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Starting the morning dry in my hammock with the rain pouring down, knowing it was a true zero day felt amazing.

Stoker was still up the mountain, but would be joining us for lunch. The rest of us (Mr Cheese, Fail, Gaslight, Roadhog, and I) went into town. We got breakfast sandwiches at the local coffee shop, then some treats from the neighboring bakery. Shop local!

Mr Cheese and Gaslighter sharing an ice cream sandwich at the bakery.

At the coffee shop, a former hiker named G-Man showed us videos of the flooding that Erwin got from the hurricane last November. The floodwaters rose 10 ft above the now washed out bridge over the river. The bridge went directly from Uncle Johnny’s hostel where the trail spits out from the woods, directly across the river to where the trail picks up again. No, there’s no bridge, and we’ll have to take a river raft ferry in the morning to cross and get back on trail.

A part of the former bridge stands on the bank of the river. Uncle Johnny’s hostel was severely flooded since it’s on the shore, and now cars, trucks, and shuttles have to go a long way around to get into town.

Zeros are great for relaxing and spending money in small towns that have been affected by natural disasters, but we also had chores to get done, so we headed back to the hostel to do laundry, eat our lunches, and nap.

Stoker offered hair cuts to the longer haired folks of the hostel, and I buzzed a couple of guys’ hair with an electric trimmer.
Loaner clothes at hostels and making lunch with fresh ingredients are some of the more fun parts of the trail.
Later in the day, we all piled into the shuttle van into town again to get our groceries for the week of hiking.

Today, we were all sleepy from our hard work of hiking 20+ miles yesterday, and 18ish miles the days before in the heat. We had a lot of fun together cutting hair, making dinner for the whole group of us, and watching a show that Stoker and Mr Cheese love.

Photo credit to Fail for every picture I’m in! This picture showcases Roadhog and the awesome salad Stoker made.

As we watched TV and enjoyed our homemade dinner, we indulged in some foot massages assisted by Gold Bond foot lotion. This was a highly necessary activity that only aides in bonding the little tramily together. These are the memories that last a lifetime!

The cabin at Uncle Johnny’s was nice for cooking a group dinner together, but through a miscommunication we realized too late there was only one queen bed and a pull out couch for all four of us (Roadhog and Gaslighter got bunks). We made it work, as tramily does.

I’ve said it before, but it can feel a little strange writing a blog post about the Appalachian Trail when all we’ve done is have a “normal town day”. It felt like a Saturday/Sunday (because we had to “go back to work in the morning”), but those days of “normalcy” are a part of the trail too. As the tramily for the night said, “why are we hiking? This is so much more fun!”. I said, “we hike to find friends to do this with!”.

Well, now we have found those friends, and tomorrow we shall hike on together!

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