Day 51 | Appalachian Trail Thru Hike 2024 | Heading NOBO!

Good morning. It's day 51. They say every journey begins with a single step, but I believe ours began over two years ago when we decided to attempt a through hike of the Appalachian Trail. Through years of preparation and training, we prepared ourselves for an adventure of a lifetime. This is our journey to Katahdin. We're gonna go down and check to see what they have for breakfast. I'm really looking for coffee and I'm gonna go on a hunt for my sock. We have been reunited. I feel like singing and dancing. I have both of my socks now. Bye guys. See you. Bye. Right, we're leaving Standing Bear. I mean not Standing Bear. My bad. We're leaving Boots Off and gonna make our way down the driveway back on trail. I think it's probably like what maybe a 0.1 walk or so. Or maybe not that far. I don't know. Oh okay. All right, well here we go. Down the driveway and back onto the trail. The weather is looking a little bit better. It was supposed to be thunderstorming pretty much all day, but from what we're seeing now, it should probably not hit us until this evening. So we're looking for probably another warm humid day. So we'll make sure we stay hydrated and just keep going. Coming up to the trail right across the street. Let's be extra careful before we cross it. Let's stop here. I see a car coming way down there. After this car, let's go ahead and go. All right, here we are. Oh look at the lake. I'm probably gonna say this wrong, but I think it's, there's a blaze. Lake Watauga, I believe. I know it's after the W and it's sort of, yeah. I think we should walk along that for a while today, which should be pretty fun. Oh this is pretty, isn't it? This would also be another fun place to bring the family. is the trail. I don't know if it's this, but something smells so good. It is. Oh my goodness. I wonder if those are the wild roses. Oh look at that. Oh that looks pretty. Wow, right off the trail. This is beautiful. Look how high the water is though because obviously somebody put a fire ring here and I'm guessing they wouldn't have originally put it too close to the water. Really? Oh, it's getting about that time. Here, feel it. Oh yeah, I actually followed some of that too. This is so wonderful. I like swimming. It'll be super fun to do that as it gets warmer. I don't know if that's where we were. I don't think we've done a full circle yet. There's a rope swing. All right family, out of all six of us, who do you think would be the first to tackle that and give it a go? Logan. You think Logan would? Yeah, he's pretty brave. Or you. Yep, I would be the last person. Just because. I don't know. I don't know how deep it is. What if it's not very deep? I'm guessing it probably is though. It looks like it's something that has been there for a while. This would definitely be a fun place, this area, to have a fun family trip. Yeah, we've been walking along this lake the whole time. It is so beautiful. What is it? Oh okay, I'm coming. This is right off the trail. This is a beautiful campsite. Oh yeah, I see. Fish and then over there. Yeah, let me see. Wow, that is really pretty. Oh yeah, look at the mountains up there. Boy, that looks like some rain. That's way over there. And then the mountains he's talking about. I don't know if you're gonna be able to see it too well. Oh yeah, I can zoom in. Yeah, it looks really neat. Yeah, I might get a better view on it if I keep walking. Might go around that way. It's so beautiful. Yeah, what is this all about? I just noticed this. I don't know. Someone's buried there. Kind of looks like it. Well, whatever's there and if it's something or someone, may they rest in peace. Silk blazing. For you. Thank you. Popping out of the woods and coming up to Oh, butterflies. What y'all doing? Oh look, there's a baby. Yeah, but oh, I've never seen butterflies on poop. Huh. All right, well yeah, enjoy. Oh my. I don't know what these purple flowered trees are. You can see the droppings like all over. I know, they're so pretty. I can zoom in to show you. My goodness, those are beautiful. And here's the dam. Oh yeah, that's the rock you were looking at from way back there. There's the rock that she was so excited about or mountain. Wow, that is beautiful. Green, yeah. Hey friends. Wow, so pretty. Hey friends. Looks like a tail of a snake. And then his little friend down here. There's a baby. I tried. Look at his little feet. Better than regular mayo. You'll never know the comfort of having to drink warm mashed potatoes at night. From your ramen bomb? Yeah. Yeah, long day, nice warm dinner. That was like lo mein. So I have my fleece on, not because it's cold out here. I think it's probably 70 something. It was 73 about coming up. Yeah, which is a great wonderful temperature. And there's a little bit of a breeze, but I am soaked through all of my clothes completely with sweat. And when the breeze comes through, it just kind of becomes a little chilly. So I'm glad to have either this fleece or my puffy. Both work. Hey, look at my trellis. I've had these shoes since spring I'm out in Georgia. And I may get a new pair in Damascus. If there is the speed goats, then yeah. But if there's not, no. I'll just stick with these old buddies. Yeah, there's at least one, maybe two outfitters. I can't remember in Damascus. I'll look. If not, I'll just have someone sent to us like daddy sent mine. But one thing that I am, no, you have eight. I have seven and a half. Yeah, or sevens, I think. Yeah, but I'm not going to throw away these shoes. I'm going to keep them. And like, I'm going to have like little cubbies. I'm