Day 20: Unnamed Campsite

Start: Windsor Furnace Shelter (AT mi 1225.9). Stop: Unnamed Campsite (AT mi 1235.5) Today’s miles: 9.6 miles. Total AT mileage: 210.8 miles

I woke up today around 7am, fighting the urge to roll over again and go back to sleep. It was overcast and still kinda chilly.. perfect sleeping weather, but I had to pee. All hope of that happening disappeared.

By the time I visited the privy and got my food bag, everyone was starting to get out of their tents/hammocks. We ate breakfast together, packed up slowly, and then dispersed into the woods. An 8:50am start today, my latest (besides yesterday of course) in a while.

I started up my audiobook and started being transported back into another world entirely. I crossed rocks and smooth ground, creek beds and gravel roads. It was overall very easy moving terrain, but once again, my audiobook had me moving slowly, soaking in every word. I scrambled over some boulders, looked at the lookouts, and spoke to hikers crossing my path, but I was so engrossed in the book that when I crossed a creek bridge and heard a loud “PBS!” I wasn’t expecting it to be Curmudgeon and Cholula! I never even passed the sign for the shelter, so surely this isn’t where we’re camping?! But I looked down at my watch and I’d gone the right amount of miles. This was home for the night.

I stopped the book and it was a struggle for almost an hour to not put my headphone back in my right ear, but a book is a book and will be ready to play tomorrow. The time, conversations and moments with my new friends won’t last forever and I need to enjoy them while they’re here.

We soaked our feet in the creek, then discovered bones and fur from a small deer that’s been scavenged. As we were sitting on logs crossing the creek, FarOut, Hot Sauce, and Towely came strolling through and set up camp with us! Some other guy is literally in a hammock very close to my tent, so close in fact that I switched direction so my head isn’t as close to him as it would be laying the other way.. but that’s the way it is in smaller camps. There’s another 3 guys just down the way, too.

All of us ended up eating our dinners and then Lizard made an awesome fire. It did what good fires do and everyone ended up coming around it to chit chat and get to know each other. I laugh so much with this tramily and (Using Lizard’s term) extended tramily. It’s exciting to have such a good group of flip floppers, it’s also exciting when NOBOs camp with us and are friendly and tell us what we have to look forward to when we flop down to the sections they’ve already done. I’ve got a mental list of places to see, stay, and avoid. It’s both cool and sad, because they’re crushing 20-30 mile days, so unless they happen Zero a lot or something bad happens, our chances of meeting again are slim.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain starting in the afternoon.. as I type this I swear I hear rain drops hitting my tent, but they’ve already stopped. We’ve been so lucky to have only had rain that first week, but it looks like our luck is running low. There’s a section ahead called “knife’s edge” where all the rocks are jagged and known for stabbing feet no matter which way you try to traverse them. Everyone pulling big miles are trying to pass that section (14 miles ahead of us) before the rain comes in tomorrow.. we are planning a 13 mile day to just before and hoping the rain eases off for us to do that section the following day.

It is what it is. If you spend time stressing and trying to reroute your miles to not have to do something in the rain, I feel like I’ll never make it to the finish of this trail. If it rains while I slip and slide on rocks, I guess it rains. I’ll just pray that I don’t get seriously injured and no one else does either. As clumsy as I am, it’s a crapshoot if I’ll fall on dry trail. Hahahaha

As I lay here in my tent and hear all the people moving around, I think I’ll listen to my book until the sky is all the way dark, then put in my earplugs. Sweet dreams 🙂