Day 5: Enchiladas and Beer
Chris and I strolled into Patagonia early the next afternoon. We were hot, dusty and grimy after 4 1/2 days of hiking since the Mexican border, but we knew we had beds waiting f
or us at the Stage Stop Hotel in town. The trail ended 3 1/2 miles outside of town, but as we walked down the two lane highway, we were as happy as two kids walking home from an afternoon of fishing.
Patagonia is tiny even by Arizona standards. Its initial reason for existence was the mining boom of 100 some odd years ago, and now about 900 people live scattered around the valley in homes new and old. The writer Jim Harrison lived here until he died a few weeks ago. If you know his philosophy about life, you’ve got a good sense of Patagonia. It’s a good place. Good vibe. There’s maybe 3-4 restaurants, an RV park, a school, some shops, and the Wagon Wheel.
After checking in, cleaning up, and dropping our packs, we went right for beers at the Wagon Wheel. I’m sure in the light of day it doesn’t seem like much, but that night it was the best damn bar in the world. 
We traded stories with a Canadian couple also hiking the trail, who told us among other things that they had run into Mexican refugees above Bathtub Spring the night after we had camped there. At 2am in the morning they heard steps and whispers, and when they poked their heads out of their tents three figures stopped and a voice tentatively asked in English, “No problem?”. “No problem,” they said, and the figures went on their way.
Sleeping in a bed was as nice as I thought it would be, but both Chris and I woke up the next morning with sore backs anyway. We grabbed pancakes at the Gathering Grounds restaurant next door, said hi to he labs on the ATV, shouldered our packs and started down the road again to met my parents 7 miles out of town at the Temporal Gulch trailhead.
The Arizona Trail 