[Late night postscript from yesterday’s report: During a 10:30pm nature call, X was just about finished with her business when she looked up to see three sets of head lamps come bobbing down the trail. So it is true: when it comes to the young machos, the AT is truly a 24-hour operation. And this was before the full moon rose…]

Even after an early bedtime and some good sleep, it was hard to pull ourselves out of the tent this morning. Three easy miles of gradual downhill helped get us going before a steep little climb up to the aptly named No Business Knob Shelter brought us to our first break. We decided we could make Erwin around lunchtime, and if we could manage a quick resupply, we’d still have time to make it to the first shelter north of town.

We had near vertical views of the river and town, which, if not as great as in the dead of winter, cannot be criticized as they included some very nice mountain laurels in bloom…

We came down off the mountain right across the street from Uncle Johnny’s Hostel, where the marketing frustrated N as the answer to his every question seemed to be geared to getting folks to stay at the hostel, which was a shorter day than we planned. Fortunately, N ran into the famous “Miss Janet” Hensley, who not only took him across town to Erwin’s best food store, but also stopped him at Subway to pick up lunch for X, who had stayed back at the hostel to charge phones and rearrange gear (not to mention catch up with what seemed like every other hiker on the trail today who all seemed to wander through Uncle Johnny’s).

[Six years later, Uncle Johnny’s is remembered unfondly as one of the most uninviting, unapppealing hostels on the trail. In addition to the surly staff, walking around the place revealed piles of trash and a general unsanitary appearance. We used one of their picnic tables for lunch, and were glad to be quickly on our way. In the following week when a notorious hiker virus swept through our little bubble, many fingers pointed back to Uncle Johnny’s as a probable source…]

We were back on the trail by 3:30pm and made our goal of a place under the roof if the predicted 60% showers hold true tonight. We are sharing the shelter with most of the Canadian contingent we had lunch with on top of Big Bald yesterday. We enjoyed listening to the guitar and harmonica music coupled with soft voices ’round the campfire before hiker midnight. Chalk this up as another great day on the path to Maine…