Day 40 Meadows and Songs

We took our time today, starting out of the motel in Atkins at 10AM. The 20 miles we hiked felt easy and we took a lot of breaks. 


It’s kind of crazy how just 5 fewer miles made the day feel so much easier than the 25’s we’ve been doing. We never had to push very hard to make it through miles quickly. We stopped at a stream to eat some oranges that were left by the stream side. We washed our feet at a river crossing. We took a 40 minute lunch. 


We have now hiked over a quarter of the trail. Given our week off for sickness we are slightly behind where we expected to be. However, our pace has increased so much that none of us are concerned about the timeline. We still expect to finish around the end of June. It’s crazy to have come a quarter of the way already. In a sense I feel like we just started, but I also feel like we have been out here for months. 



The weather was very warm, getting up into the 70’s. I spent a good part of the day listening to music and felt very happy. It was nice to make great progress, hike through some beautiful meadows and ridges, and take our time when we wanted to and just soak in the day.  I would say today was a high point for me so far. The views were excellent, the weather was nice, and it was really cool to be outside living in beautiful nature. 






From our campsite we have 26 miles to Brushy Mountain Outpost, a shop right on trail where we will meet Chuck. Ask me some time for the full story of how we met Chuck in 2020. He and his wife have offered to pick us up and feed us for a day or so. We may do the whole 26 miles tomorrow then zero Wednesday, but we may also just do 19 and meet Chuck in the late morning on Wednesday after hiking 7 miles. Either way we should be in Pearisburg by Friday night. 


We are expecting scattered thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. It’s not supposed to rain a lot or be particularly bad,  it will probably be at least somewhat wet tomorrow. 


I’m headed to bed.


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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