Yet another amazing breakfast today. Cornmeal pancakes with a homemade strawberry sauce, spearmint tea (also homegrown), and granola. We settled up and left around 10am, picking up the gear that we had left at the front door for the past 2 days. Walking to the sidewalk we were back on the trail, as it cuts straight through the town. The AT symbol is printed every few feet of cement, and acts as a constant reminder to all who live here that this is a trail town.
Stopping by the gear shop, we resupplied our fuel, and soaked up a brief moment of wifi before leaving it behind. The trail took us off the road a few blocks up, and quickly back into the mountains. It was a brutal first climb, as they so frequently are out of a gap. The day quickly turned rainy, and we got our rain gear on, but it never got too bad. It just makes for a hazy, moist evening.
I enjoyed a simple snack food dinner tonight, no cooking for this guy. It always feels good to be back at camp, wherever that may be. It moves every night, but still somehow manages to feel like home, as if you bring it with you. We also had our first bout of trail magic (not including just friendly people), as there were 4 PBRs decorating the shelter picnic table. Of course we were then told that they were found scattered around the camp along with empties, which took away some of the good will. Regardless of the intentions we're looking at it as trail magic.
Punchline made it to this shelter (he was the new guest of our Inn last night), but the rest of our crew is a couple of miles back. At least that's our assumption. Tomorrow we plan for another 15 miles (today was just 11) as we're pushing to arrive at Erwin ASAP and hitch a ride to Trail Days from there. First step to making that more doable is lightening my pack weight, so I'll be sure to keep eating in massive quantities. If the scale at the Inn is to be believed, as opposed to the one at Standing Bear, I actually haven't lost any weight yet. That would be pretty exciting, so for now I'll choose to believe that scale. Tomorrow is going to bring some thunderstorms and sore feet, but thankfully my sniffles seem to have ended. One step at a time and I'll get there.
