Today's miles 8.7. AT miles 391.8
A nice short hiking day for us today. We left camp at 9am, it was a little cloudier today with sunny spells. We had two balds to go over today, Little Hump Mountain and Hump Mountain. There were fantastic views from the tops, a little hazy though. There was a really strong cross wind going up Hump Mountain, almost strong enough to blow you sideways. The landscape today reminded us of the English Lake District, the wind too!
We had a five mile downhill stretch from Hump Mountain down to US19E road between Elk Park NC and Roan Mountain TN. The trail down kept changing from very rocky to tree rooty to OK. We kept bumping into two other thru hikers today Slough and Ramseys. They took a photo fir us of both of us on top of Hump Mountain. We left North Carolina and entered Tennessee proper today just past Doll Flats. We have been flitting between the two states since the Smokies.
From the highway we had a short walk down the road to Mountain Harbour Hostel where we arrived about 1:30pm. A great hostel over a barn with horses and goats, overlooking a creek. Mary the owner was very friendly and took our laundry to wash. We're here with another female thru hiker Five Star and a couple of male seven day section hikers, W2 and Comfort Zone from Michigan. Five star actually cycled from Connecticut to the start of the AT, will hike the AT then cycle back home again to Connecticut, how impressive is that? After showering we had a hotdog each to keep us going. They sell bits of food at the hostel. They actually had a special hot dog toaster! With three slots, the two halves of bread bun go either side and the sausage in the middle. Even the other Americans had never seen one of those before.
At 5pm Mary shuttled us all into Roan Mountain town so we could get something to eat and do a bit of grocery shopping. We went to Highlander BBQ restaurant with the two other guys, Five star went for pizza. Nice food, I had highlander fries (fries with pulled pork and cheese) and buffalo chicken strips and Nigel had cheeseburger and fries. We couldn't eat it all even though we were hungry, I think our stomachs are shrinking as we're so used to eating little and often now on the trail. Mary picked us all up again at 7pm.
There's no WiFi actually in the hostel building but there is near Marys house at the rear of the hostel, so I sat outside for 45 minutes or so uploading our blog and photos for the last three days. I also checked the weather forecast for the next five days. Oh dear - snow and a very bitterly cold, -12°C/10°F plus windchill on top of that, cold spell due in about three days time. We'll have to wait and see? We may be taking an extra zero day!
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