Training for my real challenge: the sandwich challenge

Sandwich challenge ready

At the place, I met Chili and Pepper, a father-son team hiking the AT. The kid is planning to be the youngest Triple Crowner, and I told them some random advice about the other trails. It was hard to get across to AT hikers the brutality of the CDT, though. It was cool being one of the youngest female Triple Crowners and hanging out with the soon-to-be youngest male Triple Crowner, though. When he finishes, he’ll be a decade younger than when I finished!

Flowering trees along the AT

Stuck around Damascus to get a letter and a package and maybe use the internet. The package wasn’t there, and the library’s internet was down…so I ended up leaving town around 10. I got distracted by Cowboy’s (the Exxon cafe), as I remembered it has the best pancakes on the trail, so didn’t actually start hiking until 11.

I ate 7 sandwiches about 10 miles out of Damascus—a poor idea, but nice pack lightening strategy. When I finish hiking, I’m thinking about going to the Casesus Cheese Truck in New Haven, CT, and attempting to eat 10 grilled cheese sandwiches, thus winning the honor of having a sandwich named after me. The 7 sandwich lunch is only a bit of “training” in my bigger quest.

The cool thing about being in Damascus and my hike today was meeting people who I met at Fontana Dam during my Southbound hike of the Benton MacKaye Trail. I never thought I’d see them again, but I did, and they remembered me!

I didn’t get to Thomas Knob until 9:30 and did quite a bit of (this time) good fast nightwalking. The shelter, to my surprise, was full (it was almost empty in 2008), and I set up my hammock poorly in the conifers (which I think are inferior hammocking trees).

Sunset near Thomas Knob