April 26th- Another tough day here in retirement/unemployment life. We hiked 16+ miles today which included 3/4 of the way up Roan Mtn. which started at mile 14.5. We trooped up Roan with the second wind we got after lunch. Camping at Ash Gap this evening. It's a beautiful mountain meadow filled with tall green grass, wild flowers, and May Apples. I guess we have diagnosed ourselves as AT Purists. There are many different categories of hikers out here. Purists hike all the white blazes. Slackpackers are those are who at one point or more during the hike have someone carry their bag. Some do it because of injury, others do it to gain distance. You can hike faster with just water and lunch. The hostel in Erwin does slackpacking and we have seen quite a few hikers doing this today.
There were some equipment changes made a few days ago. We bought a SteriPen which uses UV light to purify the water and weighs half as much as our pump. The only problem is that you need running water to fill you bottle to purify it, where as the pump can pull from slow moving or shallow water. Next, we sent home our chairs. They are awesome, but both of us would rather gain the extra 18ozs with food.
By the way, for those of you that don't know what eats crickets I'll tell you, snakes. We have seen 3 since yesterday. One was a 4ft Black one.
Country Mouse and Shadow
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