Backpacking Adventure - Day four part eight - Feb 28 - Hiking down Romero Canyon

The trail continued down to the lower plateau where it was a thriving desert in the foothills, with quite a few rock formations.

The trail became tamer as we came closer to the trailhead with fewer rocks and drops in the trail. There are lots of Chollas and Saguaros, and lots of other cacti of every other possible type.

We could see the last stretch of the trail to the trailhead as we finally hiked the last part of the foothill that goes from the Romero pools to the lower trail. It seemed like a long way, but it didn't take very long before we were at the trailhead. We did stop a few times, because by this time, we were all feeling the stress and fatigue from hiking 6.2 miles that day.

By this time, every muscle in our legs were ready to call it a day.

After we reached the trailhead, we sought out the bench, and firmly planted ourselves, not to move for about 20 minutes.

I finally got up enough energy to walk over to the road to look to see if our ride had arrived. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic that day, and our ride was delayed about 15 minutes while we were licking our wounds.

It was a great backpacking adventure, but we were all ready to take it easy for a few days while we recovered before our next backpacking trip. It was comforting to know that we increased the distance we went every day ending up hiking 6.2 miles the last day. WE arrived at about noon after starting our hike at 5AM, so even with our rest stops, we were able to accomplish 1 mile per hour while carrying our 35 pound backpacks. We could tell that we hadn't eaten anything yet so far that day.