdoor stores in a square mile. Plus there’s murals on a bunch of the buildings just like Lynn, MA. We walked around for awhile running a couple errands like getting our food squared away for the next section then had some delicious Korean BBQ downtown for supper. Flagstaff is a great town, I’ll be back through here again for sure.

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