going to have like my backpack hanged. And I'm going to have like all the shoes I wore. I don't know why I think it's just like a cool idea. But I do think it's a cool idea. I do think it's a cool idea. But imagine if you have four stinky pairs of shoes next to your backpack. Well, that's true. Because these shoes start to stink for sure. Yeah. Well, I can, I can always wash them so I won't be wearing them again. That's true. Yeah. This is a part of the evening or a part of the whole day that I really enjoy. Just sitting, relaxing. We're done for the day. We're proud of our miles and the goal and effort that we made today. And now we're just kind of hanging out together. Yeah. It's very nice. Oh, Mom! What? We're doing like that one thing. We're doing the thing that we did in Georgia, back at the cabin. What? Where we, where they ate dinner with us. Oh, yeah. You guys are joining us for dinner. Do you even have a creme brulee? We do. We have a creme brulee then. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow. Yeah. Because I don't know how much water is left in there. And I don't want to use electrolyte water because that seems like that would not be good. I ate all my food for today. That was back in Blood Mountain Cabins that we had that dinner. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Right? Yeah. That seems like a long time ago, don't you think? Yeah. It does and it doesn't. Wait, what day are we on? 51 I think. That was 47 days ago. Almost a month ago. Or a month ago. More than a month ago. Over a month ago, yeah. In some ways it feels like nostalgic. It was forever ago. Yeah. And then on other days it's like it wasn't that long ago. I feel like we've been gone from home for forever. Yeah. Like I forgot that I left a box of all the things that we might need in right by my bed. So I took it out of the gear closet and I put it right by the bed in between where like Kira sleeps sometimes. Then I forgot and Ava was looking for our pads today and I was like they're in the basket in the gear closet because that's where they always are. She's like oh no I found them. She's like a bunch of stuff that you might need right next to your bed in a box. So I was trying to make it easy for them to find. I forgot I did that. Scavenger hunt. I know. That's what I was trying to avoid but yeah I ended up making her do it anyways. To be honest I forgot like everything like in my room. Like I used to know all like all of my crochet sizes, crochet hook sizes. Yeah. I used to like measure out my bed to see how tall I got. I know that's kind of weird but I've done it before. I miss doing math homework on my bed with Ellie. I miss laying in my bed in general. I miss laying in my bed watching watching like some videos on YouTube while crocheting with Ellie and like in between my legs. Yeah. I miss our mornings early morning like 5 a.m 6 a.m. Remember we used to get up? Yeah. And we'd do some back porch. We'd be watching hiking videos and having coffee and you would usually make a little bit of breakfast sometimes. Yeah. There's a lot of things I miss about home but I'm so happy that we have a lot to go back to. I'm happy that we have a lot to go back to and to look forward to and that we're blessed to have a beautiful home with a beautiful family that you know we just have a really great life at home too. So this is just an addition. I'm gonna see I'm excited to see Ellie's reaction when we get like reunited. That's gonna be so cute. Yeah. She's gonna be very happy to see you. Yeah I hope so. I think I'm gonna sleep really good tonight. I slept good last night at the hostel. How did you sleep? Uh it took me a while to fall asleep but like I think I was like probably sleeping by like 9 9 30 and then I didn't wake up up until like 6 26. Wow that's really good. Yeah. I woke up a bunch of times in the middle of the night just because I always do but I still slept well. I thought I woke up feeling very rested but I forgot to wear my watch. Uh yeah. Oh you were charging it. So yeah I felt I felt like I slept really well but I'm excited to sleep tonight because I sleep so good out here. Yeah me too. Look at all Asian squat. That's funny. It's really good for your knees. Yeah. We're pretty excited that my daughter Ava put together a box for us today to send to Damascus for us. Virginia! Yeah we should be there in just a couple days um in that box. She sent us um our lighter Nemo tensor pads. The original ones that we used to use. The ones we have now are the extreme and look like 8.4 R value or something crazy. Right now we don't need that. I don't think we ever really needed that to be honest but it was definitely nice to have. Yeah. On that 20 degree night. Those 30 degree nights but I think still it was kind of overkill and they're much heavier than the regular tensor pads so they're gonna send those along excuse me with our resupply boxes and we're gonna send back probably gloves, beanie, our heavy or at least my heavy um sleep clothes because they're very warm. Way too warm to be wearing now and I'll get some more probably in Damascus. So we should shed a little bit of weight. We're gonna wait to get the quilts, the lighter quilts or the 40 degree quilt in lieu of the 10 and 15 degree quilt. We're gonna wait for that until probably I don't know maybe another couple of weeks at least until we get past Grayson Highlands until we get a little bit more into Virginia but it'll be nice for our um wait. Hi! How are you guys? Doing great. How are y'all? Good. We passed you a few times I think in the Smokies. Did you? Yeah. We're back at it again. Yeah. How's it been going? It's