Day 44

Hot Springs to Rich Mountain Camp 8.3 miles – AT mile 283.6

Card of the day – XII The Hanged Man

Day 43 was a full zero in Hot Springs so naturally I was trying to recover today.  However we had lots of fun in the hot tub, the boys did some good cooking and got all town chores done.  The outfitter didn’t carry Merrells and suggested that I might have trouble finding them further up the trail so that leaves me with a dilemma.  I really don’t want to change shoes!

This town has no spirits, only beer and wine!  That was all kinds of odd, I mean does that make it a damp county?  If you’re going to sell alcohol, just sell it?  No one could really explain why.

I got new Smartwater bottles, which were well over due really!  The ones I was carrying had become rather minging.

Got recognised on the street by someone following the blog!  I still think that’s rather odd.  She was related to another Trek blogger (I think it was Spark?).

After doing all we had to do we finally got out of town by 2pm, packs fully loaded with 6 days food and heavy.

Today’s hiking was another day of massive hills!  I’m all kinds of over this now, but really what did I expect, it’s a trail over a mountain range!

Lunch was by a dammed pond in the middle of nowhere.  I have no idea what it’s doing there?  Is described as an old dammed pond with stagnant and unappetising water.

Sketch gave me a slice of baloney, which was an experience in and of itself.

It was late when I got into camp, and due to my resupply choices I had my first ramen bomb.  This is a hiker stable made of a pack of ramen noodles with a pack of instant mash mixed together.  Whilst I did not hate this combination, I’ll be sticking to the dehydrated meals in the future.

Hanging our bear bags was as fun as usual.  I’m still not good at this task, but I got it done, and that’s all that counts.