2017 Appalachian Hike

I got kind of a late start today and did 18 miles.

 I went to the cafe this morning faround 6:30 for breakfast. I ate an omelette with home fries, bacon and toast. After I ate that I was still hungry and ordered French toast. Twice. Oh, and I drank a LOT of coffee. 

I may have mentioned before that I don’t make coffee on the trail. I decided to make it one of my special town treats. 

Later Timber showed up for breakfast, then Engineer. I left them at the cafe a went back to the “very luxurious ” Doyle Hotel to pack my bag. Maple Syrup was leaving at that time. 

This was one of the few times I wasn’t the first to leave. I got to talk to Amy and found out we had a some bad haul in Nebraska. 
The first couple of miles leaving town was flat streets and highway. Then we hit a big climb. It didn’t take Engineer long to catch me. 

Then I caught up to Engineer and Maple Syrup while they were having lunch. Then I caught them again at the next shelter. We all had to “camel up” on water. When I was done filtering I had about four liters of water. It was about 90 degrees today and the water sources were scarce. 

We ended today by a nice trout stream. Engineer is wishing he had his fly pole. 

Tonight is my first night not putting the fly on my tent. It’s much to hot for it. 

Today was pretty uneventful. We talked about trying to put in more miles tomorrow. Maybe as many as 28. We’ll just have to see what the terrain and the heat are like. 

UPDATE! Not putting the rain fly on was a mistake. It started raining. We all just scrambled like crazy getting them on. Luckily it didn’t pour. My stuff is just damp. Now we hear thunder in the distance. It could get warm in this tent tonight.