Stats
👣 Miles: 16.02
📈 Elevation Gain: 1,824 ft
📉 Elevation Loss: 2,306 ft
Overall Weather: Cool, Windy, Sunny
Town Day Morning
We got up with a different purpose today! Today was town day. We haven’t had a town day in almost 3 weeks!!! Our last true town was Parker, Arizona. (No, gas stations don’t count as town to me.)
The morning brought us up over a pass on a not often used trail. Surprisingly, the trail did had bike tire marks.
We had several de-layering breaks as the sun came out, and it started to warm up.
This old trail led us to another trail, the “CRHT,” which we followed for a third of a mile at the other end of JTree.
Here, it followed the wash downhill. We ran into an older couple with very new-looking thru-hiker gear. They were hiking uphill in the sand, so they looked understandably tired.
A Large Number of Tourons
That led us to a car camping campground in the park (and water). And wow, were there a lot of tourons there (tourist morons.) Did I strategically crop them out of photos? Yes, I did.
We went to the bathroom and used their trash cans, then got out asap. With real town on the horizon, we wanted to avoid the literal busload of small screaming children. 🤮
Luckily, the small humans were being herded elsewhere by two rangers with terrified faces.
We buzzed out uphill on a trail and went through several junctions until we finally reached the park boundary.
Town Walking
BT seemed to keep us on dirt as much as possible, but eventually, we hit the pavement.
There were many older women with pursed lips gawking at us as we walked on the road.
We diverted slightly from his route to make a more direct line for Chipotle. As we got better cell service, I ordered two double-wrapped veggie burritos with extra beans and rice for pickup. No one needed to smell us in the ordering line…
We were voracious and thought about consuming it all in one go. However, we held back because we still needed to get food and get into the hotel.
Next, while we were tired but thankfully not hungry, we went grocery shopping to pick up hotel microwave food and 3 days of hiking food.
After that chore, we walked the 1.5 miles to our hotel and checked in.
The front desk staff was barely friendly, and either the owner or the manager was flat-out yelling at two employees. I had to say, “Excuse me,” while he yelled to get to the elevator. Gross.
When we got to the room, it wasn’t like the photos. It was clean, but it only had a fridge, not a microwave, whereas the photos clearly showed a microwave.
We went back down and asked about it, only to be told that it was a separate type of room that we had not booked (despite the wrong photos), but we could upgrade for $50. 🙄🙄🙄
They said we could use the microwave in the breakfast area, which was available 24/7.
When I asked about guest laundry (also mentioned online), they said it was “out of order.” I really felt like they were lying to me the whole time.
So, we made their lobby smell like popcorn all evening as we popped 6 bags of it at varying intervals.
Sink Laundry
Since we were going right back out, we didn’t want to waste the time or the energy to walk the 1/2 mile up the laundromat.
We used the shampoo and conditioner we bought at the grocery store and started the sink washing.
Karma made a drying rack, and we completed all the town chores before passing out in the uncomfortable bed.
Definitely NOT coming back here…