Sunday May 5, 2.9mi/4.7km

Jordan Trail TH (49.9/4480ft) to Steamboat Tank (51.6/4700ft) (Arizona) +1.2mi Sedona connector

I left camp just after 6am, and hiked the last mile of trail to the highway.

I started to see a bunch of fancy houses up on the ridge to my left, and I could hear the highway up ahead. Once I got to the highway, I had to walk along it on a sidewalk for about half a mile to get to the closest bus stop.

Sedona seems to have a pretty great bus system they run every hour and it’s only $1. But apparently I had just missed the previous bus, and the next one wouldn’t come for almost 45 minutes, so I decided to walk the last mile to town. I have planned to go directly to a diner for breakfast, but since I passed a laundromat first I decided to do my laundry and get that over with. Then, the Coffee Pot diner!

They had 101 omelets on their menu, and I tried two of them, both of which were pretty solid.

After the diner, I walked over to Safeway to buy my groceries and sit in the little cafe to charge my devices. It was a cozy little corner, and I was able to download all my maps and do my other phone chores before I left at 3pm. After Safeway, I headed across the parking lot to get some fast food and saw this tempting sign along the way.

There’s no way those places would ever want to see a hiker’s dirty feet in their spa, haha. I walked into the McDonald’s intending to buy a couple McChicken sandwiches to pack out for dinner that night, but instead I saw they had a promotion of 20 McNuggets & fries for $5 so I got that instead.

I left McDonald’s and was ready to head back to the trail. But when I checked the bus schedule, I had again just missed the bus and I would need to wait another 40 minutes. So I decided to get a Lyft to the trailhead and it was only $6. It had been really windy and cloudy all day and as I hiked along the rock formations I noticed the wind had picked up.

They were very pretty to look at though.

I had been looking for a camp spot that was sheltered from the wind, and just before 7pm I came across a spot that seemed good enough.

It was still a little windy, but it did have a pretty amazing view of the sunset amongst the clouds.

I made my dinner and was all ready for bed, when the wind really picked up and I could hear it in the treetops above me. My tent is staked in very solid, but I can feel little bits of sand coming through the mesh, so that will be a fun mess to clean up tomorrow morning.