Today's miles 21.4. AT miles 899.9
We are just 0.1 miles off 900 miles! It was back to warm sunny spells again today after yesterday's rain thankfully. We left camp at 8:50 and headed up to Blackrock summit which was a large rocky boulder field. We had our wet socks and clothes from yesterday attached to the outside of our packs, they dried nicely in the sun as we walked. After the rocky summit the trail returned to nice easy going paths again.
After nine miles we took a side trail, a waste of time, money and energy detour, to Loft Mountain Wayside. Instead of burger/ice cream vans in car parks there are 'Waysides', restaurants/gift shops off the Skyline drive. We walked an extra 0.5 miles downhill then 0.5 back up again, so we actually walked 22.4 miles today. We only wanted an ice cream and a coke but ended up buying overpriced hotdog, sweet potato fries and coke to make our trip more worthwhile. We won't make that mistake again.
The trail remained good for the rest of the day but there were a few more ascents and descents thrown in. We crossed the Skyline Drive quite a few times again today too and we stopped to get more water from a steam by Pinefield Hut. There were a few more weekend hikers around with today being Saturday and Hightop Hut where we're camping tonight is very busy. The shelter was full and quite a few tents where already pitched by the time we arrived at 6:30pm. The hut is at quite a high elevation, 3200ft, and its a windy evening, hopefully it won't be too cold during the night. I think freezing level is currently way higher, about 8000ft though so we should be fine.
We've still not seen a bear yet, some other hikers saw one though so maybe tomorrow we may be lucky and see one, as long as it's not too close!
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