Date: 2019-05-30
To: Brushy Mountain Outpost
Miles today: 20.2
Weather: overcast clouds

May 30 (Day 70): Even though we had a terrible storm last night, the silver lining was that the wind had pretty much dried out the whole tent. The one side of the rain tarp that was away from the wind was still a bit wet, but shaking it up and down for a few minutes dried it out quickly.Today was a great hiking day! Gentle ups and downs, ridge walking, and beautiful views. Hiker's heaven!We ate lunch at the Jenkins Shelter with a group of other hikers (Platypus, Laugh, Ula, Maniac, and Willow to name a few). Where to find the next water source was the main discussion because a lot of us were low. Several of the sources along the trail were dry. Found that the next source was a nice river, just down the way.We finished our lunch of, what else, flour tortillas and tuna/baloney, then headed for the river. It was a great source and we filled up! Laugh had pulled out his stove and was making a cup of vanilla chai black tea. It smelled amazing. He was trying to get caffeinated up for the big climb ahead of us this afternoon.We had decided several weeks ago, after much discussion back and forth, that we  probably needed to go off trail for a couple weeks to take care of some things at home and some issues with our rental house in NC. We had first texted the girls that we were coming off trail and they would need to pick us up. At first they were very upset and thought it was because of them and they were afraid we wouldn't finish. So we called them then and assured them that they were not the only reason, but, yes, we missed them terribly and wanted to see them too. But we were also not giving up and would definitely be finishing our thru-hike. So we decided to have them pick us up in Bland, VA on Friday, May 31st.So we started up. And up we went. We just kept thinking about the girls coming to pick us up the next day. That's all that got us through that killer climb.The end of the day had us walking across a beautiful bridge over the Laurel Creek. Lots of folks had stopped to get water or just wade in the river. We crossed and were coming down to the road when a woman came up and stuck a "FOOD" sign in the ground. Anything related to food immediately gets the attention of hikers. The lady said we could follow the trail or the road to get to the food. We chose the trail and it only took a couple minutes to see the little side trail to several white tents. Awesome trail magic!!! There were half a dozen men and women restocking food and grilling hamburgers and hotdogs. There was everything we could dream of to eat, in addition to the meats, there were donuts, cookies, veggies, fruit, candy, soda, water, chips, juice, chocolate milk, cupcakes, and I'm sure more that I've forgotten. Oh, and ice cream too!! We ate at least one of everything. David really loaded up until he was full, and that took a lot! There were at least 10 of us there and more hikers kept showing up. Word travels fast, even in the woods. ?Our trail angels were the Appalachian Trail Outreach Ministries (ATOM) group. They have been doing this for 17 years. Some of the folks worked full time jobs and saved a week of their vacation time just to come and do this. One guy was from Arkansas. Another was a teacher who had to go back to finish the school year on Monday. We were so touched that they would give up their personal time to come feed us. And they had been there all day. They had fed breakfast to the hikers camped nearby that morning and then lunch in the afternoon and we were getting dinner. They were going to pack up after we were done, but made no move to start packing because they didn't want us to feel rushed to eat.After eating our fill, we went around and thanked each of our trail angels personally and then waddled up the trail. It was after 4pm but we wanted to get a little closer to Bland. The more miles today, the less to hike in tomorrow. Did I mention that 2 of our girls were coming to get up in the morning? ?So on we went and then about 6pm decided to look for a stealth site. Of course we couldn't find one and I couldn't get the Guthooks app to find us using the GPS. (That drives me crazy, when I press the button to locate us and it can't find us or it show us in a location that we were in several hours ago!) We stopped to rest and another hiker was walking by. I asked him if he could tell us where we were in relation to Bland because Guthooks wasn't finding us. He said "Oh, we're 1.3 miles from Bland." (Then Guthooks synced up to us! ?) David and I looked at each other and said "We can do that!" So we jumped up and took off.At 8:30 that night we walked off the trail at the Brushy Mountain Outpost. We heard earlier that if you bought breakfast the next morning you could camp around the store. So we joined the other dozen or so tents that circled the store. I texted the girls and told them where we were and that in the morning we would let them know where to pick us up in Bland.We also CRUSHED our record by hiking 20.2 miles. David also has a pedometer on his phone. We did 50,498 steps! Woo hoo!