Total trail mileage: 430.6
Starting location: Watauga Lake Shelter
Ending location: Vandeventer Shelter
Weather: clear and sunny all day. 70-80 (? just a guess) degrees
during the day
I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=36.367111,+-82.059378
This day didn't go exactly as planned. But, it turned out much
better. I got up late as planned, and most everyone decided to
backtrack to the lake and do a beer run. After all, we were only
planning on doing 7 miles, so we could get a late start and still be
fine. Well, a fisherman had hit his 7-fish limit and still wanted to
fish so he gave us the 7 trout all cleaned. So, we got a fire going
and started lunch.
A few of us went into the lake, but the water was really cold. I
could only stay in the water for a few seconds before needing to come
out. Moonpie and Cookie Monster did some tree jumping into the water.
Throughout the day, a few more thruhikers (including 12% who I haven't
seen since Franklin) were passing through and they all pretty much
stopped as soon as they saw us. The group kept getting bigger and we
must have had 15 hikers or so. We were kinda leaning toward a zero at
that point and decided to do another run into town for hamburgers and
hotdogs.
Eventually (about 7:30 - 8:00) we decided to go back to camp. At this
point we actually did negative miles for the day. But, Mouse,
Sockburn, 12%, and I decided to move on anyway and do the 7 miles
night-hiking.
So, we arrived before midnight. This is probably going to mess up the
Tennessee Turnpike attempt, but the day was worth it. I am going to
still try, but I don't want to stroll into town really late. So,
depending on my pace (assuming I am ok with the miles), I may decide
to camp shortly after the TN/VA border and go into Damascus early
Friday.
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