We had some intense severe thunderstorms throughout a lot of last night. We were safely tucked away below the exposed ridge / bald of Whitetop Mountain though. Continue reading →

We headed out of the Hiker’s Inn around 8am and grabbed some iced coffees and breakfast on the way out of town. Delish! We hit the trail by 9am feeling good. Most of the day was not filled with any grand views, but was pretty nonetheless.

Rhododendron tunnel in bloom

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Nothing much to report from today. This is a good town to take a zero, rest, and resupply. We are excited to get back on the trail in a fully healthy state!

A long night of sleep got us back up and on the trail before 8am today. Feeling much better. We hiked 12.5 easy miles or so to Damascus by noonish. It was super exciting to cross the border into Virginia. We are now done with the first 3 states!

Done with Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee!

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Very shortly after posting to the blog last night, my stomach started feeling like someone was repeatedly punching it. This turned into no fun real quick, as dinner (and a giant Snickers bar for dessert) came back up. Ugh. Writhing in pain in the middle of a very cold woods is pretty terrible. Not sure what hit me, but I slept it off for the most part other than some fatigue and dehydration. So we took it a bit slower than planned today and made an earlier than planned camp after about 12.5 miles. Definitely feeling much better now, so it doesn’t appear to be the norovirus that has struck a lot of hikers and usually takes them out for 3-4 days. We suspect maybe some bad water? Continue reading →

We had another intruder last night. This time thankfully it was just a small mouse that scurried away without any bellowing or spear chucking. Continue reading →

We were rudely awakened around 2am by our first up close and personal wild life experience on the trail last night. I heard a scratching noise and turned to see a gallon ziploc bag that we had garbage in disappearing from the head end of the tarp, just about 2 feet from my head. I also saw a grey appendage or something or other in the misty moonlight grabbing said garbage bag. I began to bellow very loudly at the intruder and it dropped the bag and scurried away. Katie went out quickly and saw the culprit. It was a big fat old racoon. It didn’t scurry too far. We began to hurl insults and sticks at it. I channeled my father from Locust Lake circa early 90s. The racoon watched us and was unimpressed until some of the impromptu javelin tosses almost took it out. Then it scampered up a tree until I kept hurling stuff when it finally ran away for good. That was fun. The rest of the night was uneventful.
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We had some intense rain and storms over night, but stayed dry under the tarp. The morning had some off and on showers, but wasn’t too bad for hiking. The trail was virtually empty today, probably mostly because of the weather, but also because a lot of hikers are hitching in to Damascus, VA, for the Trail Days festival this weekend. Ironically, we had lots of streams and waterfalls that we hiked past on a rainy and cool day.

Jones Falls. This would have been really nice on a super hot day

Mountaineer Falls

By early afternoon, it started to majorly downpour. We called it an early day to dry out after about 12 soggy miles. We are also slowing our pace a bit to avoid the Trail Days festival and get to Damascus on Monday, because we need to resupply and do other errands and the town supposedly gets pretty overrun during the festival. The storms are mostly supposed to blow out tonight, so looking forward to some dry hiking again tomorrow. The trail here is definitely the easiest we have encountered thus far. Continue reading →

Today we got held up by some errands and such in town, so we got a very late start. We only hiked a little over 4 miles before setting up a solid camp to get through the nasty storms expected to roll in here late tonight (and all day tomorrow). Mountain Harbour was great and it was tough leaving. The breakfast was enormous and so good. Highly recommend this place.

Mountain Harbour B&B

We had one nice view on a ridge.

Unnamed ridge view

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We woke up in the shelter and hit the trail to already balmy temperatures around 8:15am. The barn shelter was really unique, but still a shelter with loads of snoring, a sick guy (seriously not cool), and such. Not my cup of tea.

Barn/shelter from a distance

We only planned about 8-9  miles today to get to the hostel, but they were over 2 more balds. Both were steep and had some really great views.

Trail up Little Hump mountain

Trail up to Hump Mountain

Looking back down Hump Mountain

More of the balds

The rest of the hike was pretty but uneventful. We hiked down the trail and about .3 miles off of it to the Mountain Harbour Hostel / B&B. This place is really nice and a huge step up from some of the prior establishments that we have stayed at so far (no sarcasm). We hung out with some other thru-hikers (from the notorious Highway Shrimp gang… Don’t ask…) for the afternoon as more thunderstorms rolled through. We went into the town of Roan Mountain and got some pizza and milkshakes for dinner, which was also quite good. Definitely a great spot to take a nearo day. We hit a nice milestone today by leaving North Carolina for good.

Not sure what's up with the skull!

We are now in Tennessee only until we hit Virginia. Prior to this the trail snaked back and forth between the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.

Vital stats :
Mood – good
Physical state – rested up
Smell – actually clean for once
Song stuck in my head – Numerous songs from Throwing Copper by Live (one of the hikers we met today, Tanner, loves Live and said I looked like Ed, their former lead singer)