Town errands this morning then we hung out in the hostel a little longer before leaving for the trail. I have had a list of things to do in town for a while that require phone or internet but often I have more signal on the trail than in town, I just don’t like to use my phone battery up out there. This town had a good signal so I was able to work my way mostly down the to do list. There’s always so much also going on in town that I don’t get to all of it though. Next town!

Only 7.6 trail miles today were hiked, but there were several more miles in addition to that between town and the side trail. We were excited to hang out at Watauga Lake but it was extremely windy there and not too warm, plus the lake was flooding the picnic area, so we moved on quickly. There was actually a sign telling AT hikers to take a road detour because the trail around the lake was flooded but we went out it any way. There were two footbridges with water up to the bottoms of them, and a couple of short flooded stretches that were easily got around, but otherwise it was fine.

We stopped very early at a shelter because it’s going to rain tonight and all day tomorrow and no one likes starting out soaked. The next shelter was far enough off we probably would have gotten there right at dark and it would have already been full.

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