Arizona Trail

Sideways (Week 1: Flagstaff to Winslow)

Well, at least we're not going backwards this time. Not quite, anyway. When we arrived in Flagstaff, bruising and pain down the front of Glenn's leg screamed "SHIN SPLINTS" (or a "hiccup in his giddy-up", as he calls it). Knowing from bitter personal experience that trying to tough them out just makes them braver, we decided to act grown up,…
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Thank you, Mitzi!

A special thank you to Mitzi, who went out of her way to drive into the centre of Flagstaff, which is not even where she lives, to buy two surprise beers for us at the Weatherford Hotel, where we had a reservation. They were waiting for us behind the bar when we arrived tired and thirsty that evening. Thank you!…
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Russell Tank to Flagstaff

Water, water and water. That was what we spent most of the seconds of the minutes of the hours of this part of the hike thinking about. We set out with a swimming pool worth of water: 15 litres - all we could physically carry. We thought we had it all worked out and some extra water to get us…
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12 signs you’ve been hiking too long

1. You consider socks which are only slightly smelly to be clean. 2. You're excited about the prospect of being able to wash your clothes in a sink, even though it means going to dinner in soaking wet clothes and getting frozen by the air conditioning. 3. You hoard toothpicks from the rare restaurants you come across to clean your…
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Backwards (Tusayan to Russell Tank)

Sometimes I guess you just have to go backwards to go forwards... We set out from Tusayan with 12 litres of (heavy!) water and 10 days' of dehydrated food. The first day took us through beautiful pine forests, past a pair of elk hunt scouts with an elk bugle and a hunter camp and landed us in a beautiful camping…
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Rim to Rim

After 3 days hiking and camping across the Grand Canyon, we finally popped out unglamorously in a South Rim car park late yesterday afternoon, coated from head to toe in dust, like volcanic explosion survivors, after 25.7 miles, having hiked from the Grand Canyon's North Rim. It may sound like we didn't get very far in 3 days, especially given…
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Kaibab Lodge to Grand Canyon’s North Rim

Someone who works here told us that, if we were ever feeling down in the future, Grand Canyon's North Rim is where we'd want to be transported to. This is no overstatement. We hiked down and up the more touristy, lower elevation, South Rim 2 years ago (coincidentally also on our anniversary - the 21st will be our 5th) and,…
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Jacob’s Lake to Kaibab Lodge

Total "horny" toad count since we set out: 14 Deer sightings: 20+ (all doe) Snake count: 1 x 0.5m pencil-thin grey one (which I didn't see until it slid away to avoid my boot) Grub worms: 1 (bluish in colour, because it was eating earth to extract nutrients, according to Glenn) Too-recent-for-comfort mountain lion deer kills: 2 Places with AT&T…
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