Canadian Sandwich Eaters
It's Saturday, March 23, just after 5 o'clock in the evening, and I'm at the Blue Mountain shelter, which is at mile 50.3 of the AT. That's good. I've done 50 miles on the AT so far, not including the approach trail, which would make it closer to 60.
I got a little bit of a late start this morning because of all the rain last night. It was still raining when I got up this morning, so I had to wait it out. I wasn’t interested in fighting the rain any more than necessary. Also, the morning routine takes a little longer when everything's totally wet. I finally left at about 9:15.
Just before I left, I ran into two ladies who were having some trouble finding the trail. I pointed them in the right direction, and one of them said, “Thanks! We're Canadian. We're good at getting lost and eating too many sandwiches.”
So I talked to her a bit about Canada and our connections and all that stuff. [Wife note: Rob’s parents are Canadian, and he and his sister both have dual American–Canadian citizenship.] I tried to dissuade her from telling everyone that Canadians get lost easily, though, and encouraged her to just stick with the sandwich part.
For breakfast yesterday, I had a Pop-Tart and had to follow it up later with a CLIF bar when I started flagging from all the sugar. So this morning, I had the CLIF bar first and then a Pop-Tart, which turned out to be a much better order of operations. The first five miles of today went very smoothly, but then the final three or so were somewhat of a death march. The map was a little misleading about how difficult that would be. All in all, you’re basically going up gradually. There were a few downs here and there, but most of the day was up, with about 900 feet of elevation gain. It was a pretty tough day in the end.
When I came into camp, I definitely hadn't had enough to eat. I was freaking flagging. But since it had rained all night and some of my things had gotten wet, my first order of business was to just get everything out of the stuff sacks and tied to trees so it could all air out. It's really cold now. It’s supposed to be in the low 30s tonight, but it's also windy. At least that’s helping dry things out quite nicely.
It was only about 2 o'clock once I’d hung everything up, but I was like, “Screw it. I'm having dinner.”So I cooked myself a freeze-dried meal of chicken and rice, which was really good. I’ll probably have a tortilla with some peanut butter a little bit later, and then I'll hang my bear bag at the campsite, slip into my tent, and maybe listen to a podcast or do a little reading.
The next few days are sort of interesting. They're either going to be super long days or pretty short days. On Tuesday, it’s supposed to rain. I was thinking about pushing to get to Hiawassee on Monday and stay the night in hotel, but the weather forecast is for some pretty grim weather on Tuesday night, so maybe I'll just take it easy the next couple days, and then cruise into Hiawassee and have the luxury of a hotel on Tuesday instead.
In a sense, I'm not pushing too hard. But I've done a couple of 13-mile days, and those definitely take a toll. So it's probably good to get a little rest here and there.
