Day 80 | Appalachian Trail Thru Hike 2024 | Zero in Roanoke

Good morning! Welcome to day 80. We're gonna have a little bit of breakfast and then we'll go to the pool finally so you get to swim hopefully before it rains today. All right let's go check out to see what this mall has to offer. Feels kind of strange we haven't been shopping or to a mall in 80 days? Yeah. What do you think? I'm excited. Excited? Yeah. I'm way zoomed in. So it's way zoomed in on you. Sorry. This looks like a big mall. It's like a two-story mall and we're here early. It's just past 10 o'clock so and it's Wednesday. Okay let's see what kind of trouble we can get into. Yeah good idea. That's a pretty good place. Oh there's two stories. Okay. Well it turns out the mall opens at 10 but none of the stores open till 11. So we're just walking around and checking it out. Pretty neat. All right so we're just gonna kind of walk around and window shop until anything opens. I don't really know what else to do. That's what happens when you get up at like 5 a.m and get moving before the world does. Yeah why not? Let's try them. Oh you have to have dollar bills. Let me see if I have any cash. I'm not hating it though. Oh between your shoulder blades is very nice. Oh boy this adventure continues. Yeah I like it. I think it's pretty good. I think it was worth a dollar for three minutes. Yeah I'm not, I think I'm too short for it to work properly on my legs but it feels nice on my neck and on my back. Oh my gosh you're shaking. I know. Well hey guys welcome to day 80 or the closing of day 80. Yeah. So how is your second zero in a row? It was great. Really really nice today. Yeah. Yeah we didn't film like hardly at all I think. No. I haven't edited yet but I know that I think I only have like not even five minutes of video. Sorry guys. I just forgot. I mean we were just having a good time and being silly and we bought them our way down the mall. Yeah so basically we tried to go, we had breakfast this morning. Yeah. We tried to go swimming. The water was absolutely freezing. Yeah. Like we got our little bathing suit on and everything. Touched them all like nope and then it started raining so we went back upstairs. Yeah then it started raining so then we're like okay let's find an indoor activity because let's just do something fun today. So we went to the mall. Yeah. And then we just walked around. Got that little massage chair thing going on. That was kind of fun. Got pizza. Got pizza. Really good. Yeah that was really good. Those meatballs were really yummy. Yeah. I was hungry because I ate some toast for breakfast but it wasn't enough so. Yeah. I ate that pizza in like 30 seconds. Yeah. Yeah the breakfast downstairs was it's okay. I mean. It's a hotel breakfast. They had like eggs you know and then. That's why I didn't see them. I saw a video of like an egg in like a bag. Well it's powdered eggs you know same stuff we eat on trail. I'm done eating that stuff on trail. Yeah well you don't really love the powdered eggs that we eat on trail anyway so. No they're not the best. Yeah that's literally all it is is just powdered eggs so. Yeah. I mean I put some hot sauce on it and it was all right. They looked rubbery to me. They were watery but anyways. So yeah we had a good day like we just kind of felt normal again and just had a really a really fun day together. Yeah. Came back to the hotel. Watched some tv. It pretty much rained for most of the later afternoon and it's still kind of raining on and off now. Yeah there's a thunderstorm that's that's been going through for the past um what time is it like six something? Seven oh one. Seven yeah it started at like 1 32 o'clock maybe or so and then there's more coming according to the radar but I mean we're in the hotel so it's whatever. So. How was your day? It was good. What was your highlight? Uh the pizza sleeping in because like surprisingly I'm waking up at like 6 30 on accident so. You woke up early today. Yeah so sleeping in uh breakfast attempting to go to the pool that's kind of a highlight but at least we went for like a little bit and hanged out. Yeah. Uh going to the mall and. It was kind of strange to be around like people again. Yeah like humans. To like non-hiker people and people just doing their everyday shopping and. People that don't look like complete trash. Oh yeah it's all good though. Yeah so let's see my highlight I think was um the fact that I had like four bites of tiramisu left over this morning so I ate that early with my coffee. Oh coffee that was a big highlight. Yeah that was really nice too. Um yeah just we had most of it's like mostly food if you're wondering. Yeah and overall just a good day. It was fun just to kind of hang out with you and. Chill. Chill. Just chill. Yeah there's something that I was talking to um my husband about earlier today um and it's something that I