Wednesday October 18, 18.8km/11.7mi

Flagstaff Urban Trail Jct (229.2/6620ft) to Marshall Lake Trailhead (236.6/7150ft) (AZ) + 4.3mi Urban Trail

We were awake at 7am in the hotel room, and I walked over to the Fry’s to get groceries. It’s supposed to be a 15-minute walk but I got delayed by a long train.

Fry’s is basically Arizona’s version of Kroger, so it was easy to find everything in the store since it was laid out just like every other store.

I went straight back to the hotel room where I organized my food, and then TopShelf went to the grocery store while I took a shower.

I checked out of the hotel room at 11am and walked next door to the McDonald’s where I ordered way too many chicken McNuggets. And fries, and a McFlurry, and…

I was joined at my table by another AZT SoBo hiker named Survivorman, whom I had met a week ago at the North Rim. We talked about everything relating to the trail, and TopShelf joined us an hour later. The two of us said goodbye to Survivorman, and we walked out of town at 1pm. It was entertaining seeing some of Arizona culture, for example they consider this a pumpkin patch.

A few minutes later we walked through a tunnel under the I-40 freeway, and then instantly in the woods.

I think there is an airport near the trail here, as we kept seeing planes fly overhead.

The trail followed a wide valley South away from the city.

Pretty soon our “Flagstaff urban route” rejoined the main Arizona Trail.

I stopped for a short break, and then spent the next couple hours trying to catch up to TopShelf. Eventually I became suspicious that I hadn’t caught up yet, and then I checked my phone messages and saw “oops! I took a wrong turn, I’m behind you”. Ha! I kept him, since we had a set distance to hike every day. The ponderosa pine Forest made the afternoon go by quickly.

Just before 6pm I got to our planned campsite, and it was surrounded by cows. Hi cows!

I quickly setup my tent before it got dark, and messaged TopShelf that we had a nice campsite under the pines. After some phone messaging, I learned that she stopped a couple miles short of our planned campsite and would catch up tomorrow. It feels weird to be camping alone (cows don’t count).