Wednesday May 24, 3.9mi/6.3km

Jacob Lake (533.6/7745ft) to AZT at Buffalo Trick Tank (537.5/8400ft) (AZ)

It was another relaxing morning, I slept in until 7am and started planning my next hike and downloading maps and info. After a quick breakfast of grapefruit, toast and tea, we went back to town. Shadow had a couple more things to buy, and I wanted to check out the Heritage House.

It’s an old house in Kanab, built in 1894, and home to a couple prominent local families over the years.

It had tons of architectural details that you’d only see on old houses. The stair railing posts were carved into beehives, as Utah was promoted as the beehive state (industrious and teamwork).

The attic windows looked like eyes staring down. The top triangle in the roof is supposed to be the same eye symbol that’s on a $1 bill. Neat!

The inside had fancy colored glass windows and old stone fireplaces.

One of the men who owned the house was a physician, so the desk and bookshelf contained many interesting titles.

There were several bedrooms, most of which had many photos of the man’s large family – he had 6 wives and 42 children.

It’s a national historical building!

After the free hour-long tour, I picked up Shadow from the store, and we went and got ice cream sundaes at the local drugstore’s soda fountain.

Kanab has a nice walkable downtown, only 6 blocks long, and some of the businesses had punny signs.

We drove to the house and finished packing, I got a final shower, and Deena very generously gave us a ride back to the trail, 45 minutes away. We started hiking at 5pm, in the beautiful ponderosa pine forest.

After 4 miles, we stopped to camp for the night near a pond and a water tank.

It felt so good to be camping in a real forest again! Nice soft ground with pine needles, no sand, and no wind… perfect.

Two more days until we enter Grand Canyon National Park!