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?
Anyway, we saw our first bear this morning, so that was really cool. Got a blurry pic…the momma bear and her cub scrambled down out of some trees about 50 yards off the trail and ran away.

The black thing is mom bear heading down the tree fast (thankfully not towards us)

The trail later traversed over the first (maybe only?) handicapped accessible section.

Had maybe about a mile of smooth section like this for handicapped people. Pretty cool.

It then proceeded literally right through a cow pasture. Weird.

Watch yer step

We had one partial cool view at Locust Knob.

So shortly after that we called it a day to recoup from the stomach woes. Tomorrow we push into Damascus as planned. We may take an extra day there to get back to 100%.

Vital stats :
Mood – good considering the fun of last night
Physical state – a little fatigued, but ok
Smell – hmm…
Song stuck in my head – Lonesome Dreams by Lord Huron