Big Bald, April 27th

I was one of the last to leave camp in the morning since I was so exhausted. To my surprise I was caught up with Spur and his group again.

I passed an area called Sams gap and hoped to find trail magic there but it was just an interesting road crossing.

I finally end up hiking with someone again, a woman around my mom's age named Raid. We both had a hard time with the up hills so we hike together. The day got impressively windy. I'm better at pacing myself while she'll rush ahead and get herself exhausted and fall farther behind so she enjoyed following me at my pace. We climbed forever to the top of big bald, the type of trees and terrain changed the higher we climbed.

The top was a bald. It was raining. This heavy fog drifted in making the air a soupy mess. I think we might have actually been in a cloud. It was so windy we had to walk on an angle to not fall over. It was such an interesting place.

It felt like we were walking around I  circles but at last we descended into a patch of smaller trees which had kind of a middle earth feel to it. There were old ruins. I had to take a break to dig a cat hole. I didn't think that I could make it to the next shelter. I wandered off in this ancient looking forest. It was such a cool place. I'd love to come back someday. I found a foldable table way back there. I imagine a group of guys coming out to this remote location to play Dungeons and Dragons amongst the ruins and mossy covered ground late into the night by the light of candles.

I met Sun at the next shelter. It was a nice shelter but I didn't want to stick around. I decided to head off down the mountain to lower elevations making my hike tomorrow into Erwin a more reasonable length. Raid decided to stay behind. The view cleared up quite a lot as I descended farther down. It was actually a really nice day.

I made camp with a number of other new faces including Sweet Tea and Morning Glory.

Tonight I'm camped at a "stealth" site around mile 331.6 with 1858.2 left to go.