After staying at the pavilion last night, I woke at 6am to get going. I didn't sleep a wink. I had such bad insomnia.

I started down the trail alone and I quickly reached the shelter that was closed to bear activity. I kept hiking and though I didn't see anything I heard a loud scratch down a tree and saw small trees shaking as an animal ran off in the distance. I was certain it was a bear since I was familiar with the claw scratch sound. We stopped for water midday and I had to walk down an extremely steep trail to get to water. While we were filtering water Nick had apparently slipped by us because we didn't see him the rest of the day until we reached the shelter that night.

I had a lot of alone time today which I really enjoyed. I reflected a lot on the past few days and all the feelings I've had. I worked through a lot. It's amazing how just walking in the woods and thinking can seem to heal. A few miles before the shelter Bullet, Blue, and I washed each other's hair and put them up in matching buns which gave us a good laugh. I feel really thankful to have them as my trail family.

When we arrived at camp Nick was there. A group was there, who we dubbed the "Busch Light" crew, because they always packed out Busch Light, partied and trashed the shelters, and smoked cigarettes inside them. They weren't a group that I loved being around so we set up camp far away from the shelter. One of them had killed a large rattle snake and was roasting it over the fire. He said it was attacking him but I honestly have a hard time believing that he couldn't have walked around it. We had a fire, cooked, had some great laughs and went off to bed. Overall it was another amazing day on the trail.

Today started out with Aidan (Bullet) panicking because she received a text from Ford (Marley) that said "Bad situation.". He hadn't showed up to camp last night so we assumed he had just lagged behind. Apparently he was very dehydrated and couldn't find his water filter. He decided to drink from a puddle (not a great idea) and ended up getting dysentery. He had to have a rescue crew with ATVs come and get him so he's currently at the hospital. Aidan ended up getting off trail to have her foot checked out and to go check on Ford. I'm not sure that they'll get back on trail.

We hiked through some beautiful cow pastures today which was a welcome change from the green tunnel. Sarah was feeling sick all day. Despite that, she decided against getting off trail with Aidan and hiked on with me. We pushed on all day, slowly, since she wasn't feeling great and occasionally puked. We had originally planned to make it into Virginia today but we had to stop early from her feeling sick. I tried to be as helpful as possible and set up her tent and cooked her dinner. As I'm writing this she's already asleep in her tent and I'm down the trail on my sleeping pad. I'm trying to be more intentional about taking in the beauty of this trail. I feel so at peace.