I slept well last night. I fell asleep effortlessly and I think I slept all night. The morning was a bit tiring for me. Lots of steep ups and downs and, in general, quite a bit of uphill. Two hours later, when I checked my progress, I had only covered 4.4 miles. Nothing remarkable about the morning. It was actually a little tricky to get to where the trail leveled out a bit. The good news is that when it leveled out, my legs returned to my typical walking pace, so I don’t think the hills are burning me up yet.
At the four hour mark I was picking up the pace a bit, I checked FarOut to see the next water sources because I knew I would need water between the fifth and sixth hour. There was supposedly a spring in a space about 2 miles from the trail. I decided to make that my stopping point for lunch. When I got to the space with the spring, I took off my backpack, took out my CNOC bag and filter, and just as I was about to head down the side trail to find the spring, I heard someone calling me from behind. I never learned her name, but she was out for a twenty-mile walk in the morning. Evidently, she and her husband are from Texas and like to travel in a Class A motorhome and hike, bike, and kayak. He asked me if I needed anything and I told him that was fine, but thank you. She trotted off down the trail and I started down the trail to the spring.
This trail to the spring was essentially downhill. And it was seven or eight minutes of walking to get to a point where I thought I might be successful in getting some water out. Once I got to the spring, I found a nice mossy spot to sit and began the process of collecting water. There was a pretty decent flow, but I couldn’t find a good place where I could get more than half a bag at a time, so I took what I could get from a refill and strained it into one of my bottles, which I’m very grateful I thought to bring with me. I then refilled the bag as much as I could, refilling the first bottle and repeating as needed for the second bottle, and then took half the bag to have a drink with my lunch. The climb took me just over 13 minutes. Yes, it was steep. But I knew I could rest at the top while eating lunch, so I didn’t worry too much.
Fortunately, it seems I still haven’t gotten tired of Uncrustables, Fritos, and a chocolate bar for lunch. I think that’s been my lunch for 22 of my 26 days of travel. Lucky for me, peanut butter and jelly never goes out of style. And I seem to like fried foods more than pretzels or Cheetos. I’m not sure why, but they are easier to remove. It doesn’t really matter what type of chocolate bar: Snickers, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Heath Bar. I’m grabbing six packs of mini bars when I restock and they are hitting the spot. Shortly after stopping for lunch, I ran into Flyover, an AT hiker (21) from Iowa, who was currently pursuing the Thousand Mile Challenge, which I later learned from Google is a fundraising event where people commit to hiking 1,000 miles in a year. We wished each other the best and parted ways. A couple of miles down the road and nearing the end of my day, I met Shooting Star and Trail Cat, who were on a week-long test hike in preparation for hiking the Superior Trail later this year. Shooting Star had completed the AT as a series of section increases over five years. Trail Cat considered the Superior Trail his first long hike. Again we wished each other the best and went our separate ways.
When I reached Georgia State Route 60, my time on the trail for the day was over as I would have to walk or hitchhike a bit down the road to a campground about a half mile away. Before I began my journey to the campground, I noticed another hiker sitting on the other side of the road. I went and found out that his trail name was Penguin and that he was also an AT veteran from a couple years ago and was doing a sixty mile loop hike connecting the BMT to the AT.
Just then, a pickup truck headed toward me stopped on the shoulder and asked if any of us needed a ride. I said goodbye to Penquin, told the driver where I was going, and jumped into the bed of the truck.
We arrived at Skeena Creek Campground in just a couple of minutes. I checked in and met Rick, the owner of the place. He showed me around my campsite and showed me the other amenities of the campground. Lihat juga vjkd. Since I had dallied a little today, it was getting late and I needed to set up camp. After that, I ran to the bathhouse and took a shower. I usually shower with my hiking clothes on so I can rinse them, take them out, and then put them on my clothesline at camp. It was an uneventful evening. I ate, dressed for bed, and tidied things up at camp. Around 7pm I texted goodnight to my wife and climbed into the tent intending to fall asleep quickly as I was planning to get up early.
Happy trails. . .
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