April 14: AKA -the day I got my Trail name- I got up before anyone else because I was used to getting up with the sun. I walked outside and saw our car, which had some huge dents in the hood, a broken windshield and a shattered side window. My mom came out and told me she hit and bull elk on the drive there. We spent time getting all of our bags prepared, and figuring out what Casie needed. We had pizza that my mom brought for breakfast and went to look around the town. We met a man who saw our windshield and asked what had happened. He jokingly scolded us for not calling the forest service to bag the dead elk. The lodge there had some bison and we took some photos with them, then climbed up a small hill and took some of all the kids, we hadn't all been together since Christmas. We tried taking some of the lake but Mormon Lake isn't much of a lake. It's a large sink that all the water in the area collects into. Sometimes there's no water in the lake at all, because of the all the rain we had this winter is was as full as it had been in years. We got a few pictures and then drove to the trail head to drop off me and Casie. It was really late, around 1, before we started. I said goodbye to Shandi, she stayed in town for another week but I wouldn't see her. I and Casie headed off and talked and talked and talked. We ran into a group of people looking for someone another hiker, they had lost someone in their group. We told them we didn't see them but we would keep an eye out. We then came to another member of their group and talked with him for quite a bit. He was from a little town in California that was part of the Pacific Crest Trail. The only way to get to the town was from the PCT, everything went in and out from it. As we were talking to him I told him that I had gone off the trail to go to prom, he stopped dead in his tracks and asked me "do you have a Trail name yet?" And I told him I didn't and he exclaimed "well you got yours right there! Prom Date!". It took a little while for it to grow on my but I finally took a liking to it and from that point on was "Prom Date". We went to a small camp, that was closed of course and passed by some old railroad tracks. We were making really good timing and went further than we were planning on that day. We hit a road that went to a campground about a mile up. We decided to go take a look. The camp was closed but we decided to stay the night there anyway, all the water was off so we had to go back to the trail to find some small pools to collect water from. We ate dinner pretty late and had to scramble around in the cold and the dark.
April 15: We planned on an easy day, but ended up doing far more than we planned. We woke up pretty late because we were only planning on going 13 miles that day. The day was pretty easy going, we were on a large mesa so it was very flat. The Mesa was characterized with a bunch of random lakes, some of the only natural bodies of water I had really seen on my trip, it was usually cow tanks. They were all completely full of water. The hike that day was pretty boring, mostly shrubs and the only large geographic thing we could see were the San Francisco Peaks in the distance, which I would be climbing later. At some time in the day, we came to the edge of the mesa and we could see Lake Saint Mary, we took some cool pictures there. We were almost to where we were planning on camping before 2. For whatever reason, the AZT crosses the Lowell Observatory and Casie and I thought we would go for a tour. We walked all around the facility but didn't encounter anyone. We took a snack break and decided we would hike what we had planned for tomorrow, all the way to Flagstaff, today. It was another 13 miles, 23 in total. I called Larry and Carol Gilbert, my grandpa's cousin, who was like a brother to him frowning up. Casie and I were going to spend a night with them once we got to Flagstaff. We hiked like the wind and were able to make it into Flagstaff, passing through Walnut Canyon, which becomes A National Memorial. I had gotten my first ticket from that memorial, a few years ago, because I was going off the trail. Whoops. We made it into Flagstaff a little after sundown and walked the town and met Larry and Carol at my favorite restaurant in Flagstaff, Salsa Brava, right on Route 66. I got my favorite food, a Navajo taco, and ate a lot of chips and salsa. We went back to Larry and Carol's, took showers and went to bed. I had trouble sleeping that night, I think it was because I wasn't used to a bed.
