Thursday November 16, 5.0km/3.1mi

Santa Rosa Canal at Joaquin Road (109.1/1380ft) to Santa Rosa Canal exit (112.2/1385ft) (AZ)

I slept in late at the motel, recovering from yesterday’s events. Finally at 7:45, my stomach reminded me I was hungry and I started making food. I looked out the window and saw a neat license plate, from the neighboring state of Sonora.

After breakfast, I did laundry and took a shower, and sorted my resupply food. Sadly, I wasn’t going to be able to eat any of these hard bars this week, so I had to leave them behind.

We had a relaxed morning, and eventually left our nice motel room at noon. It was a surprisingly nice and spacious room for only $70.

We walked a few minutes down the street to the Safeway, where I bought a few more things for the next week of hiking. We had lunch next door at Beyond Bread, a local Tucson chain of soup/sandwich cafes. Roasted red pepper and tomato soup, with multigrain bread!

I had contacted Jake earlier, and he very generously agreed to give us a ride back to the trail. He picked us up at 3:15, and with some traffic, we were back at the trail at 4:30pm.

We had a few more miles along the canal, which was an easy way to end the day.

At 6pm we found a spot to camp, and it also started to rain lightly. That’s a first! I hadn’t seen rain (or even clouds) since our second day on the trail, over 5 weeks ago. I made dinner, took my medication, and eventually fell asleep to the sound of rain.