We spent two days with our friend, Debbie, from our AK days. She now lives in Star Valley AZ. The weather was cool there, so we had a good hike and a lots of chat. We’re now at LAX heading home to return in two weeks to do the Northern sections of the AZT. We plan for warmer weather in May.

I wanted to stay on the trail despite heat and lack of water. But Terry was convinced, we might not survive at my slow pace. The northern part will happen later. I guess we’ll return in early May.

So we rented a car from the Tucson Airport despite having no transportation to the airport. Our hosts Carol and Carl have been generous with rides for all the hikers, but Tucson is 35 miles and another 30 to the airport.

Carol came in, she literally walks in, to tell us she was making two runs to the PO. I said no problem we’re not getting back on the trail here but rather picking up a rental car in Tucson. She said, good we’re taking a run into town today, and we’ll take you. That’s super nice and lucky.

A half hour later, she returned and told us her plans had changed and they weren’t making a run into town, but Carl would drive us now. We closed up out packs and were off. About ten miles out of town, Terry said, boy, the post office is a long way out. Carl slammed on the brakes and high-tailed it back.

We had spoken nothing about where we’d get the car. Nor had we mentioned we had one reserved at the airport, so when he stopped at the closest rental, we said thanks and gave him gas money. That rental had no cars until Tuesday. We called an Uber.

I asked Terry which car rental was listed on reservation. He said Budget. There it was, the longest slowest moving line. Terry waited against the wall next to the wife of the guy behind me. It took 40 minutes to inch forward, long enough to play 7 little words, Wordle, and Worldle. So what the heck. I was happy I didn’t have impatient Terry in my view. When my turn was next, I opened my phone to discover I had ordered the car from Hertz. I turned to the guy behind me and said, I’m in the wrong line. Can you tell my husband? He said, oh man. I ain’t getting involved with that. I headed over to the Hertz count, when I heard the guy say to the representative, what? The reservation can’t be for yesterday. He looked over to his wife whose was talking to Terry. The two culprits of these egregious mistakes pretending they don’t even know us.

Off we were in the rental car blistering down the highway, with plenty of water, heading off to car camp for the night. Oh no, we forgot to pick up the umbrellas we had shipped to the PO to survive the heat. Detour back to Oracle and hoping no one sees our ineptitude again. This was a stealth retrieval, a true face saving move. In and out like pros.

Resuming the blistering pace in our Corolla. We’re free from fret. And where are we going. Someone said Globe was good. No it wasn’t. Off to Lake Roosevelt. It looked great.

The park was empty. We pulled up to a site we liked. We got out and were accosted by a women surveying all the sites for possible microwave pollution. She said she didn’t get along with microwaves and hoped we had our phones in airplane mode. We we weren’t sure we could help her with that. She left when she saw us walking about camp with our phones held high to capture bird calls.

It was the break of dawn, and we heard our biker friend from Vancouver Island fly by our tent. He had this crazy AZT bike trip planned by a friend. The day before the trip, the friend tested positive for COVID. He went for it without his buddy. This route requires lots of uphill bike pushing and downhill terror. We’ve seen other bikes limiting their trek to just the friendlier paths. But this guy was going for the gusto. We were up and packing before Colton woke. He popped his head out of the tent as we were leaving just before 7:00.

We only had six miles to go, which turned out to be eight or nine with the two mile downhill path into the small town of Oracle. Biosphere 2 lies just outside the town. Once again rocks were my enemy. I ended up on my back sliding from the rocks. My backpack made it hard to get up so I waited for Terry. He looked down at me and asked, “What are you doing?”

The houses as we came into town were big cliff hangers. The trail dumped us onto a newly asphalted road. We whipped out our phones looking for a hint of which direction to walk. A woman stopped her Honda CRV at our feet. She had just found a tortoise in the road and was calling friends about this. They were in mid-rescue we she came to our aid. She was thrilled to be of help. She called her husband who was in the middle of his two hour daily conversation with his friend who has a back injury. Nevertheless he took her call. Yes, the tortoise was being rescued, but now she had a new project, us. No, he didn’t know the number of the former trail angel, but recommended she should drive over there. So off we went.

At the trail angels, she left the car on and jumped out while the car dinged and dinged to her about taking the keys from a running car. She didn’t care and the car gave up. In the meantime, we hadn’t turned off our Garmin locator so anyone looking at it realized we were heading for town. One of our friends started texting. We had two dramas playing out at once.

No one answered the door to this small motel with little A-framed cabins. Finally she phoned and a man stepped out. We couldn’t hear their conversation, but we watched the drama. They had retired from renting these cabins, but someone else had rooms. She hugged the guy several times, and we were off to find another room.

She was excited because this was a new Air BnB. The owners appeared a bit older than us. A couple of years ago they purchased this large home— over 7,000 sq ft.— or so they say. Now it has three rentals. We took a room and we were squared away for the night waiting to pick up our food.

