Thursday October 12, 16.3km/10.1mi

Mather Campground (100.1/7030ft) to Near road FS2709 (110.2/6820ft) (AZ)

We slept in later, recovering from yesterday’s difficult hike. I wandered over to the general store at 8am to grab a breakfast burrito and charge my devices. I was suddenly pretty hungry, so I also got a chocolate milk, orange juice, some ice cream and a yogurt. TopShelf joined me an hour later, and we took turns doing our resupply shopping while the other person watched over the charging phones. I also went next door to the post office to get my new shoes, and by noon we were pretty much ready to leave. I headed back to the campground to get packed up.

After I had a quick shower, we left 1pm and were hiking back toward the trail. We rejoined the Arizona Trail, and in this section it’s also a paved bike path.

We hiked side by side on the wide paved path, occasionally dodging e-bike riders who were going way too fast. An hour and a half later, we left the Grand canyon National Park.

The forest for this entire section seems to be a large ponderosa pine forest.

Pretty soon we turned left, and went under the park access road in a tunnel.

There was all sorts of artistic and interesting graffiti in there, and this one was especially funny since I always appreciate song lyrics.

We hiked along for another couple hours in the ponderosa pine forest, which was really quiet in contrast to the commotion in the National Park.

As the sun got lower it started to get really cold and I checked my weather forecast – a low of 30F/-1C tonight, brrrr. I found a spot to camp up on a small hill, which should be slightly warmer since it’s not at the bottom of a cold valley. As I write this in my tent, I can hear elk bugling in the forest not too far away.