Arizona Trail/ Patagonia

Day 5

Zero miles

We are a bit foot sore and knee sore and decide to have a zero day in Patagonia.  It's an eclectic small tourist town that used to be the hub for the ranchers and miners of the area. It's more of an artist and environmentalist enclave now.  It has a nice, friendly air about it.

 

We call our friendly shuttle driver Ken, who lives here, and he gives us a ride to the nearby town of Nogales to pick up some things we decide we need, namely a repair kit for our air pads.  We discovered our tube of glue was dry when Mark's pad sprung a leak.   Even with a lightweight foam pad under our air mattresses the southwest can be a prickly place. 

Upon returning to Patagonia, Ken swings by his house and picks up his wife and we all go to lunch at The Wagon Wheel.  A rustic bar and restaurant.

 

 The food was good, the beer cold and the conversation comfortable.  They are really good people and we highly recommend Ken Morrow for all your shuttling needs in this part of  Arizona.  He also can supply hikers with canister fuel, but it might be a good idea to email him beforehand as he only keeps a few on hand. 

Contact him at: kensshuttleservice@gmail.com.   

 

He also does wine tours of local wineries and he gave us a brief tour around town as well.   They have an opera house, a theater/event house (The Tin Shack)and of course the well know Paton Center for Hummingbirds.  We are a bit early for hummingbirds, but come April this area will begin getting many varieties.   The most notable the violet crowned hummingbird. 

Speaking of birds, this area is a ornithologist destination vacation as many rare birds are found here.  We also learned that the plump quail that have been startling us along the trail are called Montezuma Quail and this area is the only place to find them in the United States.  Pretty awesome.  

The pricey, but nice, Stage Stop Hotel where we are staying was a museum for everything about the horse and later the stomping grounds of Western movie actors, most notably John Wayne.  The studio helped erect it so that the stars could have a place to stay and not have to make the commute from Tucson.   We were told upwards of 150 movies between the 1940's to the 1960's were filmed in this area.  At one point yesterday during our hike I told Mark I thought I had seen this 'scene' in a western before and I might actually have been right. 

We walked around town a bit and checked out the natural food store, Red Mountain Foods, and the Patagonia Market.  Everything is a bit pricey, as is common in little touristy spots, but one could easily resupply here.  While we've enjoyed the Stage Stop Inn almost everyone we've talked to today has reccomended by the Duquesne House for overnight accommodations and the most cost effective would be to camp at the RV place as you walk into town.