Date: 2019-05-03
From: Erwin/Uncle JohnnyÃÂÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs Hostel

To: Uncle JohnnyÃÂÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs/Super 8
Miles today: 11.1

Slackpacking!! My fave! Today we were going to shuttle into Erwin and have breakfast with Hot Sauce and Heather, but we decided to just slackpack sooner instead. We packed things up and moved out of our room. I put all my stuff in a trash bag so I could just bring my pack, and put the trash bag in the main store of the hostel. Hot Sauce had Turkish Delight from home and shared some. I¢ve never had it before, but it was delicious. Heather came with us because she had also come in from Spivey Gap before us yesterday. The lady driving us closed the trunk right on her pack belt and broke the buckle. I felt so bad for Heather. Packs are not cheap and having to replace things like that when you didn¢t even make the mistake sucks. It¢s an easy fix though and she can buy a new buckle. The woman drove very fast and we were a bit car sick again. We passed by a house with a skeleton riding a rooster. I have questions. We got to Spivey Gap and Prometheus headed out first. He said he was going to run the whole day. Heather then headed out and I grabbed some water from the gap and headed out. I had eaten ice cream and snacks for breakfast, so I didn¢t have a lot of energy, but I was making good time without the weight. I hiked behind Heather for most of the way. My toe was hurting, so I was hobbling. I had taped it up that morning, but it was still hurting. Heather¢s leg was bothering her too. We had both stopped a few times and stopping was always hard because we¢d lose that momentum and speed when we started again.We passed a few down trees that were hard to climb over. I always wanna yell ¢Parkour!¢ It really is like that sometimes. Someday someone will grab a chainsaw and clean it all up, hopefully! Other than that, the terrain wasn¢t too bad. There was some up, but it was mostly flat or downhill. We got up to the top and saw a nice view of the river down below. We could also see the cars on the highway below. We could see Erwin for a while, but the downhill was long switchbacks that seemed to take a while. We finally got down to the road! Heather and I fist-pumped and celebrated. We walked right into the hostel. I got a Pepsi and we saw Hot Sauce. She said Prometheus was out back, so we headed back to see him. He had run the entire distance and was wiped. It was impressive how he ran it, but he was paying for it now. There was a passing shower and it poured and I was glad I missed that while hiking. We wanted to move to the Super 8 because the hostel room was small and hot. We found out they were shuttling a few people down there, so we joined. I grabbed my huge trash bag of stuff and unloaded some of it into my pack as I sat in the van. We arrived and waited a bit in line to get a room behind some other hikers. I paid for this to pay Prometheus back and we got a room with two beds for two nights. We set our stuff down and did laundry. We took showers and put the clean stuff on. We walked into town for dinner and decided to check out the chili cookoff. Another freaking chili thing. Lol not a fan! It was pretty far from the Super 8, but we walked there and took in the town. Prometheus tried the chilis and I just watched. We then left to get ice cream because there was a cool store nearby with homemade ice cream. I got vegan chocolate because it was the only chocolate they had left. It was not great. I also got a scoop of bourbon vanilla and that was good! We walked to Walgreens and Prometheus got a few things. I got a few snacks to eat tonight. We went to Bojangles after. I had never been there because they don¢t have them up north. It was really good! The chicken I got was fresh out of the fryer and I got a huge Pepsi. The food was delicious, but didn¢t sit well with either of us. We ran back to the hotel because it was raining, and when we got back we both just lay in our beds, a bit uncomfortable. Prometheus and I have had some drama. It¢s personal so I¢m not going to share it here, but tonight was tough. I think we could use some time apart.Little Debbie