Numbers 1 - 15
Wednesday morning we hiked 2.3 miles down to Winding Stair Gap, intending to catch a shuttle into Franklin NC to pick up my shoes and do a quick resupply. Originally we’d hoped to be back on the trail after lunch. We found out instead that the Forest Service planned a controlled burn of the next several miles of the AT, so would be stuck in town most of the day.
We were fortunate that Sunset, an AT veteran who ran a hiker hostel in town (Chica and Sunsets) was dropping off a couple of SOBOs (southbound hikers) at the gap and he offered to give us a free ride into town. Orlando joined us and we were dropped in town. Rick and I had breakfast at the Kountry Kitchen and then walked to the post office where I picked up my shoes. While at the PO, I mailed home about 3 pounds of excess gear.
We caught another ride from there with Apache 69, a member of a local veteran’s group that helped out thru hikers with rides. After resupplying we stopped at an outfitter but didn’t see anything we needed. 
Walking back to downtown we had lunch (burgers) at the Lazy Hiker, and planned to take the 3pm shuttle back out to the trail. With some time to kill, I walked up the hill to another outfitter to look around. Again didn’t buy anything but a Cheerwine, but did some local sightseeing.
The bus came early at 2:30, so we hopped on. The driver was new, so we circled the town a few times before heading up the road to the trailhead. Once there, we found out that the trail wouldn’t open for another couple of hours.
At 5:30, the reopened the trail and 18 of us who had been waiting headed into the smoldering forest. Much of the ground was still showing sparks and smoke and many trees were still burning. We found a site a few miles up the trail at Panther Gap that had burned through for the most part. Lots of smoke but apparently safe. We set up camp among the glowing hills and called it a night.
Only covered about 4.3 total AT miles that day, ending up at around mile 111.
Until next time...
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