April 16th, 2016

Today we woke up rather late because we were so tired from yesterdays trek. Today we only had a 9 mile hike because we hiked an extra 3.5 yesterday in order to lighten our load today. We only had one coffee packet left so we decided to save it for another day. Our morning hike consisted of a 5 mile walk on very high but flat plateau, making the hike before lunch pretty easy. I have found that flat terrain is by far the most desirable to walk on rather than downhill and obviously uphill. Going downhill in my New Balance tennis shoes doesn't feel so great on my ankles and so a nice long flat terrain was heaven for me. I had planned to bring my hiking boots along with me but I left them in the car when we got dropped off at Springer Mountain. At first I didn't think much of it because I usually hike in my tennis shoes, but now I am starting to realize that New Balances are not made to endure a long hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. The bottom of both my left and right shoe have started to come off of the shoes and holes are appearing in various places. We ate lunch at the bottom of Blue Mountain, and finished a so far easy day by hiking a brutal 800 feet upwards in elevation to the shelter at the top of the mountain. For some reason, it seemed like all of the hikers that we had been leapfrogging with throughout our trip all got backed up at the Blue Mountain shelter because all of the surrounding campgrounds were taken. Exhausted and annoyed that we had to keep going, we trudged another 1/2 a mile to a campsite halfway up the other side of Blue Mountain. After a rather large dinner, we noticed that we have been eating really well since resupplying and decided we might need to slow down a bit if we are to have food for the last few days of our trip.

Im definitely going to need new tennis shoes after this trip.