I woke at 5 am this morning and forced myself to rise and break camp. There was a shuttle to Franklin rumored to pick up hikers at 9am where the AT crosses route 64. It was 4 miles away and I was not sure how long it would take me to walk there. I packed by the light of my headlamp, shouldered my pack, and headed north in total darkness, following the nervous beam of my light. <\/p>\n
The AT is so well trod that it was easy to find. The only time I got confused is where I crossed a road and had to search the other side for a blaze. I finally found the path, zigzagging up an embankment on a narrow ledge. It’s not something I would do on a regular basis, but it was kind of cool to see the lights of distant cities far below.<\/p>\n
Daylight finally began to filter through and I made good time up over Winding Stair gap and down to the road. It was only 8am when I reached the parking lot, so I resigned myself to wait for an hour. As luck would have it, five minutes later a camper from Canada pulled in, it was Spot and Starcraft whom I had met before. She was dropping her husband off for a section of the AT and offered to give me a ride onto town – a gift of trail magic for sure.<\/p>\n
The rooms at the motel were not ready yet so I walked to a nearby McDonalds for breakfast. Restaurant food, even fast food, tastes wonderful after several days of noodles and constant exercise. By the time I finished breakfast, my room was ready and I enjoyed a hot shower and then went for a walk up town.<\/p>\n
The outfitter’s salesman talked me out of buying a new sleeping bag. We both agreed that it will be warning up soon and I would be mailing the new bag home (Karen’s). I did mail a pair of heavy fleece pants and bought a new Patagonia puff jacket. It’s pretty stylish so I can wear it after the hike, too.<\/p>\n
I’m sort of getting an idea of what I like to eat on the trail. I bought a small bottle of red pepper to spice up my noodle dishes, and of course I pack lots of snack food, mainly Rice Crispy Teats and granola bars.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I will get back on the trail again. The Smokey’s are only about 50 miles away. I know there is no cell service in the park and very little in the Nantahala Mountains before there so updates may be sparse. I changed the blog title because several people have asked me about it. They know me as Castaway and it will be easier to find it with a Google search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke at 5 am this morning and forced myself to rise and break camp. There was a shuttle to Franklin rumored to pick up hikers at 9am where the AT crosses route 64. It was 4 miles away and I was not sure how long it would take me to walk there. I packed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appalachian-trail","category-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}