We didn’t feel good about the next two segments of the hike because of heat and the unpredictability of water, so we got serious about moving forward to the last section. So we worked on renting a car. Then we notified Debbie our friend in Star Valley to visit for a few days while we checked out our next move forward to the Grand Canyon and Utah. We were all set up. I said we better check on the temperature there. Every night for the next 14 days was going to be below freezing. We don’t have clothes for that.

So we cancelled everything and went back to plan A. But we still don’t know about water.

Every time we get into town, we take everything out of our packs. We need to find our dirty clothes to wash, find garbage to throw out and replace the pond scrum we’ve been drinking with clear tap water. Town trips are not relaxing. We had a 6:30 breakfast, but we weren’t ready to leave until our packs were stuffed.

We called for an Uber and we were off in his Rav 4 by 9:30 and should should have been on the trail by 10:00. The driver was listening to the hits of the sixties and complaining that they only play what are considered commercial hits when there are better songs. He asked me if I wanted him to turn the music off. The volume was so low I couldn’t make out one song. I should be happy riding with someone older than me, but now I worry about possible cataracts, or some dementia because he thinks he can hear the radio.

It was a twenty-seven mile drive to Romero Trailhead. We had to go in through a state park. We stopped to pay the fee, and I asked the ranger if we could get to Romero Pass from this park. “Not anymore. It’s closed for repairs.” The only other way to get to the trail was on the other side of town on the road we came from last night. In fact we would have to resume our hike where we left off with the eight mile climb now starting after 11:00 AM in the mounting heat. This was now impossible because if we couldn’t make it in one day, we’d be too late. We wanted to be in Oracle by Sunday evening.

So we asked the driver if he’d drive us the 29 miles up the mountain to the small town of Summerhaven. He capitulated. He seemed to regret the decision as the road slowly wound it’s way up. We passed many bicyclists conquering this steep incline. Our driver hated bicyclists and became more vocal about it as the miles mounted, along with the cost, finally reaching $116.

We were dropped off in the middle of this cute ski town, well ski town for about two days a year. He let us out at the cafe where all the hikers we had met were milling. You can imagine how we felt emerging from a car all fresh and clean as the other hikers had earned a rest and we had bought one. We left post haste with our tails between our legs.

This hike should have been been easy. It was only ten miles. After a long uphill, it’s followed by a down hill. Ha! Up we went. Sharply. Any downhill break was covered with breakneck rocks trying to take us down. And all the while the wind blasted. If our Uber driver read this he’d say, “We’ll you signed up for this.”

It seemed we should be near. In truth we had only made it four miles. When we saw a couple of flat spots we pitched the tent and whipped out the Jet Boil. It was a kale and white beans with rice night. We’d pay for this mix later. As we were cooking in the tent, hiker Colton called to us, can I share this spot with you? Sure. We had just met him at the cafe. He is an ambassador for Six Moons backpacking gear. Amazingly he’s hiking with Cystic Fibrosis. The wind was howling and continued all night.

Because we camped part way down the north side of Mica Mtn, it seemed we would have an easy, downhill sort of day. Our goal was to camp a few miles past Molino Basin campground for a 20 mile day. We hit the trail at 6:05. The weather and terrain gods would have none of it.

Rocky and treacherous, the north side of Mica was anything but fast and easy. As the morning wore on, the temp rose quickly into the 90’s. Shade was nonexistent. Every animal had crawled or slithered into some hidden pocket of agreeable conditions, except a few miserable hikers. Hey did I mention seeing a long (5-6 ft) green snake laying across the trail a few days ago? When it became aware of our presence, it launched off the trail and up into the branches of a palo verde tree in the blink of eye. It’s eyes showed total focus and I wondered what actions it might be considering.

There was no guaranteed water source, forcing us to carry a couple of gallons, which we replenished at one mudhole and one hiker box along the way. By 3:00 the final ascent began. It took over an hour to climb 3/4 mile. We stopped once so Deb could replace her spent caffeine. Five o’clock found us in the Molina campground parking lot, totally exhausted and super thirsty. What to do? We put out our thumbs and hitched a ride into town for a night in a hotel. We’ll return to the trail tomorrow….

We hiked uphill the whole morning and left the desert well behind. The trees were sugar pines and Jeffery pines. It looked like the woods around Tahoe. There was even a stream with water. The air was cool, and the winds swirled around us. Despite being a trudge, it was pleasant. We climbed about 4000 feet to 8900.

We were happy to start the decent. We flew down hoping to make the progress we needed. If we were going to be in Oracle by Sunday, we needed to get in a fifteen mile day. It seemed possible. Maybe we could do Seventeen miles. And then the trail narrowed until we needed to push through the prickly bramble. Rocks of small bolder size to pea gravel covered the trail tripping us up and sliding us down. No. Falls but lots of slips it was painful, slow and maddening.

