A day of road walks. A day of monotony. A day of blistering heat on a never ending motorized path.

Not every mile of the Arizona Trail lies on single track walking path. Some of it still follows roads, both paved and dirt. These areas are also traveled by those who ride the trail on bikes or horses. Currently, the section we hiked today is being re-routed with new trail, outside of the town of Patagonia, so hikers can avoid these long road walks. However, for us this is the current trail and we intend to hike every mile of it.

From state highway, to paved back roads, to private dirt roads, to forest service roads, and finally on to old road beds we hiked. We ended up walking 12.6 miles of road before we finally reached dirt hiking trail once again. It was a long day and at the dead end of road is where we camped that night and put our tired feet to rest.