Date: 2016-05-07
From: laughing heart hostel

To: spring mountian shelter
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 27- May 8, 2016Today was quite challenging but started off very good. We woke up nice and late, 8:30am, at the hostel and knew we were staying until at least 12. There was a picnic hosted by the hostel owners and run by the hikers doing work-for-stay. We planed on hiking out after burgers and hotdogs and only doing an 11 mile day to the first shelter. Dregs spent the morning preparing to leave and I spent the morning lounging around avoiding the tasks he wanted me to do. I'm sure I had at least 8 cups of coffee and still didn't want to move. It is mothers day, so dregs and I got to talking to our moms and letting them know how much we appreciate them. And we really do appreciate and love them. Then, we finally were able to grab some food. All of it tasted great. Hamburgers, hot dogs, French toast casserole, egg casserole, coleslaw, chips and some sweet tea. We ate it all, so good. When we were done, we said our goodbyes to our hiker friends and me, dregs, and funfact set off. We hiked down our most traveled part of the trail, that led to town, for the first time with our packs. It was a struggle to make it down the steep steps but felt good to finally use my trekking poles that made me less likely to topple down the steps. As we walked through town we got stares from locals and fond greetings from all the other hikers stoping in. Once we got through the town and onto dirt trail, we caught up with fox. Really nice guy, strange, but really nice. He had just taken his pack off so he could dunk his head in the rushing water of the river running along the trail. He dunked his head right into a rapid and looked refreshed as ever. A few steps later we came across a turtle which was a neat find and a little further up the trail we found a red headed skink. The first two miles of the trail were straight up a mountain and it was sad to see that along the whole trail, all 11 miles we hiked today, all the trees and plant life had been burnt in a wildfire. The tunnels of rhododendron trees were now what dregs called, "rhodo-dead-friends". The climb up the mountain was strenuous and our bodies were not use to the hard work after our zero day. It was really hot out and we had a full resupply of 5 days of food. My feet were hurting due to blisters and my ankle swollen, Dregs's back was bothering him and he wasn't feeling great, as well as both of us had very full stomachs and it was already late in the day when we just started our 11 mile hike. Yea, We had some challenges to overcome. We struggled for a while and took it really slow. I changed out of my shoes that were hurting my blisters and put on my crocs. I hiked most of the day in those and it worked out great. Then we came across a south bound through hiker, Mountain Man, who we talked to for a bit. After that we took some ibuprofen and picked up the pace. My left knee began to hurt really bad because I had been favoring it while my blistery right foot was in pain and that was an issue for a bit. Dregs encouraged me all day so that I could keep going while in such pain which made a huge difference for me. But eventually, around 7pm, we made it to the Spring mountain shelter where all the black flies were biting and set up our tent. The three of us had dinner and could finally relax. Hopefully tomorrow we have less struggles.