(3/11) To Hot Springs

    Last night there was some very heavy rain. But I had one of my best nights sleep in the trail yet. After getting to camp early yesterday we were able to get to sleep before the rain really hit. I only woke up once or twice last night, but when I did the rain was coming down hard.

     We woke up early then immediately decided to sleep in. Around 8 we got up for real, ate breakfast, filtered water, and got on the trail. Pretty soon the weather turned warm and to patchy clouds. We climbed two mountains today before descending down to Hot Springs.

     First thing in the morning we climbed Walnut Mountain. We got to the peak pretty early, around 10 am. There weren’t great views from the peak, but after dropping down to the next gap, we ran into some gorgeous woods.

     Then we started ascending our final mountain of the day, Bluff Mountain. We had some cool views of Bluff Mountain during the ascent.

     On the way down from Bluff Mountain we saw our first wildlife in a while, a group of 4 deer. They were bedded down in the thick rhododendrons and we spooked them out as we walked by. They took off, and by the time we were aware that they weren’t just loud squirrels all we could see were their tails.

     After reaching the top of Bluff Mountain we started dropping down to Hot Springs, nearly 3000 feet below us. On the descent we were treated with the ridges in the distance, surrounded by thick clouds, but some of the peaks poked through the clouds and hit the sky.

     Finally, Hot Springs came into view and we knew we were within our last mile of the day. 

     Right as we got into town we ran into Bear Paw, Chili Head, and Yogi (who we previously called Vermont). Tyler and I went into our hotel room in town to drop off our bags. Then we went to a diner. This place is like 400 yards from our hotel room and serves very large portions for a very reasonable price. At the diner we found the through hikers we ran into earlier who invited us to eat with them. We all had a good time at dinner and we ate a ton (and got some to go). 

     Tyler and I were planning on getting our resupply today, but after getting back to our room we decided to resupply in the morning after breakfast. We plan on hiking around 15 miles then finding a stealth site. The weather should be pretty good then turn to rain before too long. It will be very nice sleeping in a real, clean bed tonight.

Goodnight.

Walker

Check out Tyler’s blog too- https://tylerat2020.blogspot.com/?m=1