We stopped at 5:30 by a stream to get water. Our last source in 30 miles. Our packs will be heavy with water tomorrow. We were fortunate to find a flat spot to pitch our tent. We ate dinner with a Scott’s oriole flitting around and serenading. We only made it 13 miles. Will start before sunup tomorrow.

The day started with a sit-down hot breakfast in our hotel. We called an Uber and fifteen minutes later we were headed for Hope Creek Trailhead 27 miles away. The last mile or two was on a dirt road. Our driver was cool about the whole drive even when his Uber app lead us astray, and Terry directed him with his iPhone Maps.

We hiked down 2.5 miles to reach the official AZT. We had another 8 miles before we’d arrive at our campground named Grass Shack. We had reserved a spot here on Recreation.gov last night. We were heading into Saguaro National Park, and you can only camp in one of their camps.

It was a hot 93 degrees. I was dragging my feet and the rest of me. We entered the park and the magnificent saguaros appeared everywhere. We identified the song of the Gila Woodpecker, the Cristal Thrasher and the White-Winged Dove, new birds for us.

And then the climbing began. With the added heat, it was torturous. Whine, whine. Shade was very occasional. Terry met a couple of hikers at the hotel. He was sure they were older than us. We found them tucked into the supreme shady spot of this area. They were very gracious and offered the spot to us, but we declined. I was pissed we had, when they passed us later skipping along up the incline.

We were well above the saguaro before a few trees started to dot the landscape. I felt I couldn’t take another step. At our last trip to the grocery store last night, I found my favorite pick-me-up, 4 oz cans of double shot espresso. I made room for two of them in my pack. Terry said it was time to use one. After downing one, I, too, skipped up the trail the last three miles. When we got to the camp the other couple and a single man were set up and visiting.

We found a great site out of view of the others. We’re on a babbling stream. Despite the babbling we heard a desperate cry of what we believed to be a baby bird waiting for parents to return. The app identified it as a Cooper’s Hawk. Next we heard low chat, chat, chat, chat persisting. This was a Yellow-breasted Chat. Both the calls to this chat and an Elf Owl lingered into our dreams.

Cristal thrasher, gila woodpecker, yellow-breasted chat, Coopers Hawk, white winged dove elf owl

Tuesday morning, and we need to reach the REI in Tucson, 25 miles away. Deb needs a hiking shirt, and we’d like to check out hiking umbrellas that stick to a backpack and provide a spot of shade. When Deb asks Andy about getting a bus into Tucson, he offered that he had an appointment near the REI at 10:00. Sweet! They had no umbrellas in stock, but Deb did buy a shirt.

We checked into a Best Western, cleaned up, and had time to repack before Deb’s brother and his wife stopped by. They had spent the winter in their motorhome in California, and were driving back to Minnesota. Lucky timing. We spent a few hours enjoying the hospitality at Olive Garden.

Tomorrow the feet meet the trail as we start climbing Mt. Mica.

We hoped for a fast 12 mile down hill run into Vail AZ. We had hiked from the land of the Pine at high altitudes, to the land of the oaks as we lowered, to the land of no shade on the desert floor. Today was the warmest so far. Low eighties. Nary a place to sit, only the trail itself, which we didn’t do owing to no shade. It’s hard to sit under an ocotillo, the tallest vegetation out here. So we were on the move for 8 hours only stopping to snack and get water.

Terry continued logging in more plant Identification. I took a picture of him with the app, and he’s identified as an animal. About two thirds of the way down, Terry told me to try my bird song ID. It identified twenty birds, some I had never heard before, like a verdan, a cactus wren, and an upland sandpiper. It was hard to stop pulling my phone out for more IDs, but we were heading into town and glorious things awaited.

Emerging from a trail into a road is disorienting. The noise and fast pace of traffic breaks the peace immediately. We didn’t know which direction town was or how to get there. Calling Uber, Lift and a Taxi provided negative results. Hitch-hiking gave us no hope. I wouldn’t pick us up. We were wearing weird clothing to cover every part of your body except nose and mouth. We were hot, dirty, and stinky. And we had huge backpacks.

A man approached us. He had been day hiking on the trail, and now was heading to his car in the parking lot. When I asked for a ride into town, he reluctantly said yes. But he was going in the the gun shop that was directly across from the post office, our destination, so what the heck? It seemed about 10 miles into town and we were happy we didn’t have to walk it.

Vail didn’t know how to be a town. It was a bedroom community of Tucson with no center, only the gun shop, PO, gas station and Dairy Queen. I went to the PO and Terry went to the gas station to get a Monster. When I came out of the PO, I saw a man lifting his tail gate and helping another man lift his backpack into the car. That can’t be Terry. What the ? Terry waves to me to come. This man told Terry he was a trail angel and we could stay at his house, since there is no lodging in Vail. Mighty generous of an unknown man.

