A Stranger Enters Hikers Motel Room

This morning for the first time all year, I got to sleep in! I slept in until around 8am which I haven’t done in over 40 days. Usually we’re up around 5-6am depending on our plans for the day. I think one day we slept in until 7am. But this is definitely the latest day yet!

Once we got up we walked over to check out the continental breakfast. Which was a classic set up with a whole lot of nothing. Just cereal, yogurt, and the standard waffle maker. Somehow though, the waffles and syrup were terrible! I’m guessing that the syrup had been sitting for a while or something. Because even with our low standards we couldn’t force ourselves to eat this waffles.

Then we headed back to the room to chill out. A lady was inside making our beds when we got back. Which was pretty funny for some reason. Most hotels don’t do cleaning services anymore so we weren’t expecting it. Once we got back we just chilled out for a long time. I wrote up and edited my blog post for the day. Then I did my daily short reel for Instagram and YouTube. I got all of that uploaded and then began working on my weekly YouTube long vlog. I post those every Thursday on YouTube @madisonblagden if you want to check them out!

Slugging a half gallon of chocolate milk in bed!

After that I didn’t have much more to do. I had to send some emails and still have some more videos to edit for other projects. But nothing too major so I still have plenty of time. Then we just watched movies and lounged around for hours. Pretty quickly though we were hungry again because of the small breakfast. So we started looked to see what was around for us to door dash to the room. We don’t want to walk around or do anything today!

One of my favorite town foods of all time is definitely Japanese food. There was a hibachi place right around the corner. So we wound up ordering food from there. I got a sushi roll and then a hibachi plate with steak, rice, and vegetables. Everything came to the room so quickly because we were right down the road. Then we feasted at the room. I got a bunch of extra yum-yum sauce, which is basically just a mayo that is seasoned to pair better with rice and meat. I’m obsessed with that stuff. I wound up eating everything really quickly which was great.

We watched so much TV today and did a whole lot of nothing.

Then I talked to my mom on the phone for a while. And after that I just got back into bed to relax some more. Later on I did the rest of my editing and voice over work for my weekly vlog. I wanted to get that out of the way so I can upload the video on private. That way it’s just waiting there for me to do the final upload Thursday morning. As I sat outside to do that, my dad gave me a call. We caught up on the phone for a while which was nice. Then I did my video work before returning to the room.

Sitting outside of the room to made some phone calls and get some video work done.

After that it was back to the room to resume my laziness! It’s been so nice lying around all day long. It’s funny, because taking a day off makes me feel pretty anxious. I feel like we should be moving and making miles. But at the same time, we’re ridiculously ahead of schedule. Even taking the day off we will still be at the AT before the 20th of February. Which is about 2 weeks before I was originally anticipating to get there. We’re in a great place right now and really don’t have to feel too much pressure. I would rather wait out the rough weather if we have the option to do so.

A misty and cold day today.

Later on I got a call from Sparkle. My girl! It’s always so nice catching up with her. We talked on the phone for a whole hour and caught up on everything. She has some exciting stuff coming up this year and I’m so happy for her. I want only the best and most exciting things for that amazing human. It was so nice talking and laughing so much on the phone with her. We’re so silly when we’re together.

The quality inn in Oxford.

Once I was off the phone I headed back to the room. Then we watched more movies and laid around. After a while we started thinking about what to do for dinner. The rain had really picked up and it was now dumping out. Which is unfortunate. The weather today was cold and there was some rain. But the bummer is that the actual worst weather has now pushed off to tomorrow. Tomorrow it looks like it’s going to rain literally all day long, be very cold, and there are some tornado warnings. So at this point we aren’t entirely sure what our plan is. If it’s going to dump 3-4 inches of rain tomorrow and be in the low 40s, then it doesn’t feel incredibly wise to hike out. I just have a feeling that we will wind up getting picked up somewhere and going back to town anyways. We’re just going to keep watching the radar and make our decision for tomorrow in the morning.

The classic gear and pack explosion when you get into a motel room.

For dinner we wound up ordering chipotle to the room. Which also arrived ridiculously fast. I got a bowl with sofritas, rice, beans, salsa, corn, and a few other toppings. I’ve also been sipping on a half gallon of chocolate milk all day long. So I wasn’t able to crush the whole bowl right away. I’ll have to finish the rest of it later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Laying around and watching more TV before bed.

The rest of the night we just continued our TV and movie marathon. Because we didn’t hike today I feel like I have so much energy. I could not fall asleep and wound up staying up really late just lying there. A little after 11pm we were still awake. I saw a shadow go by our window and just assumed someone was heading to their room. Then all of the sudden a key card unlocked our door and a random guy walked in! He was absolutely stunned to see us there in the room. Then started to apologize, saying that the guy at the front desk had accidentally given him the key card for this room. Once we left I couldn’t contain my laughter. I was absolutely dying laughing at the whole situation. If we had been asleep then that would have been super unsettling. But since we were still awake it was just a wild and crazy event. I couldn’t believe that that just happened. 

We started to wind down after that. I watched a little bit more of a movie. But eventually I managed to roll over and head off to bed.

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