Day 9

Wednesday April 15

Muskrat Creek Shelter

Mile 81.4

NORTH CAROLINA!!!

We made it into North Carolina today, leaving Georgia behind. One state down, 13 more to go.

After a restless nights sleep, we woke at 7 to get ready to head back to the trail. We ate in the room and took the 9 am shuttle from the motel.

After an interesting ride in the clunker van up to the gap, we started off about 9:30. My calves were extremely tight to start off, but finally loosened up after a few miles.

Made decent time to Blue Ridge Gap where I snacked a little before heading on to Bly Gap. Crossed into NC about 1:20 and wanted to stop and take a break but the weather has been raining all day or misting, so I kept pushing on.

The climb out of Bly was as hard as usual, but made worse by the mud. It took forever to get to the shelter. I finally gave up caring about the mud and just got dirty. My shoes were soaked and caked in mud and my socks were squishing.

The shelter was full as we expected since everyone was kinda grouped together. Set up the tent and tried to dry out. Ended up washing my shoes, socks, feet and legs in the creek just to get the mud off. I am seriously regretting the lack of camp shoes right now.

After a snack in the shelter with the hordes I bailed to my tent to dry off some more. We are still in a cloud and it keeps drizzling and dripping, keeping everything wet. I kept moving most of the day just to stay warm in this weather.

Met some new people and caught up with some old groups today. One girl is from Australia. One guy passed us on the trail talking about how humans evolved from apes but that they ate magic mushrooms brought to earth by aliens. Wow.

The shelter is crammed, with people sleeping on the dirt floor and on the table. There is no way I would sleep on that nasty floor. People spill food and drinks all over it. No thank you. I will take my wet tent any day.

We are planning on going past the next 2 shelters tomorrow, so hopefully we will leave most of this group behind. Kate and Nicole know our plans and will be going to the same campsite.

Everyone has bailed into the tents by 6. Still off and on drizzling. Someone got a weather forecast that said it would be drying up tonight and tomorrow. Sounds good to me.

---

Today was the first "bad" day. I think it is a mix of the weather and the fact that I am still not hiking at my usual strength. I'm still dragging on even the slightest uphill sections. Not used to that and I thought that I would have got at least some form of trail legs by now.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day. Big miles planned to try and get info Franklin on Friday. Looking at about 17 miles, but over fairly easy terrain. It is more than I wanted to do to start out, but plans are always changing on the AT.