At breakfast, which included hot biscuits and gravy, fruit, fruit loops, and yogurt (these are definite delicacies), we watched the weather intently. It sounded pretty grim for tonight and the next day. We saw no snow on the radar, but we were supposed to ascend quickly to around 4000 feet sooooo... Yeti may be able to earn her name again.
We were in no rush this morning as we decided we would go for maximally ten miles after 33 miles in two days. We grabbed some snacks from the nearby Citgo and got a shuttle to Uncle Johnnys which is 60 feet or so off the trail. We found a few more snacks and several dogs to snuggle. We also met Brick, a German woman from Oberhausen, just an hour or so from Bochum! She was pretty psyched that we lived in the Ruhrgebiet and knew the word Ruhrgebiet at all. We were the first Americans on the trail that not only knew more than Bavaria and Berlin. She seemed quite friendly and we are hoping when she heads out again (after healing her ankle) we might get a chance to practice some German (even our tiny German practice here made us realize we were getting rusty. We told her gute Besserung and hit the road with Bambi and Spike.
*the news team: Bambi as lead anchor, Spike on sports and Tyler on weather
At this point, we had decided we would only go four miles to the first shelter. The beginning of the trail was flat, wide, soft, and beautiful. We did the entire 4.4 miles in about an hour and a half, which meant, after our relaxing morning, we still made it to the shelter by 3 pm. There were six people there, Disciple (yay!), Leapfrog, Extra Mile, Dean, Peregrin, and Trek. Which meant we even had a spot in the enormous 14 person shelter. Because of the scary forecast we decided to try shelter life again.
We made an early dinner followed by heavy snacking and hung the bear bag by about 6:00 so the rest of the evening we spent chatting and giggling like school kids at a sleepover. There was an attempt at a fire, but the off and on rain eventually doused that dream. The four of us crawled into our respective sleeping bags after our dinners. We resembled the grandparents from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, snuggled up, and too bed ridden to do anything but observe the world in front of us. Essentially we were in bed by 7, and glad to do so, so we would be ready to head 13 miles to the shelter tomorrow to wait out what will hopefully be the last of the rain for a couple of days.
