It got cold last night… and my sleeping pad deflated again, and a group of scouts, or something showed up to the campsite after 10pm and loudly got all settled… it wasn’t a great night sleep.
The morning was cold and windy too, but very nice. Once we lost some elevation, and the wind died down a bit, it was very pleasant. After descending from Roan High Knob, we spent most of the day hiking up and down wide open grassy balds with excellent views. In some of today’s photos you’ll see a barn in a valley. This is actually a converted barn that’s now a shelter for hikers. We would have visited, but it’s about .3 miles off the trail, and that’s distance we didn’t want to add.
As we climbed the final mountain today, Hump Mountain, the weather started moving in, which added an intense vibe to the ascent. The wind was blowing strong, and a drizzle started, but we still had some amazing views. On the way down, we passed a group of day hikers who asked us if we were through hikers, and gave us a bit of trail magic! So thank you for that if you all find this journal! The trail mix was tasty and got us through the rest of that descent.
After 16.3 miles we reached highway 19E and we headed over to Mountain Harbour B&B and hostel. They didn’t have any hostel beds left, so we decided to splurge and got a room in the B&B for the night. It’s an awesome room… king size bed, lots of space, mini fridge, and the best part…a jacuzzi tub. Our sore legs are thanking us now.
For dinner we hitched into Roan, TN and got pizza at Smoky Mountain Bakers, and it was very good. I’d recommend it. They’ve got a small seating area, but you can call and order ahead. After dinner we wanted to get some beer for the room, so we walked to a convenience store… no beer. So we walked a little further to a market… no beer. They didn’t have beer at the pizza place, and we didn’t see beer signs in front of the few restaurants that we passed. We came to the disappointing conclusion that they don’t have beer in Roan, TN.
Defeated, we turned back to start walking the 3 miles to the B&B. We pretty quickly got offered a ride, which we took. I asked the driver (Jeremy was his name) if there was anywhere to get beer. He said that all the stores in Roan are dry, but if we wanted he’d take us over to Elk Park, NC. Of course we accepted, and Jeremy drove us an extra couple miles, waited outside while we got a six pack, and drove us back to the B&B… it was so kind of him.
We’re quite comfortable tonight, and as I’m sure you’ve all seen by now, I finally had good enough wifi to upload our posts for the last week, so hopefully you all enjoy those. There probably won’t be another set of posts until the end of next week when we reach Damascus, as the service has been pretty bad in the mountains. But I’ll continue taking pictures and writing each evening to let everyone know what we’re up to!
Made my day to get all these posts !
Love the pictures & your blog! You two are amazing!
Found your blog and will continue to follow. Glad you enjoyed the trail magic! Good luck to you both on your AT thru hike!