Spent way too long in town this morning. We had to do shopping/resupply, have breakfast, pack, and get back to the trail to do 17+ miles. First stop was the IGA grocery store, then back to the hotel to break down all the excess packaging, pack the food, and pack our bags. That part took the longest, after that we went down Main Street to a Giffords restaurant/cafe for food. We lingered there quite a while too, I don’t think anyone felt like leaving town while still recovering from the night at Native Landscapes.
Even once we started walking it was pretty slow going. Starting around noon means missing out on the best part of the day for hiking. There were some decent climbs again as well. We saw a lot of other hikers today – both NoBo and SoBo. We’ve been kind of catching up to a lot of NoBo at the same time as were running into the first SoBos. Today we kept hearing how many other thru-hikers were near us on the trail.
Eventually we started to realize we would probably not be making it to the shelter before dark. There wasn’t much else in the way of camping options though, so we were going to be at Pine Swamp even if it meant hiking a bit with headlamps on. I’d done a bit of semi night hiking, like going back for sunrise at McAffee, but we ended up needing lights for 20 to 30 minutes of walking. Of course after hearing about how many other hikers there were we arrived at 8:45 to find a totally empty shelter.