Little Foot left camp first in the morning, then me, then the guys. Such a pleasant morning to wake up to. Nice and mild. I never caught LF, but I stopped atop Max Patch, a BEAUTIFUL spot of endless grassy hills with the mountains all around in the background. I sang The Hills Are Alive again... I stopped for a break, then Xan and Brian showed up and stopped, too. Gorgeous break. A few other hikers stopped by in our area as well, and it ended up being almost 2 hours before I was hiking again. We had only planned to go about 13 miles today - to take it easy after making it 41 miles in a day and a half.
We left Max Patch together and loved the next 3 miles of flat-ish hiking, through the sunny woods. It was another warm day. We finally made it to the Walnut shelter, where we had planned to stay, when we found the note. Well, then we HAD to keep going! No, we really didn't, but we were all feeling up for it and, despite the weather report for thunderstorms, the sky looked great.
Off we went! Lots of down, but ups too, and about am hour from town it really looked and sounded like rain. Getting a better look, tho, from a clearer spot made me realize that the thunder I thought I heard was actually a plane, and the dark clouds I thought I saw were mostly dark mountains... So we ended up crawling into town at 8:30pm, desperate for a nice clean hotel room and a shower. And food! Our optimism for such things slowly faded, tho, as we walked the streets on this Saturday night. There was a big music festival in town and all the hotels were fully booked! Even the hostels! Luckily, we ended up at The Dockett House, which had one spot in the bunkhouse, and would allow us to tent on the lawn. I got the bunk room (big smiley face and thanks to the boys). After setting up, we got to chatting with Frank and a few of the other guests and there were huge biscuits passed around and bananas. We all decided that showers were more important than eating, so we got clean and chowed down a few more biscuits with a few beers on the front porch in rocking chairs WITH our feet up. It was such a nice ending to the day... Who needs dinner when there's biscuits, beer and bananas...?
Almost 70 miles in 2.5 days... Go us.
(...go us to bed...)
-- Posted from the trail...
Location:The Dockett House B&B
1 comment:
Well that's a lot of mileage and very impressive. You must be in a grove now.
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