April 16: Easter. Easy day. We had planned to hike around 10 miles and get picked up by Larry again later that day. We would be hiking the Flagstaff Urban Trail, a trail network in the Flagstaff area that was a part of the AZT. We ditched out being packs for a small backpack and a few water bottles. We got dropped off on Route 66 and just haaaadddd to go to Starbucks before we started, a good pre-hike. The Flagstaff urban trail went right through town in a park splitting Flagstaff in 2. It was a paved road, thank god. We walked past a construction site and saw the large dirt mounds...we ended up playing kid of the hill for a bit and getting lots of dirt in our boots. At one point we went near BASIS Flagstaff, as a student at BASIS Oro Valley, I just had to go see it and post jokes about TPing it on my Snapchat. After that, we went through Buffalo park, which sadly had no buffalo but was still really cool. It was a city park and it was incredibly busy, the trails were wider than a highway and packed with people and dogs. More importantly dogs! We passed through a gate that brought us back into national forests. We went around Flagstaff and to another popular hiking area, Schultz Pass. It was a nice creek and we talked to hikers as we walked up. After a few miles, we got to the end of the Flagstaff urban trail and were going to wait for Larry to pick us up. We drove home and I made sure to get a big Dr. Pepper on our way back. It was still only around 4 and we spent the rest of the day getting into a resupply box I had sent to Larry and Carol. They were super generous to us and gave us dinner and breakfast that morning. We stayed up for a bit and watched Up!, one of Pixar's greatest creations.
April 17: We woke up and had breakfast at Larry and Carol's, Larry dropped us back off at where we had stopped yesterday. We passed by an entire family troop of mountain bikers, some looked as young as 8. I don't think I could mounting bike in my life and this little 8 years old was doing it, and to me, that was cooler than what I was doing and felt like a dweeb compared to this kid. For whatever reason, I was really tired that day and was having trouble hiking up the side of the San Francisco Peaks. Though they are the tallest mountains in Arizona they were not super steep so it wasn't that bad. We had to get to a point that would let my grandpa get to us the next day. He was planning on going hiking with us just for the day, he wanted to hike with me but isn't a huge fan of backpacking. We made it to a tank that is fairly close to a road that goes up to Snow Bowl, a popular ski area. The snow had come back and we were hiking though around 70% snow coverage. We came to an absolutely beautiful tank on the side of the mountain and met an Englishman there who told us his life story and about how much his ex-wife took from him. We had to camp closer to the road so we filled up all the water filter bags we had, around 30lbs of water and out it in my bag to hike to an area my grandpa could get to easier. We spent that night at around 10,000 feet. The highest elevation I reached in my hike. Because if this we had to wait extra long for our food to rehydrate, which takes longer the higher elevation you are at. Though there was snow all over the ground and we were at such high elevation the night wasn't super cold.
April 18: My grandpa showed up earlier than planned. He was dropped off by my uncle Larry, who isn't my uncle at all but we just call him that. We spent the day heading down the mounting and hearing plenty of grandpa's stories. My grandpa is an incredibly social man so there was not an awkward pause in conversation the whole day. I actually can't remember a whole lot of this day because I was talking to him. As we got around to the back of the mountain the snow got quite a bit thicker. There was almost full coverage, as we hiked down it started clearing though. My grandpa was going to get picked up on a dirt road on the base of the mountain by my uncle Larry. We got to the pickup point earlier than we expected and we sat under a tree and waited for a while for him. Once her arrived he came out with a Pizza and yelled "order for Brady, is there a Brady here?". We gobbled down the Pizza and filled up our reservoirs with water jugs he had brought. I and Casie were going to get picked up the following afternoon because Casie had to go home and had to catch a flight up to Colorado to visit Colorado State University, one of the schools I was looking at, which I have now decided I am going to (Go Rams!). We continued for a few miles after my grandpa left us, and as the sun fell the wind picked up. We had to make camp a bit off the trail because we needed to camp in a gully so there would be no wind. We made a nice fire that night and stayed up a bit later than usual hanging out around the fire.
April 19: We got up and walked along roads all day, it was around 9 miles but we got picked up by noon. The area was incredibly flat and dry. A large stretch of land dividing the forests of Flagstaff with Grand Canyon. It would take me another 2 days to cross when I came back. We almost got to where we planned on getting picked up when we saw a car pop over a hill. It was our grandpa and uncle Larry who were early again. We hung around and went shooting some, Uncle Larry and my grandpa had brought guns with them. Classic Arizona. We then went back to Uncle Larry's and showered, then made the long drive down to Phoenix and went out for dinner before dropping off Casie. We went to my grandpa's house and I picked up my car and drive back to Tucson. I didn't get home till 12 and was ready for my own bed.
April 20th-23rd: A day at home and then 3 in Colorado. I then came back and spent the night at my aunts in Phoenix so I could go back up to the AZT the next day
