Day 40

Another wonderful day. I had that whole camp area to myself and it was so peaceful. The temp really dropped in the early morning and the wind picked up again. Took me a while to get out of camp and my hands were freezing, as they have been almost every morning. You should see my hands. They’re getting really tanned while the rest of me isn’t. LOL! That is except for where the trekking pole straps go around my hand. Very interesting tan line. Right before coming across the exposed ridge line, I bumped into Taps again. He’s a really good guy and it’s always a pleasure to speak with him. He plays taps every night before bed in honor of fallen heroes. There was no way I was going to take the bad weather bypass. I was so excited for the exposed ridge line and it didn’t disappoint. On the TN side, you could see towns and civilization everywhere within the rolling mountains. On the other side was NC and it was only wooded mountains as far as you could see. There were some real rock scrambles. I can see why you’d want to take the bad weather bypass if it was wet. It’s a long fall if you make a wrong step on some of those rocky outcrops. Once I reached the other end where the bad weather bypass meets back with the AT, I was greeted with rocks forming the number 300 marking 300 miles on the AT. That’s giving me an avg so far of 8.12 miles a day. I need to get that up to 12 miles a day avg if I want to finish in a total of 6 months. After hitting 300 miles, I came up to a mountain top called Big Butt. I liked Big Butt, and I cannot lie. (Sorry, had to. I also HAD to take a funny pic next to the sign that said “Big Butt Bypass.” Who would want to bypass Big Butt? LOL) There were a few meadow crossings and a really cool, massive boulder that was split right in half. Also came across “Shelton Graves” which has the graves of a pair of Union soldiers who were killed on that spot while visiting family in the Confederacy during the Civil War. The graves are still kept up with flowers and US flags. After around 11.4 miles, I made it to Flint Mountain Shelter. Glad I was the first tenter here because there are not a lot of spots for tents and I got the only flat spot. I’ll be using my ear plugs tonight because a lady showed up who just put her tent wherever she could put it and she sounds really sick. Constantly coughing. I’ll keep a distance from her just in case. Tomorrow, I’ll continue on and have 7.2 miles to do going south. Feels like a joke having to hike south when I’m trying to go north to Maine. The last part of today’s hike was going south. After 7.2 more miles, the trail will turn east and then once it reaches Sam’s Gap at mile marker 319.7, it’ll start to go northeast again. I’m hoping to be stealth camping tomorrow. I really like having a quiet campsite all to myself. Fingers crossed. PS: I missed about .4 miles on my track for making my Relive videos and tracking my inclines and declines. I took a small break and stopped the track when I met up with Taps. I forgot to restart it for almost .4 miles after that. Gotta remember to always have the tracker going when moving. Grrr! Not sure how it’s going to come out on the Relive video. Guess we’ll find out.