5\/19\/12 – 483 miles
\nI left Damascus at 10:00 and continued my journey north. My pack was heavy with all the food and extra items I’m carrying. I need 5 days to reach Atkins, the next resupply, almost 70 miles and a brutal climb up Whitetop Mountain into the Grayson Highlands. <\/p>\n
The trail was familiar to me. This was the same place where I hiked last year, walking for two days and then returning to town on my bike along the Virginia Creeper Trail. The climb out of town didn’t seem as hard this year as last. It might be that I’m in better shape but I hiked right past the shelter I stopped at last year and climbed another 7 miles to the next shelter.<\/p>\n
I have a couple of luxury items I’m carrying this stretch. I bought a book to read, I picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer, and Chicken Feathers gave me his bleach for water purification. I also had Karen send me my rain hood for my jacket. The rain hat was not working too well. <\/p>\n
I dropped the hat – my friend and companion – in the hikers box. I’m sorry Wilson, I’m sorry Wilson, I’m sorry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5\/19\/12 – 483 miles I left Damascus at 10:00 and continued my journey north. My pack was heavy with all the food and extra items I’m carrying. I need 5 days to reach Atkins, the next resupply, almost 70 miles and a brutal climb up Whitetop Mountain into the Grayson Highlands. The trail was familiar […]<\/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-490","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\/490","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=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}