AZT Day 7-Into Oracle

Miles 216 to 209 (Tiger Mine Trailhead)
Passage 14
7 miles
3/9/15

A lovely morning hike to the Tiger Mine Trailhead near Oracle. Ever changing landscapes, rocks, plants, and fun things to see. While scenery isn't the prettiest in the traditional sense, I find the starkness and wide open skies incredible, and am loving the beauty found here. The variety of spines is astonishing.

Spines.

There is also lots of poop on the trail, or scat as scientists like to call it.  We get a close look to try to figure out what animals are out here.  Endless forms of scat certainly are most beautiful, in their own way. Is taking lots of photos of scat a sign I've been getting too much sun? 

Scat.

At the trailhead, Jan and I give Marney from the Chalet Village Motel in the town of Oracke a call and she picks us up in short order.

We made it to the Tiger Mine Trailhead.

Marney picks us up at the trailhead.

Marney is super all around--she's been hosting hikers for years, drives us to the Dollar General to get supplies, has our resupply box, is a wealth of helpful information, shows us the loaner clothes, hiker box, and where to do laundry. She makes us feel welcome as we rush around getting our town chores done. We highly recommend staying here!

Chalet Village Motel in Oracle.

We felt wonderful getting through a week on the trail, and already feel like we've learned a lot and had such an adventure. When we set out 7 days ago, I didn't know if my feet would make it or if we'd do OK with the water. What an incredible feeling of accomplishment to have stretched our abilities and pushed beyond comfort levels. This trail has exceeded all our expectations and we are thrilled that we went sobo to see the wildflowers especially between Superior and Kelvin which were some of the most incredible I've ever seen. We were also glad we didn't skip the section from Kelvin to Oracle since we crossed those under good circumstances water and weatherwise, and it feels good to have faced that challenging section.

Jan has more photos and videos from this day on her blog.

Celebrating with ice cream at the Chalet Village Motel in Oracle.