Today was 14.7 easy, uneventful miles. Someone mentioned that this section of trail leading into Damascus is called the Damascus Highway, and it sure felt like it after today. I started around 10 and was done for the day about 3, so about 20 minutes per mile.
I spotted a pair of deer on the trail just about 0.1 mile before the shelter where I stopped for lunch. This time they stopped and looked for a while before running off, but it was still difficult to get a photo. A couple hours later I found three more deer, this time just a couple hundred yards before where the trail crosses TN 91. These three were off the trail a ways and stayed around quite a while after they detected me. On the other side of the road the trail crossed through a farm for about a mile, for one stretch I was walking just a couple dozen yards from a herd of cattle grazing in the field with no fence separating us. Other than the deer and the cows there wasn’t much to see today. Had another afternoon rainstorm, but I had made it the shelter just minutes before it started coming down. Mostly the same crowd as last night, me, Strider, Pockets, and a new addition of Nomad. It’s the last night we’ll see Pockets – he’s heading back home to Florida from Damascus. Nomad started on April 24th at Springer but was off the trail for 12 days. He said the first month was kind of a trial run to see if he was going to do the whole thing. He decided to go for it so he had to go back home, quit his job, take care of some other stuff, then get back on.
This sounds strange but until last night I hadn’t actually counted how many days there were until the October 15 deadline for Katahdin. I’d kind of just been figuring based on five months plus a few days. Turns out that October 15th would be trail day #166. So I probably have slightly more time than I thought. The 15 mile/day plan takes 148 hiking days, so I’m feeling better about the four early zero days. Over 21% complete and entering Virginia tomorrow.