We drove up and around housing communities to Spider Rock Road to a good sized, really nice house on a acre with view of the mountains. His ninety pound Pit Bull greeted us affectionately. I’m instinctively fearful of pit bulls, but he gave me no room to worry about him. The man, Andy, had to leave to go to his son’s volleyball game. He was a divorced dad with shared custody and the kids were with their mom on weekdays. It was about 3:30. Andy would be back around 7:00. Make yourselves at home, wash your clothes, take showers, No Wifi and weak Verizon service.

He drove off. We had an intense conversation about how stuck we were and how this detour would put us behind schedule by a day. We needed to be in our own space without distractions to regroup. We needed to spread out our stuff and focus on the next leg of our journey and call people and and eat with abandon and shop . . . And not visit with strangers.

Andy came home with a pizza and a salad for me and his friend, Rita. She had a great interest in hiking and she became a Trail Angel when she learned that people thru hiked this trail that basically was in her backyard. She had been encouraging Andy to get into this volunteering opportunity. And he pounced on it when he saw us in our state of need. Over a couple hour dinner, we learned a lot about these two generous people.

The bed was good.

We woke in the hallway of the 19th century ranch house that serves as a visitor center for a 3,000 acre NFS reserve. Thru Hikers land here because the terrain is pretty forbidding before and after this Forest Service Land. We found it wasn’t uncommon to pitch tents there and if there wasn’t room, to sleep on the porch or inside the ranch house exhibit. Being the last to arrive, we put our sleeping bags down at the end of a hallway inside the 19th century bunkhouse. We would have much rather camped alone away from such civilization. I felt as though we were in the movie Power of the Dog. I dreamt that Terry made me play the piano for the Hummel family who were pictured on one of the displays. My mother was a piano teacher, so she played well. I was horrible. You know the scene, if you saw the movie.

We left the ranch at 7:00. We walked to the top of the hill and and got LTE signal. I loaded my blog post we wrote on the night before. While we were doing this, two of the other hikers passed us. Two women aged 62 & 70, who haven’t hiked in 30 years. Now their gear is old and heavy and they need to carry lots of water. So we assumed we’d pass them shortly.

I called my brother. Greg has been following our Garmin locator signal that tracks our movement. He zoomed in and located us on Google earth. He wanted to know why we were in a building last night. He told me what our next post office looked like. He thinks the PO is new, so now we’re excited. Later at our 3:00 break Terry said, we must hurry because Greg will wonder why we’re stopping so log.

I turned on my Garmin watch yesterday for the last two hours of our hiking day. It tells me how far and fast we’re going. With the watch on, I was focused and faster. Terry has stayed behind me this year because, he says, I lose things. So I just sort of lallygagged along. Not good if you’re on a schedule.

Terry walked behind looking for pigpen to lose yet another pair of glasses. But when I turn around he is way behind bent over with his his new app (Seek) trained on some plant or tree. He looked serious and studious. When he catches up to me he shares his finds. We both love their delicious names like Desert Globemallow, Silver Nightshade and Rock Harlequin.

Two hours & fifteen minutes and five miles later, we stopped for our first break. As we were packing up, the two women caught up to us. We’re had they been? We thought they we’re in front of us. They had taken a wrong turn. We took the same turn, but checked our app and turned back immediately. They went on, as we donned our packs. we found them on break just ahead of us and never saw them again. We headed down the hill to a road and there across the street was an incredible trail angel cache of food, water, beverages and even chairs. We had just snacked but there’s always room for chocolate milk, bananas and apple pie. OMG it makes you weep.

Just up the trail we ran into a threesome walking merrily down. They were carrying no packs. People with packs don’t walk merrily. I asked if they were from Minnesota. Yes, from Brainerd. There was a car parked by the food cache with MN plates. Somehow they got around to telling us about how their son and a friend had pulled his ice-fishing house from Brainerd to the BWCA and then three lakes into the wilderness area to fish. Hmmm—

We maintained our good pace fueled by increasing pain. We ended after a 17 mile day. The weather was super. The one water source, a trough, covered in thick green algae, has served us well and will probably last to through the next 12 miles into town.

Tonight we made a campsite just a step up from a wash. It’s narrow and surrounded by cacti, snags, thorns, clothes-grabbing trees and bushes at every turn. Yet big enough to pitch the tent in a relatively flat spot. The slight slope keeps us on our toes. But we memorize every snag and rock to successfully maneuver down to the wash.

The pebbles in the wash made super comfy seats. We had quiet alone eating Cuban Rice and Beans from the same cook bag using the same spoon. We watched the sliver of a moon come into view as the sky darkened just after 7:00. Doves cooed. So much peace to be found.