been going good. I got shin splints so I got off for a couple days. Me too. Did you? Yes on my right um shin which is crazy. I've had them multiple times as an athlete you know being a kid so I'm yeah I'm used to them but usually they're so painful. Usually it takes about a week or two to heal but I just kind of kept going and I haven't had an issue with them since thank god because that they were painful. Yeah I had like I got them right after hot springs and then I was like I was like what is going like I've never had this before. It's terrible right? Yeah. And then I um I like pushed on until we got to Uncle Johnny's. I was just like an excruciating pain. It really is. I was like I don't really know like what you like what do you do? Nothing. I mean literally it's rest or like basically micro fractures right in your shin so it's like yeah you're supposed to rest and yeah it's terrible though. How's it feeling now? It's good. I mean I took three days off. Oh good. After that I went to my house. Hello. Hi. We're all ready for bed, packed away, all snugly in our quilts and having a fantastic ending to another fantastic day. Yeah. So we did 11.7 miles from Bootsoff hostel to the campsite. Yep and pretty happy with that mileage. Uh we left a little bit later than we usually have been intending to. It's kind of hard sometimes when you leave hostels and there's so many people there that you know and that you're visiting with so I think we left about 10.30 and then all down the trail we stopped and visited with I don't know like several different groups of people and just you know had a good time and talked and had a nice day on trail. Yeah. Yeah. So what was your highlight for today? I would say I'm really glad that it didn't rain today. It was like supposed to be like an 80% chance of rain. Yeah pretty much thunderstorms all day. Now we can't guarantee what the rest of the week looks like because like today it looked pretty not good um but I've got to do this. Oh yeah it's reflects to your pillow. One more big breath. Yeah so the rest of the week um looks like it's supposed to be thunderstorming all day and all evening and that's what today was supposed to be but today we didn't get wet at all. It stopped raining. It didn't even really start raining. It was like a it was like a sprinkle. My wish changed. Yeah it rained before we left um Boots off this morning. I think it was like uh almost all the way until 8 30 or so this morning but yeah um yeah it was a good good day today. So that was your highlight. I think my highlight was um oh the lake. I thought the lake was really pretty. Oh I forgot about the lake. Walking on or near. We didn't walk on a lake. Walking uh next to Watauga lake I think it's called for miles and that was really pretty. So the water temperature was like a nice temperature so if it was like a nice sunny day I would definitely love to go back there and just go swimming. Well it was a nice sunny day. Like a hotter day like in the 90s to go swimming. Yeah because it still only got up to I think like 73 you said. I think so yeah. Yeah this one's all right. It wasn't bad. So what about your character builder? I already know what mine is. I know what you're gonna say I think. You know what I'm gonna say? The mud. What was the character builder? Mine is the humidity. Oh yeah the humidity and the mud. The mud in the beginning was crazy. I can't believe neither one of us fell. Yeah props to us. High five. But uh when we there's like an opening in the lake which I like dip the bottom of my shoes of just to get like the mud off. Which was completely silly because we walked in mud. I'm talking about this deep at three four five inches deep at some point and sometimes you just couldn't get around it so you just kind of squished your way through it and then other times it was just so. The quick small steps. Yeah it was very slick so I'm really so glad that we didn't fall so. Oh that would have been terrible. I mean you know me. I'm getting used to falling and slipping and sliding. Because like imagine if you fell like face forward and just like like came up with like a moon tide of mud on your face. I almost did that when we got to that water source with all of our friends. Um we kind of got excited because we're like oh my gosh everybody's here. There's like probably seven or eight of us at least. Um and I was like hey everybody and then I went fast forward like seven or eight steps and almost just face planted into the mud. But my pack. Okay there's another character builder. I put my pack on a log and somehow or another it fell directly into a big huge mud puddle. It was it took me probably 15-20 minutes to use my um cloth to clean it off. And oh okay that was my character builder and the humidity I think. Yeah. Other than that it was I mean it was a good day. It was a great day. Also like the mud was only for like the first like mile or two. So it wasn't very long. It was just it was longer than that. It was way past the lake. Yeah the thick mud was only a couple of miles. And then the rest of the trail was just so slick because it's been raining for the past couple of days with muddy mud and rooty and rocky and all of that. But yeah. Yeah all right. Well I don't think I have anything else. I think I am ready to go to bed. Ellie came here. Ellie Ellie Ellie. Love and light to you all. Thanks for watching family. We love you so much and we're getting ready to call you for the evening because we have one one bar of 5G. Oh my gosh our tent sites are getting so fancy now. I know. Like wi-fi what is that? What is that that I'm hearing? Rain. Good night.