I slept in until 9a. Warthog was up much earlier (as always) and ended up walking to the gas station for coffee and breakfast. The plan was to leave the hostel around 11:30a. Before hitting the trail, everyone decided they wanted lunch from the gas station. I got a ham sandwich, Warthog got a burger and fries. It was hard to leave once we had food in us. We didn’t end up leaving until 2:30p. It was okay, we only had ten miles or so to cover today until we get to the iconic McAfee Knob.
McAfee Knob is a point on the AT that everyone gets a photo taken at. Our leave time would put us arriving there a bit before sunset. Just enough time to get all of our photos, make dinner, and enjoy the color show. We also took a bottle of champagne and did a toast to all kinds of things; people who couldn’t be here, our friends around us, the already covered and the future miles of the AT.
On our way there, we saw a bear cub and mother. The cub ran up the tree and the mom sat at the bottom eye us. She wasn’t aggressive, but we didn’t really stick around to find out if she would be.
There were a lot of day hikers out. It was Memorial Day plus it was such a popular site to visit. It felt almost foreign to see so many bodies on the trail that aren’t thru hikers. But it’s their trail too and I’m glad people are still interested in getting outside. I’ll be honest, it’s kind of fun to pass them on the trail. Our legs are so much stronger than theirs are. 700 plus miles will do that to you.
We played games as a group all of the way up and it made the miles fly by. After watching the sun set on the knob, we still had a half of a mile or so to our campsite for the night, the whippoorwill sending us off.
Before hitting our site we saw a series of rocks that made a sort of cave. Bravery filled our group of seven and we went exploring. It was late by the time we got into camp, almost 10p or so. I felt horrible for getting in so late. But the tent near us was our friend, Lucky, which made me not feel quite so bad. Of course, I didn’t know who the tent belonged to until the morning.
-ansel