Date: 2023-06-30
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Miles today: 10.0

Day 6. We hiked another 10 miles today with extra motivation as we were scheduled to be picked up at 3pm at a road crossing and taken to a town for some R and R.  Before we went to bed we had a family meeting about the next day¢s plan and how early we wanted to leave. There was a lot of big talking by some of our kids how they¢d be up before 6 and ready to hike at 7. Well, the kids found that following through with action is a bit tougher than the making the plan but we did have our earliest start ever. We were on trail at 8am sharp! Even without breaking down tents (we slept in the shelter) there is a lot to be done each morning to prepare for the day ahead. All bedding and pads have to be stuffed, deflated or rolled up. You have to use the bathroom (always more challenging in the woods and with kids), brush your teeth, lower the bear hang bags, boil water, eat breakfast, wash dishes, put away your set of clean/sleep clothes and put back on your dirty/hiking clothes. We pack up the cooking gear, filter about 10 liters of water to refill camelbacks and bottles to get us to the next spring, take down the clothes line, remind the kids 4 times to refill their backpack hip belt pockets with morning snacks, remind the kids 3 times to stop jumping on the sharp rocks surrounding the fire pit, then stop and get out the first aid bag to get peroxide and a bandaid for the kid that kept jumping on the sharp rocks around the campfire. Next you have to look at your spouse and ask ¢are we crazy?¢, or ¢why didn¢t we just go to a resort in the Bahamas?¢, put all the gear into 6 packs, walk around the campsite picking up left behind items and finally get packs on shoulders and start walking. So you can see, leaving by 8am is a true feat. We made our best time ever covering 4 miles in about 2 hours. The terrain was almost flat (there is no flat on the AT, just degrees of ups and downs) and the path was smooth instead of rocky. The kids were excited at the prospect of an early finish and more time in town. Oh how the trail must laugh at our feeble plans. Shortly thereafter the trail became very technical and rocky so our pace slowed. The reward was we entered a section of forest with an enchanted look. There was moss and glittering wet stone everywhere. If you are a fan of the old movie Labyrinth, well this section of forest looked like a place that David Bowie would magically appear wearing black leather pants and a ruffled blouse. We did not see David Bowie thankfully but the kids were hoping to see a bear. Hikers on previous days reported a mamma bear with two cubs hanging near the trail. We kept our eyes scanning the forest and soon every tree stump looked amazingly like a bear but alas, we did not see the real thing. At lunch we met a young hiker ¢Raptor¢ who was just days away from finishing the entire AT. He gave our kids some peanut butter M&Ms so they are now his friends for life. Meeting people on the trail has been our most unexpected highlight of this trip. Everyone on the trail has a story and it¢s such a joy hearing those stories.  No one just wanders out here on accident. Something has driven them to the trail, but what is fascinating is that most don¢t know why they are here when they start, that¢s what they discover as time goes on.  ¢Why are we here?¢ I often ask. We don¢t know¢¦yet. We made it a bit early to our 3pm pickup and our camp mate, Jeff, from the previous night was waiting for the same pickup. We all road to town together and Jeff asked the kids what they most missed in while in the woods. ¢Smoothies, A§a­ Bowls, real pillows, mattress and sleeping-in¢ were their responses. One last story; when we arrived in town we dropped our stuff on the cabin porch. While we waited for my phone to charge so we could get the key code from my email we walked across the road and swam in the creek in our hiking clothes. After putting on our dry clothes we ate outside at a riverfront restaurant. At one point, W - our oldest son, said his hands were sticky and he needed to go wash. We saw him walk to the rivers edge and bend down to wash in the river. We laughed out loud to think that his first inclination after a week in the woods was to go to the river instead of the bathroom to wash. Thankfully he hadn¢t needed to pee :)