The forecast isn’t looking promising and a motel room is probably better for us than camping at a hostel. So we talked through it as a group and decided to split hotel rooms.
As we walked, Lotus pointed out a weirdest thing we’ve seen yet, a snail eating a centipede. I didn’t realize snails were predators. A little further down we saw a box turtle too. Warthog and I were especially excited about that… because we are reptile dorks.
Just a couple of miles in for the day we came across our first trail magic! Woot! Woot! It was a church group. The guys organizing it actually grew up in Grand Rapids, MI (where we live). They had homemade cookies and bread. They also had eggs, lunch meats, cheese, coffee, etc. It was a great break. We couldn’t stay too long though, we had too many miles to cover and had a late start.
Just after that trail magic Kirby got sick and vomited. He hasn’t been feeling good. He said he almost stopped this morning and just set up camp. After his episode, he made the decision to call it quits for the day. I feel bad for him. But I’m sure as we all take zeros, etc., that he’ll catch back up to us.
Looking at the forecast, we decided to add on another 2 miles for the day (a total of 15.8 miles). We are supposed to have some not so awesome weather today, but tomorrow it’s supposed to be twice as bad. Most of today was overcast and cloudy. However, it cleared up we went across a couple of balds which allowed us to have a view. The skies still threatened rain and it was windy. So for most of the day I wore my rain gear.
It did rain a bit today, justifying my rain gear. The trail got muddy and wet. Sometimes you would take a step and would slide back so you really only made a half step progress. It’s exhausting, but also kind of fun. We were slipping a lot. You have to be extra careful on these days.
In our last few miles we came across an older lady (in her 80’s) and her daughter on the trail. The mom seemed like she was moving slow and was having a hard time. She said, “We started out too late.” I offered to have Warthog carry her pack (it was a very small pack), she declined. I worried about her all the way to our destination for the night. I thought, there’s no way she’ll make it. There were some many rocky areas you had to navigate, I was having a hard time. Plus, rain was supposed to start up again soon. We decided we would give them until 7:30p to make it down before we headed back up.
We were camping at Spivey Gap tonight. There were a bunch of campsites hidden by a row of rhododendrons. I heard all of the hikers laughing and talking. Warthog had walked ahead to get the tent set up before the rain started up again. I was moving pretty slow by then because my feet hurt so bad, but it was a nice stretch of woods to take my time in. They were pretty.
When I got there, I could see a sign for trail magic by “Badger” a 2016 thru-hiker. He had been there since Thursday. They had a fire going, chili, hotdogs and hamburgers, pulled pork mixed with mac n cheese, fresh fruit, moonshine soaked cherries, chips, soda, and all kinds of goodies. We were hitting it at the end since they were packing up the next morning. But it meant that I didn’t have to cook dinner, which I was glad for. It was about 6:30p when I got into camp. Warthog had the tent up, but hadn’t gotten to blowing up air mattresses or anything else.
We ate and sat by the fire. The rains started and then let off for a bit. Just then I saw the 2 women that we passed walk by and I could finally relax. It was 7:30p. They had about a half hour of daylight left.
Around 8p the rains came again and this time it was heavy. We all ran for our tents. It was bedtime anyway. I took 2 Tylenol PM’s hoping to get good sleep tonight. Our rainfly was soaked from the night before and because of that whenever a heavy raindrop would hit, it would occasionally splash inside the tent. I don’t know if it was too saturated or if it was from condensation. It doesn’t really matter. I slept with my ball cap over my face so I wouldn’t get wet. A couple of times through the night I woke up because of water dripping on me, but for the most part we stayed dry.
– ansel