Day 63: Zero day at Katie's House!

Day 64: (VA Route 56 (mile 834.4) - Harper's Creek Shelter (mile 837.3))

At this point in my hike, my circadian rhythm naturally wakes me up around 6:30-7am when the sun is just over the horizon. This is great on trail, but unfortunately it makes it tough to sleep in on mornings off trail. This morning however, I managed to sleep in until 8:30am which felt pretty incredible.

We were not able to head back out to trail until Katie's mom got back from work. I was told this would be any time from 3-4pm, so we had all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon to continue snacking and relaxing. These are the two main priorities of a thru-hiker when not hiking so I had no complaints.

After a leisurely day of eating far to many leftovers, Katie's mom returned around 4pm and surprised us with a pizza. We ate the pizza and loaded up the two cars around 4:45pm. The drive to the trailhead took about an hour. We all thanked Katie's parents for their incredible hospitality and took a quick picture before finally hitting trail at just about 6pm.

This morning, there had been talk about possibly hiking 9 miles to Maupin Field Shelter, but it quickly became apparent that Harper's Creek Shelter - just 2.9 miles away - was a more realistic destination for the evening. The hike was uneventful, although my body was a bit confused to be starting so late in the day. We made it to the shelter a little after 7pm and I set up my tent before digging into the leftover chicken-chickpea-tomatillo dish I packed out for dinner.