April 15th, 2016

Today we finally got to resupply food after a long and tiresome first 4 days. We quickly packed up our campsite and walked over to the Neels Gap store and hostel around 9 am. The first thing we did was pay 5 dollars each for a nice hot shower. Because we had to pay for them, we spent about 30 minutes soaking under the hot water. It was honestly one of the highlights of the trip. After my shower I changed clothes for the first time on the trip and we headed into the food store to resupply. When buying food we tried to be frugal in order to have the lightest packs that we could. We ended up buying about 100 dollars worth of food to last us the remaining 6 days along with a t-shirt each and some candy and sodas. We interviewed one of the workers at the store who had thru hiked the trail a few years ago and then started our simple 5 mile hike to Testnatee Gap. Yesterday my pack was pretty light because we had almost no food left and I am now the designated food carrier because Ford carries the mammoth tent. But today, the new food items added a lot of weight to my pack and our simple 5 mile hike was a little harder than I expected. We finished our hike around 2:30 with plenty of daylight left. We decided together that instead of stopping we would move on in order to cut down on our 12 mile hike tomorrow. By the end of the day we ended up hiking 8.5 miles, 3.5 more than we had planned and finally threw down our packs at a campsite at Sheep Rock Top. The wind on top of the mountain was pretty strong so we set up the tent and made dinner with our new food supply. A few minutes ago, Ford and I sat inside our tent and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen recede over the mountains. Today was tough but we will definitely thank ourselves tomorrow.

Ford Tebowing next to the Sasquatch at Neels Gap with freshly resupplied pack.