Day 32: One Month!

Hiked 8.7 miles, staying at Mountain Harbor hostel in Roan Mountain Tennessee.

Today marks exactly one month being on the trail!  The time has flown past and what a journey it has been so far!

Well we didn't get the amazing sunrise we were hoping for this morning.  It drizzled all night and was pretty misty this morning.  Even though it was overcast the visibility was great which was unexpected.  We had 5 more miles of balds to hike over and got to enjoy the views almost as much as yesterday.  The difference was the addition of storm clouds which gave the sky a lot more red color.

Looking back at Overmountain shelter

Cool cloud formation over Hump Mountain

Looking ahead down the trail from Hump Mountain

We cranked through the miles and downhill to town hoping to beat the rain and were successful yet again.    Dip'n'sip and I reached the road by 10 and roadwalked the .3 miles to the hostel.  The bunkhouse here is great.  It is inside an old converted barn and is the perfect setup for a bunch of thru hikers (and it keeps us dirty hikers away from the fancy guests in the b&b part). 

Top of Hump Mountain

Dip'n'sip admiring the view

Descending down Hump Mountain

Descending down Hump Mountain

Leaving North Carolina!

After showers and laundry our next mission as always was food.  As the ladies weren't ready yet, Dip'n'sip and I headed to lunch with the intent to meet them there.  We heard awesome things about a local bbq place so we made that our destination.  We ordered our food and sat down to wait.  When we got there the place had just opened and it was just us and a highschool team.  Well apparently the hiker hungry has hit the two of us.  When the waitress came out she immediately assumed that our food was destined for the highschool team.  When they said it wasn't theirs you could see her looking around, notice us, and think to herself 'this can't possibly be for them...'.  Well she brought it over and casually said 'this is a lot of food boys'.  We got a huge kick out of it and promptly demolished everything.  Dip'n'sip even went back for some ice cream.  The ladies joined us along with Doodles and a hiker we hadn't met yet, Shady.

View of the town of Roan Mountain, TN

Dutchman's Pantaloons

After hanging out for a while and even talking at length with the owner we headed across the street and took care of resupply.  We wanted some beer which required us to hitch a ride to North Carolina and managed to yogi a ride out of one of the bag boys at the supermarket.  Our options at the beer store were Bud, Bud Light, PBR, Killians and Yuengling...  Not quite the classy selection we are used to but they did have a drive through window at the beer store.  Oh and they also sold cigarettes...a lot of cigarettes.  With no ability to get our Tennessee round of beer courtesy of Why Not's friend David at an actual bar, we did second best and brought beer back to the hostel where we enjoyed them with Bonzai, Doodles and Shady.  Thanks again for the beers David we love that you can be a part of our hike this way!  For those of you that forgot David is generously buying a round of drinks for us in every state!

Clockwise left to right: Doodles, Bonzai, Shady, Srocket, Why Not, Dip'n'sip

The loft where we slept

The downstairs of the bunkroom

We spent the afternoon relaxing and ordered some pizza for dinner.  There is small tv here and a small selection of VHS movies so we put on one of the greats, Billy Madison.  It's hard to believe this is the first time I've watched a tv screen in over a month.
 
There are only six bunks in the hostel but Bonzai managed to yogi the hostel owner into letting him sleep on the couch and Doodles and Shady managed to convince her to let them sleep on her porch.  Did I explain the term 'yogi' yet?  It is basically a thru hiking term for begging, the key is that in order to be considered a successful yogi, you can't actually ask for what you want, for instance hanging around a group of day hikers cooking burgers and chatting them up in the hopes that they will offer you one.

We thru hikers are taking over this joint.  Seriously though it's pretty awesome how nice people are here and how unwilling they are to turn people away.  It is nice to be under a roof again while it's raining.  Somehow we have managed to do so every time it has rained in the last month!  Our luck is up I think though, they are predicting rain and scattered thunderstorms every day this week!