Pancakes!

Mar. 23
The advantage of staying last night at the Rufus Morgan shelter was that we were only 0.8 miles from the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) in Wesser, NC.  At NOC there is a diner right on the trail that opens for breakfast at 8:00am.   The whole evening before Sam, Tyler, Man Cub and I had been talking about going for pancakes in the morning.  Much to my great delight a heap of blueberry pancakes was sitting in front of me at 8:15 this morning.  Life is good!  I wonder if I could arrange to have someone prepare me a breakfast like this every day out on the trail.
After breakfast I had to buy some new socks at the NOC Outfitter store as the pair I began with had developed multiple holes.  New socks were just the thing I needed to keep my feet comfortable as the next 7 miles of trail was uphill.  This was the longest continuous climb I have experienced in the southern Appalachians.  The day included a couple of other hard climbs up Stecoah Gap and Jacob's Ladder so I called it quits at 2:30 having covered 16.8 miles on an "easy" day.  The shelter was full that night as we experienced a wild storm with high winds, rain and hail.  Turns out there were even tornado's in the western part of Tennessee.  A young woman thru-hiker arrived at the shelter just before dark, 7:30, very proud to have completed her longest trail day to date.  She had departed NOC at 9:00am, just moments after I left.

Trail miles to date : 151.0