From Tuesday: It’s 7:00 on Tuesday night and we’re tucked into our tents for what us supposed to be a 25 degree night. My Nunatek quilt will be put to the true test.

We plan to arrive in Flagstaff on Thursday morning after a mere ten miles and in time for a healthy dose of unhealthy breakfast. I’m hoping for Eggs Benedict with a double side order of bacon and bottomless coffee, the latter of which I will only do in town.

The trail these few days has been quite nice and that we are on the Mogollon Rim, is an entirely different landscape than southern Arizona and central as well. So much forest, wild elk, colder daytime and evening temperatures with plenty of prescription left on the ground from recent systems that passed through. Other than occasional planes, the soundscape has been silent of human development. Crushing pine needles under feet. Pine cones dropping from tree limbs. Birds, of course. And the wind. Different dances of the wind through dense forest, thin forest and burned forest.