didn't really realize and it was something that when we were having dinner last night that you brought to my attention kind of on accident and I guess I was sort of staring off into space and you asked me if I like are you okay are you sad are you like are you do you not feel good and I was like wait what and I realized I was completely um relaxed just completely relaxed sitting there at dinner knowing that we had all day today as well you know to kind of rest and just to do our thing and on trail as as your mom there's so many constant micro and larger of course decisions that I'm situations that I'm constantly analyzing yeah from food how if you've had enough to you know what's ahead of you um how far ahead you are how close you are to me are you going to be safe with a baby cub yeah like just wildlife like there's so many things that I'm constantly analyzing and to a point where sometimes it becomes hyper vigilance being vigilant is good that's a good thing but sometimes I realize that there is some hyper vigilance happening that I didn't even really realize until yesterday I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad thing I have a big job to keep you safe on trail and it's it's my privilege and my priority but I didn't realize it until you said that I was just completely relaxed just sitting there like a normal quote-unquote person but at Olive Garden yeah having dinner and not you know I was aware of my surroundings because of course I always am but there's a little bit of a difference um in being aware of your surroundings I'm in the middle of what feels like nowhere and Olive Garden which I guess some people would say we're probably safer in the woods than you are Olive Garden you probably are right yeah you probably are right but still just on a constant day-to-day basis I am constantly analyzing um every and scrutinizing all the decisions that I'm making to make sure that you're safe and that we're making good choices from weather to food to water heavier water carries when I think we there could be potential of dehydration because the humidity is high or how many miles we're going and good what yeah the wet tent there's just so many so many decisions but anyways yeah that was um I don't know what made me just think about that but that was just an interesting epiphany I sort of had yesterday for the first time yeah so I have felt really nice just sort of breathe any care for builders today uh we didn't go get to go swimming obviously I was really looking forward to go swimming yeah well we'll try again at some point I suppose whatever yeah today it just didn't it just didn't work out I'm sorry he didn't work out today or yesterday at campground or even here so yeah bummer yeah well some of you are probably wondering why we've had a double zero because it was just three days ago or we were on trail for two days after having our latest zero in Daleville and what I'll say right now is is not a whole lot but what I'll say right now is Little Bear and I have been having some pretty significant conversations over the past few weeks that have really sort of ramped up right yeah over the last few days and so we've taken these two days to have some down time to really be able to connect and to talk and to sort some things out and we're in the process of sorting some things out together I think individually as well but also together and um we're not quite prepared just yet to announce anything I don't think I am for you no but we will be soon and so we're not you know trying to leave anybody on suspense or do one of those cliffhanger things like that's just not what we're doing but at the end of the day this is our experience and this is our hike yes and this is our journey and I will continue to be fiercely protective over that for both of us but especially you so we've got some things we're thinking about um we've given ourself the rest of tonight and into tomorrow to make some decisions yeah so stay tuned for those decisions whatever we decide one way or the other because there's lots of options here that we're kind of just throwing around a little bit um we'll be good yeah we'll be fine it will be through prayer um through discernment um and we will follow what we think is in our best interest as we have from the very beginning and we'll let you guys know what we um come up with and uh I guess probably maybe in tomorrow's video yeah sounds like a good plan you think yeah it sounds like and I know like we like that was supposed to be the ending part of the video but we forgot so yeah oops our bad okay so love and light to you all we look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow and we hope that you guys are having a great day and again thanks for your support your love your kindness your encouragement and your prayers we appreciate them more than we can ever possibly express bye guys bye