Day 5 Push to Town

Writing from a warm bed indoors, in a quiet climate controlled room. 


Today was a pretty quick day. Something that sounded like a deer ran past our camp site around 11PM last night. Other than that I slept solidly through the night. I woke up around 6:30 and got out of my tent just in time to see the second half of the sunrise. 



Compared to yesterday today’s 9 mile hike was a breeze. We were still recovering from the long day yesterday, so the 9 miles weren’t simple but we were highly motivated to get to town and eat some food. 


The only major climb of the day was Kelly Knob. In the way up we had a cool view of the three mountains we climbed yesterday. 



We were on top of Kelly Knob before 11, having covered 4.5 miles, half of our mileage for the day. However we had covered almost all of our ascent for the day. The final 4.5 miles were all down hill and we covered them in under an hour and a half. Yeah, we were pretty motivated to get into town.


We had an awesome shuttle from Dale the Bandit, a successful thru hiker 2022. He dropped us off in town at the Holiday Inn. We got a two queen bed room and I offered to sleep on the pull out couch since I’ve been sleeping great pretty much everywhere. And trust me this pull out couch still feels plenty luxurious. 


Once we got our room we went out and got dinner. Spencer and I both got burgers and Tyler got a Rueben sandwich. We ate until about 3:30.



After our late lunch we went to the Ingles grocery store and bought a food resupply for the next 4 days. We then went back to our room and before too long ordered a pizza delivery. We basically have bottomless stomachs already. It always blows my mind how much better real food tastes after eating the same trail food every day for a week. And how much better a shower feels after gathering a week of grime and sweat. We worked hard for the small comforts of being in town and appreciate them so much more because of the effort it took. 


Tomorrow we leave Georgia and enter North Carolina. I’m very excited to be making such great progress so far. We are feeling very good, all things considered. No major concerns. It feels like a big accomplishment to be crossing off our first state. 


Anyway I’m going to enjoy sleeping inside tonight. 


Goodnight


Walker 


If you want to follow Tyler or Spencer, here are their logs as well:


Tyler: https://tylerat2024.blogspot.com/?m=1


Spencer: https://www.instagram.com/baxter.bound?utm_source=qr&igsh=MWx4MzRqa3M4dGk3Mw==

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