Hello again,
It's been an interesting few weeks since the last post....and we are nearing 40 miles past the Great Smoky Mountains Nat'l Park...which, though a significant milestone, was a bit of a bust due to the frequency of rain. We, being pretty much fair weather hikers, have done our best to sit out as much wet weather as possible, but it has still been necessary to attempt to make progress regardless of the weather, resulting in some very wet days of slogging through trails either often soft with mud or actually running with enough water to call them streams in their own right.
As we near the 300 mile mark on our trip, the 'adjustment pains' in my feet have totally subsided, I've avoided blisters entirely (a rarity on the trail), and though there are other pains that come and go, so far everything that hurts seems to be of the temporary variety. I no longer feel any need to count steps uphill to measure a set distance before I allow myself a breather as we can both adjust our paces to hike almost non-stop up most hills and have learned to enjoy just a diminishing steepness of the grade rather than praying for a flat spot or a downhill.
Our mileage has not increased greatly as we still find anything over about 8 miles to be a bit of a challenge, but we are covering those miles now at closer to a 2 mph rate than a 1 mph, and finished almost 6 miles by noon a couple days ago, and did 13 by 3:30 PM as we came into Hot Springs, NC.
We are now in Damascus, VA for Trail Days until Sunday, May 17 and will be relaxing until then, when we catch a ride back to Hot Springs and resume the trail.
Not getting any younger, but certainly feeling that way....and I've lost 17 lbs so far.
Later,
Plowboy