Mileage: 13

Sting, Riley, and myself walked from the hotel toward town to get a hitch. We probably walked two miles before stopping. After nearly two hours someone stopped to give us a ride. We started the hike around 10:30.

Sting told me there was a chance he’d go home today. He just wasn’t feeling it. I wished him well and left. We hit the junction where the AT and LT split off from one another. I remembered being here five years ago. I felt both sad and relieved to be off the AT. It would be nice to have a new trail with no memories but at the same time I loved being back.

At the first shelter about five miles in I met up with Riley and Haiku. Sting showed up and we all were excited he’d made it. He told us he chose to continue on. I breaked for about an hour then hit the trail again. I was in so much pain again. The terrain was not really that hard either but it ended up taking me nearly 6 hours to go 8 miles. Every step was a struggle. My food bag had to weigh 15 pounds too and that wasn’t helping.

At camp there were surprisingly a lot of hikers. I was thinking I’d see less since we were only on the LT now. We all sat around the fire and made food and had some laughs. I headed to bed early with the hopes of healing my legs by giving them some rest.