Saturday October 28, 26.7km/16.6mi

Black Bear Saddle (433.4/5570ft) to Roosevelt Lake Marina (450.0/2210ft) (AZ)

I woke up at 5:30am, to the sound of Beer Goddess’ footsteps leaving. I got packed up and left a half-hour later, watching a glowing eastern sky.

I hiked along the side of a ridge all morning, contouring on a level elevation and enjoying the views of the lake.

The view of the Four Peaks, behind me.

And the view of Roosevelt Lake, ahead of me.

The trail had been a little brushy all morning, but soon it opened up and was easier to walk.

After a couple hours of walking along that ridge, the trail finally started to drop in elevation and head down to the lake.

An hour later I came to the Mills Ridge Trailhead. I like that they explain whose land we were hiking on.

And nearby, a local trail angel had left a cache of water. Amazing!

I grabbed one liter, to make it the final 2 hours into the town. It was pretty easy walking, and at these lower elevations there aren’t many plants growing.

I did start to see a lot of these Saguaro cacti, though. That’s a first for this trail!

The lake was getting closer!

So many saguaro cacti!

The final descent to the lake was quite steep, and we took our time on the loose gravelly path.

As we got closer, we could see the dam that created this artificial lake.

And the massive, half-mile long bridge that we would soon be walking over.

When TopShelf and I arrived at the road, we had a surprise, someone had left an entire case of Dr pepper!

We would find out later that it was a friend of Beer Goddess, he had picked her up earlier and dropped off a case of soda. Nice! We walked along a road for a couple miles.

And pretty soon arrived at the Roosevelt Lake Marina.

The first thing we did was order a meal. It was 3pm so I’m not sure if it was lunch or dinner, but it was delicious.

This place is very friendly to hikers, and they let us charge our phones and camp for free nearby on the property. We also bought some snacks at the tiny general store, for the next two days’ of hiking to the town of Superior. The shelves were almost bare, as it was the end of the season and they don’t restock often. After shopping we setup our tents and got ready for bed. I had a great view of the rising full moon!

Even though we only hiked 16 miles today, much of it was slow trail and exhausting.