The rain that started yesterday evening continued through the night and into the morning. It’s always a little extra challenging to become fully awake and get out of the cozy sleeping bag on days like today with gray skies and drizzle.What made it okay, though, was knowing that because we had decided to go above and beyond the 15/day plan yesterday in order to make it to the shelter because of the weather, we had an easy day today. It was only six miles to the road that led to the next hostel near the town of Hampton, TN. I had even called ahead this time to reserve a cabin.
The six miles were easy miles too. The light rain continued during the hike, it was actually refreshing, and knowing that at the end of the day there’s going to be a washer and more importantly a drier available makes it completely tolerable. Getting rained on hiking is pretty cool, starting the next day with still soggy clothes isn’t. It felt like I was walking through a rain forest today, the plants at the lower elevation are thick and bright green and dripping with water, the trail muddy. The six miles flew by and before I knew it I was at the road Black Bear Hostel 1/2 a mile west. I had barely started on that 1/2 mile when a pickup truck stopped and offered an unsolicited ride up to the place. I got in back and was there in seconds instead of minutes.
Strider was already there, as was Pockets. Pockets had told us he was planning on doing another big day, but he said that because of the rain the thought of staying at a cabin was too good to pass up. I unloaded my gear and got a couple of cold sodas. The rain stopped shortly after I arrived and the sun even came out for a while. All three of us ended up spending most of the day playing a game of RISK on the porch of one of the cabins. Our playing was only interrupted by the shuttle into the town where we stopped at the general store for resupply and McDonalds (there wasn’t much choice) for dinner. We brought it all back to Black Bear, devoured it, and tried to finish our game of RISK, but after six plus hours there was still no winner.
Pockets talked Strider and I into slackpacking tomorrow. For 10 bucks each we get to leave all of our gear (except the essentials – water bottle, camera, cliff bar) here for the day. Then we hike 15 miles over the last significant mountain before Virginia, telephone back here, and they deliver our packs back to us along the trail. Pretty exciting to think about how amazing it is going to feel walking the trail without a 26-30 pound backpack! It’s raining again tonight, but it’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow. Should be a good day for my first slackpack!