Day 43: Pizza Delivery

Hiked 19.7 miles, staying in Partnership shelter.

Today we woke up relatively late by our standards, 6:30ish.  This was not late enough to avoid Monk deciding to name our group the "Early Birds", we will see if it sticks.  The terrain wasn't bad today at all, but it was harder than expected.  It is all about mental preparations though I think.  If I expect to be doing steep uphill all day I am not surprised.  However if I look at the elevation profile and it looks flat, if we get to a short but steep uphill it feels so much worse, even though overall it isn't very difficult.

I think I may have given everyone the impression that we are always walking through fields recently with all my photos of them.  This just happens to be where we are getting a lot of the nice views and cool shots.  I've started taking a photo every day at 9 AM no matter where I am (if I have the energy I'll go back and label them) so that you can see some of the less exciting but still interesting photos of the trail itself and get more of a sense of the average stuff we see.

9 AM photo

I stopped at Trimpi shelter to use the privy and hung out with Freezepop for a bit who had stopped for a snack.  Most people skipped this shelter because it was slightly off the trail.  This was three hours into the day and I was already 9 miles into a 19, so I slowed my pace down a lot and just ambled along for the rest of the day.  This is what I like about an early start, plenty of daylight to enjoy.

Picture of the clouds dancing over the far peak

Shortly after Trimpi I came upon some trail magic left by a Baptist church youth group.  This was quite extensive and I thoroughly enjoyed my snack pak (haven't had one since I was little), but especially enjoyed doing a mini resupply as they had dehydrated meals and oatmeal and all sorts of stuff.  This will be nice as the resupply options in Atkins is supposed to be pretty limited.

Trail Magic!

Just like yesterday, most of the day was spent hiking in the fog and/or rain.  The rain was light but constant for most of the afternoon.  The fog wasn't too bad, there weren't many viewpoints anyway and since I was hiking on my own it was very serene.  It was heavy enough that I didn't eat a ton as I didn't want to stop to open my pack in the rain.  As a result I was famished when I reached the shelter.

This was solved by the fact that this shelter is famous for being able to get pizza delivered to the shelter.  Well, actually delivered to the park visitors center that is right next door but close enough.  Having Pizza Hut while on the trail was a fun experience.  They must get a ton of business this time of year!   After a 20 mile day that pizza tasted fantastic.

Everyone is happy to have Pizza Hut deliver on the trail!

We waved goodbye to Warcry and Freezepop today, they are planning to go all the way to Atkins today, at 12 miles away we won't get there until lunch tomorrow probably.  Monk, Bluebird and Coach also took a shuttle to Marion instead of staying here, but Grizzly is staying with us tonight and a bunch of people are up on the top deck including Aquaman who we finally caught back up with.

Partnership shelter

Looking from the shelter towards the privy and visitors center through the trees

The view from the shelter

While at the visitors center I got the weather from the ranger.  Looks like more of the same, drizzly and foggy for the rest of the week, but at least the heavy rains seem to be behind us.