Day 39

19.7

Slept great last night. Not sure if I’m Still feeling a bit sluggish from Trail days or if I’m crashing from the caffeine that already mixed with my electrolyte powder. The goal is 19.7. Nothing too hard for us. Despite how we are feeling we are still hiking at a pretty good pace. We are averaging over 3 mph a lot of the time.

The morning started out with some strenuous uphill and I’m sweating my ass off like normal even though it’s only probably 50 something degrees. I get to a waterfall and so I stopped, poured water all over myself and tried to cook off. As soon as I set off again it started to dump buckets of rain on me so I said screw it, not even going to put on a jacket today. Just let myself get soaked today and honestly it was pretty nice. I had music going the first part of the morning, switched to an audiobook, and for the last out until we stopped for lunch I started a new podcasts that is absolutely hilarious so I was in good spirits.

Had an hour long lunch break at the the shelter, met one other kid who is flip-flopping named Dandelion. Nice guy but will probably never see him again.

The rest of the day king of switches from rain and sunshine. As we are crossing a bridge, an older lady in front of my stops to adjust something on her pack all while leaving her trekking poles against the railing. In slow motion I watched one of them slip down and fall over 20 feet down into the river below. I could see her look in disbelief at the river and back to her husband and then back to the river. I peered over the ledge and saw it about 10–15 yards downstream. Didn’t look that hard to get if you could make it down there. I could see them giving up on it immediately and starting to walk on so I yelled “I can get that for you!” I set my pack down, grabbed my trekking poles and headed down. It wasn’t so bad getting down as it looked like from above. I was level with the river within a couple of minutes. It’s pouring rain at this point so it’s impossible for me to get any wetter so I walk right into the river, shoes and all. The water is only at about my mid thigh but I can’t see the pole anymore so they are steering me in circles from the bridge. I find it within a couple of minutes and have it back in her hands shortly. She thanks me profusely, takes my picture and we part ways.

The sun comes out a little later and we finish our 19.7 miles by 4 o’clock. The plan is to hitch into Marion, VA for our resupply and get back out within a couple of hours. We get a hitch pretty easily within under 10 minutes from a very sweet and southern mother giving her even sweeter daughter a ride to work. Lovely people these southerners. They drop us off at the Walmart where we grab food and a new shirt for myself. The old one is too hot and this one is only $15. I give two tone my credit card while she resupplies for us while I walk about to the Subway and babysit our electronics while they charge. Afterwards we received a hitch from a very nice man who was still in his scrubs from his job as a local veterinarian but was on his way to his son’s 15 birthday party. He had a cake in his front seat and a dog in his back but went 20 minutes both ways out of his way to give us a ride.

Anyways, we enjoy a huge meal that consisted of an entire rotisserie chicken, a loaf of sourdough bread, a quarter wheel of Brie cheese, a thing of hummus, 2 bell peppers, 5 oz of spring mix greens,a half lb of blue cheese olives, slaw, and a jar of biscoff cookie butter. We ate damn near almost everything and shared the rest with the other hikers.