We were up early enough to watch the last of the sunrise, by hurrying out of bed. Then a long descent into Erwin. Almost right away as we went down, we met Brother Tom, setting up trail magic, so we hung out with him for 20 minutes, eating home baked brownies and zucchini bread, along with fruit and sweet tea. After that we passed a guy, who turned out to be a coworker of Brown’s from REI. He was a very energetic guy and entertained us for a bit. Finally, right at the edge of town we met two lovely ladies selling deep fried apple pies as a fundraiser for their church. We ate a bunch.
Next stop, resupply courtesy of Uncle Johnny’s Hostel. All you can eat pizza was also on the menu. We still managed to blow through town in 2.5 hours, then climbing up the mountains right away. We were all groaning about our poor life choices, but we made it. We did screw up and skip all the nice water, then ended up having to hike an extra mile and very tediously dribble water into our bottles. Finally in camp just before dark, Brown decided he was too tired and full to have dinner, so he was straight to bed.
Tomorrow we are headed to Ashville to meet up with Tiki, a hiking friend of mine from the PCT.
Damn! I just looked at the map and you’re ‘almost’ there! What are we going to do for reading material when you finish? Such a good blog, your tale of the trail is truly inspiring. One minor complaint from my bird union rep, that critters are getting all the coverage but they have promised that there won’t be ‘significant fallout’.