Day 103

It was a beautiful start to the day. The temperature in the morning was 58° F with sunshine and cool breeze. After a climb coming out from the shelter, I had a nice little rock scramble to warm up the flood. After that, the trail was very easy.

I would call today “Mountain Laurel Day” as I spent most of the day walking past them as far as the eye can see. Such a beautiful flower!

After lunch, the trail turned into a pine forest. The trail was soft under foot with pine needles and the piney aroma was strong. The day went by pretty smoothly and although I ended the day over 1,100 miles, I didn’t see or make a 1,100 mile marker to get a picture by. Instead, the big celebration today was a few miles before that. I’m celebrating the 1097.15 mile marker because THAT is the halfway point for the AT for 2022. It took me 103 days to do the first half. I’m hoping to cut that almost in half for the second half of this journey. I have more daylight per day, I’ve got my routine dialed in and my legs are stronger. I should be able to do the rest a lot quicker. Oh, I also saw my 2nd rattlesnake. This time I knew there was one up ahead because a day hiker coming that direction gave me a heads up it was there. Still didn’t matter because while I was walking cautiously, it started rattling before I could see it and made me jump out of my skin. It was slithering away into the bushes so I recorded it while it left and waited for it to go before I passed it up.