Sunday April 14

Plan today is to head out of Erwin, TN. Woke up at 6am, took 3 ibuprofen since I could feel the menstral cramps coming on..how delightful...went back to bed until 8 to allow the meds to work (while I have a bed with pillows for perfect positioning). 
One of the best ideas ever, in my humble opinion, is free breakfast at a hotel. And I don't mean prepackaged processed little blueberry muffins. I mean cereal, bagels, eggs, sausage, biscuits, oatmeal, fruit....on and on. A recent discovery has been a "ghetto mocha": a package of hot chocolate mixed with a cup of coffee....yum...so I went down to the lobby to use the computer to purchase and print out postage labels for our bounce box...forward to kincora hostel, and one box home with "stuff" in it...my 0.5 L platypus, hose and bite valve,  underwear and socks, old receipts, a sweet note of thanks...zag sent home some extra food. I ate a strawberry pop tart from zag and drank my "mocha" while I figured out how to print the labels. After taking the labels upstairs I came back down for actual breakfast food (I'm in no hurry today): toasted wheat bagel with cream cheese and jelly on half, peanut butter on half , a banana, some yogurt, 3 cups of oj....and another mocha..I sat at the table and typed up my blog..trying to catch up on the last week. Goat came down to say goodbye and gave me his 2L platypus.  His wife was on her way up from Sarasota, FL to pick him up. I was sad that he was done, but happy he was going to be taken care of. The breakfast lady was very kind to give me some bleach to clean my water filter. I wandered back upstairs about 10 am, went back to bed and finished my blog updates... We were so worthless, we finally left the hotel at 11:30am!  We had to walk a mile down the road to get back to the trail. We hiked 13.9 miles today! Windy and overcast, rain threatens. We stopped about 1 mile short of our original destination as it had started to rain.. put up our tents as quickly as possible...(.got to the campsite about 630.).I was able to call home on the way up to beauty spot..so nice to hear a sweet, loving voice, full of encouragement..

I continue to learn:
things to always do in  town:
wash sleeping pad with soap and water,
wash hiking pole handles with soap and water,
Wash out nalgene (yep...soap & water)
Air out platypus...back wash Sawyer filter and bleach if able..

The wind is howling through the treetops again tonight and there is a tree creaking nearby...I hope it stands strong all night!
Zag & I had a great day today. I feel like we've worked out what we need to do to be able to get where we need to be in June.
Tomorrow we go 15.9 miles to Clyde Smith shelter.
Pics: following zag down the road out of Erwin; standing on railroad tracks outside of town (we saw 3 deer just after crossing the tracks); warming my sore feet with hot oatmeal after a long day...