We left Marion at 9:30 this morning, catching the 50 cent shuttle back out to Atkins to start our day. It was much warmer today than it has been, and it didn’t rain today, which was a bonus. It was nice to begin the day with dry boots and socks.
The one problem with the hike out of town is the extra heavy pack from the resupply. With the new blisters of the last few days, the extra weight in the packs caused both of our feet some pain. We decided to take it a bit easy, and only did 14.4 miles to Knot Maul Branch shelter. It was a good day though. We hiked through a nice variety of woods, hills, and pastures.
We got some great trail magic from a few folks whose son recently opened up a brewery. That Coke and apple really hit the spot. We even ran into Scratch and Squirrel , though they were taking the day off of trail magic since they’ve been working hard the previous 8 days serving hungry hikers. I’m hoping we’ll run into them again a bit farther north.
To top it all off, we completed 25% of the trail today; a pretty big milestone. Looking back at the beginning of the hike, it seems so long ago, but it’s really only been about a month and a half or so.
We’ve got a good group around the shelter tonight, a few new faces for us like Refill who is from Hamburg, Germany. We’re also sharing the shelter with Weather or Knot and his dog Riley, who we first met way back at Neels Gap.
Depending on how our feet are feeling, we’re going to try and get some long days in and get to Woods Hole Hostel by Saturday.
