Day 32: A day in Pine

Let me take you on a virtual tour through Pine, AZ.
Here's the post office where I picked up my mail drops.

May 14: Really, nothing happened today. I was thinking about continuing onwards, but I started doing some math in my head and realized that at the pace I was going, there was a good chance I might hit the Grand Canyon during Memorial Day weekend. I felt that was a bad idea for a couple of reasons. Not just because it would be crazy busy there at the time--more so than usual, at least--but also because I needed a permit and the competition for them would likely be a lot more fierce. Nothing good would come from arriving at the Grand Canyon during Memorial Day weekend, and the easiest way to avoid that would be to slow down. Take a day off from hiking!

And Pine was a nice place to take a day off. Anyhow, I felt like taking a day off. I hadn't had a day off since the day Amanda and I had visited Tombstone and Bisbee nearly three weeks earlier!

So I took a day off and did nothing. Well, okay, nothing that would push me further down the trail. I caught up on some shows in my Hulu queue, I wrote and mailed postcards, I did some more grocery shopping. And I wandered around town a bit--once in the afternoon and once in the evening. I couldn't stay locked up indoors all day!

But that was it. Nothing really happened.....

Here's the laundromat where I cleaned my clothes.

I did my grocery shopping at the Ponderosa Market. It didn't
have the joys of a full-fledge supermarket, but it was more than
sufficient to resupply my food for the next 9 days on the trail.

When I saw this sign, I thought that maybe Amanda had dropped by for
a surprise visit! But when I went into the store to find her, she
was nowhere to be seen.... False advertising!

Payson is considered a "trail town" in my data book, but the
closest the trail approaches is about 15 miles away--which
wasn't close enough for my purposes. Pine would be sufficient
for resupplying!