Gatlinburg to McAfee Knob: The Toast Cronicles

The cats out of the bag… I’m terrible at journaling and keeping up with my blog.
It’s been over a month since my last post and literally hundreds of miles have passed!
So, my apologies for keeping y’all out of the loop.

As of late, the days are starting to blend together. In an effort to remember as much as I can about this trip, I’ll try to be more active with blogging.

Highlights/Memories:

– wearing tiny St. Patrick day hats !

– max patch blizzard. We were so pumped to get to max patch, but that day we got tons of snow and no views whatsoever ! The snow had its own beauty to it though. I’ll come back in the future to check out what we missed.

 

 

 

 

•  500, 600, & 700 mile markers (they start to lose their zing after 500.. Next one I’m excited for is 1,000)

 

• losing 25 lbs

 

• Stan, dill, and I all got some sort of stomach bug on Easter. We called it NORO but apparently it’s not NORO unless you go to the hospital and get it confirmed. Let me tell ya, that was the saddest Easter I’ve ever had. All three of us were pathetically lounging in the super 8 in Erwin that day eating Popsicles and missing home.
  I was the first one to get sick the night before and I slept with two shopping bags next to me in case of an emergency… I missed the bag and ended up puking a watered down protein shake on my sleeping bag. WOO! At least we made it into Erwin the next day and I was able to clean my gross bag.

 

•  Stan left us. Out on the trail friendships are accelerated. You sleep in the same vicinity and share similar experiences every day. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss Stan when she first said she was going to head home. She got off trail and met us in Damascus for one last hooray. The dynamic without her has been strange but we also picked up a stray. Pen-Dexter (another app trials blogger) ended up pushing big miles and met up with us at the Overmountain Shelter.

 

So now we’re once again a roaming pod of three Appalachian trials bloggers ( thanks Zach for providing that common bond, my friends are pretty cool). Pen-Dexter helps level out Dill and I’s (somewhat) irrational nature.

• We ran into the Real Hiking Viking coming out of Damascus. How did I react? Like a fan girl. I embarrassed myself. There goes my chance. I said “hi” before I realized who it was, then said ” oh my god hiiiiiii”. For shame.

 

•  So far I’ve done five 20+ mile days. 4/16 has been the longest one yet at 25.2 miles from Rice Field shelter to Warspur shelter. The same day, my snot rocket saved a snake’s life. At the exact moment I decided to expel the mucus out of my nose, a hawk was 2 feet directly above my head. The noise I made scared the hawk and it released a still living snakes from its’ talons onto the trail in front of me. Luckily the trail was wide at this point and after screaming like a little girl I ran around the snake and didn’t stop running until the trail starting getting difficult. It’s not everyday a snake drops from the sky…

 

• I found out I got into grad school! So much stress was lifted off of my shoulders, and then placed directly back on. I’ll be attending Washington University in St. Louis in the fall for their doctorate of occupational therapy program. I’m more than excited to live in St Louis and to attend such a good school. But to be honest , trying to figure all this stuff out while rarely having service or wifi is very difficult. I’m guessing a zero day will have to be taken for me to get all of my ducks in a row.

 

• The biggest highlight so far is meeting all the awesome people!! Shout out to Northstar, Santa, wonder , white rabbit, Phat sister, Bean, Ash, Butter, 3 mile, and lil D! I’ve met so many other people as well.

Sorry for all the writing ! A lot has happened and I’ve done my best to summarize all of my highlights!

 

Random photos in no particular order:

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it for now!

 

Toast Out!