Lessons from the AT: Week 2

We are officially 2 weeks into our journey!  We have hiked a total of 155.9 miles.  WOW, What a journey!  I know I said we likely wouldn't have time for a blog entry while we were stopped in Bryson City for our next resupply stop, but as plans often do that has changed slightly.  In the last 4 days my (Carolyn's) ankle has started to be slightly bothersome, mostly in the evenings.  And then around mile 128, it started aggravating me on the trail and by yesterday (Friday) afternoon when we stepped off the trail at Nantahala Outdoor Center just outside of Bryson City, I could hardly put any weight on it.  So, we are laid up at a hotel for a couple of nights trying to do my best to rest my foot & ankle.  In the mean time, I wanted to share a few things that we have learned about ourselves & the trail in the last week.

#1: Hiker Hunger is Real
Hiker Hunger has struck, for real.  With a resupply happening today, yesterday was feast day.  My lunch alone included more than 1,000 calories.  We ordered  in pizza at the hotel last night, and then went out for frozen yogurt and loaded it with everything you can imagine.  Our last night on the trail, I was dreaming about food - and what all I could eat while we stopped in town.

#2: Hike Your Own Hike!
This one is pretty major and one we sometimes struggle to follow when we are hiking with a great group of folks.  The first week of our hike we would spend time each night deciding how far we wanted to hike the next day, where we would stop to camp, etc.  This worked fine, but I was starting to feel like I wanted to do a little more at the end of the day.  So, this last week we have gotten up in the morning, taken as many breaks as we wanted to eat, enjoy the view, watch wildlife, or look at new plants and then near the end of each day we would start looking for a place to camp starting at around 5:30.  This has been working wonderfully! Sometimes we would stay with a group at a shelter and other times it was just us out on the trail.  A couple days ago, for whatever reason we decided to push on to a specific shelter.  We hiked until 7 p.m. It didn't take long before neither one of us were enjoying the journey and instead we were just looking for the shelter around every corner and cursing it when it wasn't there.  Once again, we had to remind ourselves to HYOH.

#3: Enjoy your Surroundings
This goes with the last one a lot. I have noticed that many of the people we started hiking with are college students, and thus many of them have a deadline and they want to go as far as they can, preferably finishing the trail entirely by the time they go back to college in the fall.  This means pushing for 15-20+ mile days.  I am sure they are still finding the hike enjoyable and I am glad they can enjoy at this pace.  But the one day that we did that and forged ahead, we could not enjoy the trail to its fullest.  We have found that we really enjoy stopping at the different look out points, talking to others along the trail, and watching the animals go about their business.

We are hoping this stop in Bryson City is brief as we are both looking forward to getting back on the trail as soon as possible. Our next stretch goes through the Smoky Mountains National Park and from everything we have heard it is a gorgeous and challenging stretch of trail.  Being that we are also nearing the end of May, this will likely be our last major milestone before we take our time off to temporarily rejoin the real world and then make our way via motored transportation to the northern end of the trail. Here is hoping our physical barriers prove to be temporary and we can be on our way after this short respite.