Friday, March 29, 2013 – 10.6 km

This morning I met Pops C, a fellow thru-hiker and AZT trail steward. Finally another thru-hiker! He apologized for waking me up, but I was already awake, just lounging in my sleeping bag because I only had 10 km to walk today. A permit is required to camp further along the trail in Saguaro National Park, and my permit is for the day after tomorrow; apparently the trail isn’t usually monitored but I don’t want to camp illegally since I’m a law-abiding type of person. Yet somehow I’ve been questioned by the police four times in my life… where’s the justice? Pops left after collecting water from the spigot and I continued lounging for awhile before getting on my way.

The trail was lovely today. Many desert flowers blooming against the backdrop of the Rincon Mountains, and majestic saguaro cacti flaunting their superiority to prickly pears.

What more could a girl ask for? Water in Rincon Creek, but whatever. Possibly there was a stagnant pool lurking somewhere, but I had plenty of water and was therefore not invested in searching for a stagnant pool.

While looking for a camping spot along the creek, I encountered a Gila monster, the only venomous lizard native to the United States. Cool, except at the time I didn’t realize that it was a Gila monster, because I thought they were much larger (you would think that before backpacking in Arizona, I would have learned… anything about Arizona). I approached close with my camera to get a picture, then thought ‘well, I won’t camp here because that might bother the nice lizard’. Then I walked away.

Poll: At this point, who’s reading this journal just to see whether or not I die?