15.7 miles
524.6 AZT mile marker
It was another night with a lot of condensation. At one point during the night I could tell even my bag was getting wet again, but then some wind picked up and I think helped dry things slightly. That didn’t matter too much though since I was headed to town today where I could get everything dry easily.
I set off at a good pace, with town drawing me in. I hadn’t gotten a shower or done laundry in more than a week, and I needed a good town stop.
The trail followed the Gila River, but kept its distance, winding through the hills next to the river. It never really directly approached the river, so it wasn’t actually like it was following a major waterway. I had filtered enough water at camp to get me to town, so it didn’t matter that I didn’t actually get to the river as I crossed dry wash after dry wash.
The trail was generally flat with some small gradual climbs and descents as needed to continue a line on the side hill traverse, but it wasn’t very difficult. There wasn’t too much in the way of scenery either. The terrain was gentle and not too dramatic, so it was just an average desert landscape.
I was struggling again today with motivation, and was only focused on doing the miles until town. I will be taking a day off in town to try to change my perspective since just doing the miles is not a sustainable way to finish this trail. I kept looking at my trail app to see how many miles were left to town.
I passed Druid whose very detailed trail notes I had been following on my trail app, but I was hiking faster and I continued to drive forward.
I came to a point where the trail paralleled a railroad track. I considered just following the tracks since it was a lot shorter distance to get to the same place, but it appeared it could get narrow along the route and I decided not to risk not having a place to bail if a train came. Hiep later told me he took the tracks and there was no such concern and he really enjoyed them. You just never know.
It was getting warm again, especially since I was at low elevation, and I had to take a couple brief stops. However, at long last I made it to the trailhead, and walked about a mile out to the main road.
It took about 15 minutes for me to catch a hitch into town with a Ed, who has picked up hikers 3 days in a row now. He took me right to the Inn where I was staying.
My room wasn’t ready so I hung out in the attached bar with a couple cool beverages which were given for free since my room was late being ready. Works for me. Hiep showed up. We are sharing the double room.
Since we are taking tomorrow off, we didn’t have to focus on our town chores and just hung out for the night. We had the largest size pizza that the only open restaurant in town, and may have had some more drinks before heading to bed.