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AT Blog: 26 and 27

Hurt But Not Injured

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Day 26 and 27:

A note from future Hudson, I’m doing much better now, but it was a rough couple of days.

So my ointment didn’t do crap. I packed up and knew my chaffing was not healed and would get worse with these hikes. Fortunately the trail crosses the road a few miles down, and after weighing my options I decided to head to Erwin early, in order to heal up. I was not in a great headspace, it is extremely frustrating just walking 2 miles today and falling behind others.

Unfortunately despite the interstate being there, Uber and Shuttles are hard to get, the only option being a shuttle but I would have to wait until after noon to where they operate. With no other options I decided to try my hand at hitchhiking into town and started heading that direction.

I did see something neat that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Wild mountain goats on the side of the trail, capable of going straight up a cliff face. Some goats had escaped from a farmers field and had been successfully surviving in the wild for a couple of decades. They even had a few kids with them.

After an hour I eventually got a hitch hike into town. The guy was super nice and he told me the story about the goats. He drove me all the way to the Super 8 where I had a room, I thanked him and gave him some gas money for the trouble.

The rest of the day and tomorrow I spent resting and healing. I quickly went to the pharmacy and picked up Desitin and applied it at my hotel room. I also went to the outfitters to get some supplies and the local library. The library is great mostly due to the computer access and Erwin’s library allows out of town residents to pay 10 bucks for a library card, which I use to get their audio books and ebooks on trail.

I also did a little bit of slackpacking the next day, over the section I skipped but did not complete all of the 20 miles I skipped to get to Erwin.